See also - "Uranium Mining, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Tests"
See also - "Uranium Mining, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Tests"
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, scientists claimed that atomic fission (splitting of the atom) offered an ideal source of energy. Fission of the 'peaceful atom' promised clean, cheap and abundant energy.
The scientists proclaimed they now had the power to liberate the world's poor from age-old drudgery and poverty. Even as these Japanese cities lay in ruins, and radiation victims lay dying, the horrific destructive power of the bombs were overshadowed by a world vision of energy abundance.
In 1953, US President Eisenhower launched an 'Atoms for Peace' program in the United Nations. The program was applauded by world leaders of all political hues.
President Eisenhower declared: "It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of soldiers; it must be put into the hands of those who know how to strip it of its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace".
But how genuine were Eisenhower's sentiments, so enthusiastically chorused by other world leaders, for peaceful atomic energy? How much was the promised abundance designed to deflect attention away from proliferation of weapons?
Unfortunately, national priorities were starkly military. The first reactor produced plutonium for weapons. The first power reactor propelled a naval submarine and was only later adapted to civil use. By the end of the 1950s hundreds of nuclear explosives had been fired by the United States, the Soviet Union and other major powers. Only after worldwide protest over the radioactive fallout did nations agree, in 1963, to a Partial Test-Ban Treaty against open air testing
Since then about 1300 explosions have been fired underground. In 1993 the nuclear nations, apart from China and France, agreed to a moratorium on further testing. France joined the moratorium a year later but in 1995 resumed testing and aroused condemnation and protest across the Pacific and around the world.
In 1950 non-government bodies called a World Conference in Defence of Peace in Stockholm. The conference launched a 'Ban the Bomb' appeal to the United Nations. Over 500 million people around the world signed the appeal. Although people vigorously opposed nuclear weapons they generally clung to the hope of enjoying the benefit of the peaceful atom while banishing the warlike atom.
But as nuclear weapons proliferated people began to understand the unbreakable connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
In 1976 the famous oceanographer, Jacques Costeau, told the United Nations: "human society is too diverse, national passions too strong, human aggression too deep-seated for peaceful and warlike atoms to stay divorced for too long. We cannot embrace one while abhorring the other; we must learn, if we want to live at all, to live without both".
After mining the uranium mineral is refined to uranium oxide, called yellowcake. This has two forms of uranium: uranium-235 and uranium-238. Uranium-235 fissions (splits) readily. Its concentration in yellowcake is only 0.7 per cent. For the common reactor (light-water) yellowcake is enriched to 3 per cent uranium-235. To make bomb-grade fuel yellowcake is enriched to 90 per cent.
Before enrichment, yellowcake is converted to a volatile material called 'hex' (uranium hexafluoride). In the diffusion process hex vapour passes through thousands of membranes along a two kilometre tunnel. In the other process the vapour passes through hundreds of small ultra-high-speed centrifuges.
Centrifuge plants are compact and so readily concealed. They allow a country possessing a plant to switch quickly from the production of reactor-grade to bomb-grade fuel. Uranium is the key to nuclear weapons.
During the operation of a reactor, some uranium-238 is converted to plutonium-239. Periodically spent-fuel is removed from reactors and after storing for a year or more it can be treated in a reprocessing plant to recover the plutonium. One large reactor produces 250 kilograms of plutonium each year. Only 8 kilograms of plutonium (the size of a large orange) is needed for an explosion.
With so much plutonium around in the world today some has found its way on to a black market. An international ring dealing in 'red mercury' (code name for plutonium), has been uncovered in Germany and Italy.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was set up to implement the United Nations 'Atoms for Peace' program. The IAEA operates the international safeguards system under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
It took from 1953 to 1970 for a United Nations committee to conclude the NPT. Nations were more concerned with developing nuclear industry than with the effectiveness of safeguards. "...the UN committee had to act on the lowest common denominator principle" and differences on quite fundamental issues "had to be papered over by general clauses which effectively deferred them". (1)
The IAEA was assigned the task of inspecting civil nuclear plants of countries to ensure that the nuclear fuel was not diverted from them into nuclear weapons. The agency was also given the task of promoting the development of nuclear power. The two tasks - promoting nuclear power and preventing diversion of the fuel into weapons - have at times come into conflict. When this happens the IAEA has turned a blind eye to suspicious circumstances especially when the interests of the larger nuclear powers are involved.
