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Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards
The
capabilities and preferences of potential buyers—terrorist
groups, national governments, or political factions within national
governments—could well be the decisive factor determining
whether a profit-oriented criminal group would develop its own
capability to manufacture nuclear weapons. For example, national
governments interested in the clandestine acquisition of nuclear
weapons might prefer to purchase the requisite material in order to
manufacture weapons tailored to their particular requirements.
However, terrorist groups might provide a ready market for
fabricated nuclear explosive devices.
Capability
to Manufacture Nuclear Weapon Material. It seems very unlikely
that a criminal group could develop its own capability to produce
significant amounts of plutonium or uranium–233. The
operations required are numerous and complicated, and on too large
a scale. There are a number of reasons why it is also unlikely that
a criminal group would be capable of enriching uranium, at least in
the near future. The technology to separate uranium isotopes by
means of centrifugation, one alternative method to diffusion (which
requires huge facilities), is being developed in various countries
under conditions of governmental or commercial secrecy. The
operation of centrifuges would be a demanding task technically. The
criminal group would have to steal a number of centrifuges in order
to acquire a capability to produce significant quantities of
high-enriched uranium from stolen low-enriched or natural uranium.
Given the cost of one centrifuge, inventory controls capable of
detecting the theft of one or more centrifuges would seem
justified. If a theft were promptly detected, it would seem that
the government would have a relatively long time to recover the
stolen centrifuges. However, the successful development and
widespread application of laser techniques for isotope separation
would seem to have substantial implications for the spread of
uranium enrichment capabilities, possibly to criminal groups as
well as to many commercial enterprises.
THEFT BY
A TERRORIST GROUP
Reasons
Although
financial gain should not be excluded as a possibility, the
dominant motive of a terrorist group attempting to obtain nuclear
material would probably be to enhance its capabilities to use or
threaten violence. An important, though secondary purpose might
well be to provide itself with an effective deterrent against
police action. In these respects, a terrorist group possessing a
few nuclear weapons would be in a qualitatively different position
offensively and defensively from such a group possessing only
conventional arms. Hence, theft of fuel from the nuclear power
industry might place nuclear weapons in the hands of groups that
were quite willing to resort to unlimited violence.