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Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards







materials flowing throughout civilian industry in America, is stolen for possible use in a nuclear explosive that could kill tens of thousands of people. More revealing and discouraging is the fact that no major increase in spending or level of effort for the U.S. national safeguards program is projected, despite the fact that material flows in the nuclear power industry will increase very rapidly in the near future.

Of course, money alone will not buy effective safeguards against nuclear theft, but more money than is presently being spent would help. As we shall see, an effective safeguards system would not add very much to the costs of nuclear power, whereas the costs in human lives and property of an ineffective system might well be immense.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

Footnote :

1 Together with a group of experts, we have recently completed an extensive study of the IAEA safeguards developed to implement the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The study was conducted under the auspices of the American Society of International Law with support from the National Science Foundation by a group composed of Bernhard G. Bechhoefer, Bennett Boskey, Victor Gilinsky, Edwin M. Kinderman, Lawrence Scheinman, Henry D. Smyth, Paul C. Szasz, Theodore B. Taylor, and Mason Willrich, as project director. Mason Willrich (ed.), International Safeguards and Nuclear Industry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Footnote :

2 Address by John T. Conway, Executive Director, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 7th Annual Meeting, Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, June 14, 1966 (unpublished); AEC Press Release No. K–108, May 3, 1967; AEC Press Release No. K–121, May 12, 1967.

Footnote :

3 The following paragraphs draw from Edwin M. Kinderman, "National Safeguards" in Mason Willrich (ed), International Safeguards and Nuclear Industry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 142–150; and Edson G. Case, Deputy Director, Directorate of Licensing, U.S. AEC, "Materials and Plant Protection: Regulatory Policy Overview" in Atomic Industrial Forum, Protection of Special Nuclear Materials and Facilities. New York: AIF Committee on Nuclear Materials Safeguards, February 1973.

Footnote :

4 For recent and sensationalized discussions of this and other incidents see Ralph E. Lapp, "The Ultimate Blackmail," The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 1973, p. 12; Timothy H. Ingram, "Nuclear Hijacking: Now Within the Grasp of Any Bright Lunatic," Washington Monthly, December 1972, pp. 20–28.

Footnote :

5 The regulations are contained in 10 Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 50, 70 and 73. In the material which follows, words and phrases which appear within quotation marks are contained in the relevant portions of the Atomic Energy Act, regulations promulgated pursuant thereto, or AEC introductory statements covering the issuance of new regulations. In order to make the analysis more readable, references to particular sections of the law, regulations, or regulatory guides where the quoted words and phrases are found have been omitted.

Footnote :

6 In its regulations on licenses covering facilities, the AEC has limited the scope of what might be considered "inimical to the common defense and security" by excluding from consideration "attacks and destructive acts, including sabotage, directed against the facility by an enemy of the United States, whether a foreign government or