Australia makes bi-lateral agreements with customers who pledge not to use the uranium, or plutonium formed from it, into nuclear weapons. Checking observance of such agreements becomes the responsibility of the IAEA which sends inspection teams to monitor the nuclear fuel in the customers' plants.
The 1976 Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry into the uranium industry reported an "absence of safeguards on source material [uranium]" and that the international safeguards system "may provide only an illusion of protection". (2)
Safeguards have serious loopholes:
governments can withdraw from the NPT upon only 3 months' notice; some enrichment and reprocessing plants are not safeguarded; governments can specify country of origin of inspectors; IAEA's primary aim is to promote, not hinder, nuclear industry; rocket and bomb components are not safeguarded so that weapons can be fired days after diverting plutonium.
Countries like China, France and South Africa have agreed to ratify the NPT, after refusing to do so for many years. This development is welcome but it has to be remembered that a nation is free to withdraw, on grounds of national interest, at short notice.
In practice Australia's responsibility ends once its uranium is loaded on board ship. On this first leg of its travels the uranium is the responsibility of the ship's captain. Israel made the plutonium for its first nuclear weapons from 200 tonnes of uranium on a ship it hi-jacked in the Mediterranean.
First stop for Australia's uranium overseas is a plant which converts it to hex. Here it is mixed with other countries' uranium. From then on no one can say what is Australian uranium and what is not.
A plant manager describes how the uranium is "co-mingled on an accounting basis like dollars in a bank account. A certain amount goes in and a certain amount is credited coming out at the end". (3)
At the enrichment stage the large plants are military. They are either not inspected by the IAEA or the inspection is cursory. A study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that: "Most of the world's enrichment plants are not now safeguarded and seem highly unlikely to come under IAEA safeguards for the foreseeable future". (4)
Australian uranium exported to Finland and Sweden is enriched in Russia. An equivalent amount of enriched uranium is dispatched from Russia to customers in Australia's name, but some of the actual uranium will be mixed with Russian uranium. Some could have been in the core of the Chernobyl reactor when it exploded.
Mr. Justice Fox was the Presiding Commissioner at the Ranger Inquiry. He later served as Ambassador for Nuclear Disarmament. In 1980 he told an inquiry that: "Send uranium overseas, it is converted and enriched perhaps in different countries, mixed with uranium from different sources, put in a reactor, burned up, comes out as spent fuel, the elements of which may have many origins. If something is done against the agreement what can you do about it". (5)
Roger Richter was an inspector in the IAEA. He told the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that: "Since the entire reactor can be emptied within days, you as an inspector, face the fact that by the time you arrive to verify the declared inventory of fuel elements, which power the reactor, all the evidence of illicit irradiations [to obtain plutonium] could be covered up.
"You will try to forget that you have been party to a very misleading process". (6)
Said a Commissioner of the U.S. National Regulatory Commission: "A nation with a designed and fabricated weapon could fuel it with diverted plutonium in less time than detecting and reporting it might take". (7)
Keeping track of plutonium isolated from Australia's uranium is next to impossible. For what it is worth the Australian Safeguards Office (ASO) follows transfers of uranium and plutonium from reports of IAEA inspections. It is nothing more than a paper chase. In 1988 leaked documents from the European Atomic Energy Agency revealed how safeguards are being breached. Scrap material was swapped for Australian yellowcake, which was 'reflagged' as being of United State's origin, then enriched to weapons grade-fuel and dispatched to France.
Revelations on reflagging forced the government to admit that ASO only kept track of an 'equivalence' of exported uranium and had no real knowledge of where it really ended up.
The construction by Germany of two reactors in Iran was interrupted by war in the region. In 1995 Russia contracted to complete the building of the reactors. The deal was vigorously opposed by the United States as opening the way for an Arab nation to build a bomb. This belies the claim that safeguards can be trusted.
France and Britain provided nuclear plant for Iraq to use in its effort to build nuclear weapons. A Pakistani scientist worked in a Netherland's enrichment plant in order to learn its design. European firms then acquired the essential components, sometimes on black markets, for Pakistan to build its own enrichment plant.
