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June 12, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 24

Letters

Known nuclear issues

I found Michael Heylin's article on nuclear weapons issues singularly uninformative (C&EN, April 10, page 53). The problems he listed have been extensively discussed in past decades. Indeed, he simply restates the well-known "conundrums." Perhaps a better understanding of the underlying problems would follow were one to ask why the task of minimizing proliferation has eluded solution. Even the simplest analysis may help. Any government, however well-situated, faces the initial decision: Can it afford the high cost, both in human resources and material wealth, to enter the nuclear club? What are the gains and losses?

The U.S. and U.S.S.R. were the original duo. The excessive accumulations of nuclear explosives based on a strategy of overkill led to Mutual Assured Destruction; clearly, neither antagonist intended to use its enormous arsenal. But to maintain a stockpile of 6,000 or more bombs, when a mere dozen would have sufficed, had a basis. Consider Eisenhower's injunction to be aware of the military-industrial complex. Our industrial operators and military strategists successfully justified to our representatives in Congress why, in a nuclear exchange, hundreds of bombs were needed to cause adequate devastation, when two were sufficient in World War II. Well, we were up and running, and our economy was not significantly strained by the huge cost of maintaining and updating nuclear armaments, and later, by cleaning up old facilities and designing a spectrum of new bombs that strategists considered necessary for specific applications. The military-industrial complex generated powerful lobbies.

China most likely joined the club of major powers for prestige. It could not be left out when England and France touted their "having the bomb," justified by being within range of U.S.S.R. missiles during the Cold War. Israel is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Its justification for choosing a nuclear option is apparent. Being surrounded by countries that have openly declared to seek its destruction, Israel set an official policy to remain ambiguous, but if nuclear devices had been developed, these were for purely defensive use. Brazil and South Africa decommissioned their programs because none of their enemies posed sufficient threats to merit the cost of entering the nuclear club. In contrast, India and Pakistan are at a standoff. Each, having demonstrated the capability to initiate nuclear explosions, now has recognized that solutions for their long-standing frictions may be better achieved by negotiations, although from time to time, sporadic conventional warfare does break out.

Indeed, it is most difficult to rationalize the nuclear activities of North Korea. Historically, the unfinished war with South Korea and the continued presence of U.S. soldiers at the border must be disquieting. To us, the misdirection of its limited resources to establish a nuclear military appears irrational. Finally, the push by Iran toward a nuclear military component can only be explained as ranting by a president who is seeking to balance Israeli nuclear bombs with Muslim bombs. There is nothing new here, other than a challenge for each of us to prepare a list of why this unstable, wasteful proliferation of nuclear armaments has continued for decades.

S. H. Bauer
Davis, Calif.

Heylin addresses a major concern for the community of civilized nations: How can we ensure that irresponsible, and perhaps irrational, national leaders don't use nuclear weapons against the rest of us?

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has been a nice "feel good" device for many of the world's nations, but it has been adequately demonstrated that nations with nefarious intentions can either not sign it, or sign it and ignore it. Heylin mentioned a few of those.

A farcical aspect of NPT is, and always has been, that signatories will work toward eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. The raw materials for nuclear weapons can be mined from the ground all over the world. A few competent physicists and chemists can take those widely available materials and convert them into weapons with the assistance of books and Internet articles. So the notion that the nuclear genie can be returned to the lamp is a dangerous fantasy.

What to do? President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is a giant step in the right direction. When (and if) fully implemented, a few nuclear nations would provide fuel services for everyone else. They would recycle spent fuel and provide new or recycled fuel as needed. The fuel facilities would be designed and staffed for maximum security, and the International Atomic Energy Agency would have on-site presence to make sure fissile material would be carefully safeguarded and accounted for. Opportunities for the theft of illicit weapons fabrication would be near zero. Other steps will be required, but this would be a good start.

J. Malvyn McKibben
Aiken, S.C.

CORRECTIONS

May 8, page 5. Walter Kohn and John Pople won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions to computational chemistry.

May 8, page 28. The Public Access Act of 2006 as introduced in the Senate on May 2 applies to agencies that fund $100 million or more in external research annually.

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