Australia suspended uranium shipments to France because of its nuclear testing in the Pacific. However, sales were resumed on the excuse that Australia needed the foreign earnings.
When the five major nuclear weapons nations signed the NPT in 1970 they committed themselves to work towards nuclear disarmament. Instead they kept on building more and more nuclear weapons. Only after political change in the Soviet Union, and the end of the cold war was any significant effort made towards nuclear disarmament.
Even so only a small fraction of existing stocks of the weapons have been dismantled. The reductions so far leave the world's arsenals holding enormous destructive power. In 1995 a UN Review Conference agreed to extend the NPT indefinitely. This was with an undertaking by the nuclear nations to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In a last minute effort before treaty negotiations began China and France undertook a program of underground weapons testing, a clear indication they intend to maintain their arsenals. A treaty banning all weapons tests was agreed to in1996. From now on nations will use computer simulations to develop their nuclear weapons.
There is still no firm commitment to nuclear disarmament nor to halt the production of plutonium. Nations like Japan and Germany are accumulating large stocks of plutonium. They have the industrial capacity to develop the rocketry for delivering weapons. The world's nuclear arsenals will only be abolished through people the world over vigorously protesting against the planning of genocidal nuclear war by the major nuclear powers. Until then some small nations feeling threatened will continue to pursue their nuclear ambitions through a nuclear power industry.
Israel's nuclear weapons are condoned by the major nuclear nations. Israel refuses to agree to IAEA inspections. Yet Israel, unlike North Korea, Iraq or Iran, still receives nuclear assistance because the United States sees it in its strategic interests to do so. When South Africa, during the Afrikaner regime, was known to be making bomb-grade uranium in an unsafeguarded enrichment plant no direct action was taken against it. Algeria is being assisted by China to build a nuclear industry clearly intended for a nuclear-weapons capability to counter the Israeli arsenal. North Korea was building nuclear weapons to counter the military backing of South Korea by the United States. After years of negotiating a compromise was reached whereby the United States will supply North Korea with light-water reactors to replace its plutonium-producing reactor. However, this will only reduce, not eliminate, the plutonium available for North Korea's nuclear weapons.
War was waged against Iraq only after that country threatened the oil interests of the western powers. Until then France, Germany and Britain were quietly supplying the equipment needed by Iraq to build nuclear weapons.
India and Pakistan are in a mini-nuclear-arms race. India tested a nuclear explosive with nuclear equipment provided by Canada and continues to receive nuclear assistance. These countries will not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty until the major powers commit themselves to the abolition of their nuclear weapons arsenals.
The United States applied economic pressure to try and stop Pakistan developing nuclear weapons, but only after Pakistan no longer served as a useful base for the United States to counter Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Pakistan will not join the NPT or accept inspections. Says Abdul Kaviakan, who heads the Atomic Energy Commission in Pakistan: "I want to question the 'holier than thou' attitude of the Americans... if we start a modest program we are the satans, the devils".
In the long run economic pressures against Islamic and other nations will not succeed in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. The only assured way is to abolish all nuclear industry.
Australia has 30 per cent of the world's uranium reserves. To say our large uranium deposits will be staying in the ground would have a resounding moral effect. Anti-nuclear sentiment around the world would be bolstered greatly. Denmark Austria, Italy, New Zealand and other countries have decided to be nuclear-free.
Our obligation to the world to provide energy can be fulfilled by providing renewable technologies. In that way we can serve world peace, protect the global environment and at the same time expand our commercial opportunities.
Notes
1 - Pringle P. & Spigelman J., The Nuclear Barons, p.305, Michael Joseph, London, 1981.
2 - Ranger Uranium Environment-al Inquiry, Chapter 13 "Weaknesses of the NPT and of the safeguards system", Australian Govt. Publication.
3 - "Uranium - Handle with Care" 4-Corners, ABC-TV current affairs program, 1984.
4 - Kras A. S., Boskma K., Elzen K. & Smit W. A., Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1983.
5 - Justice Russell Fox speaking to the South Australian parliamentary select committee, Age, 16 Dec. 1980.
6 - See Ref 3.
7 - Markey E., Nuclear Peril - The politics of proliferation, Ballinger, Mass., 1982.
8 - Nuclear Fix - A guide to nuclear activities in the Third World, p.117, World Information Service on Energy, Amsterdam.