How to Build a Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction

Frank Barnaby is a nuclear physicist by training. He worked at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston and University College, London. He was Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) from 1971 to 1981 and Guest Professor at the Free University, Amsterdam. He currently works for the Oxford Research Group on research into military technology, civil and military nuclear issues, and the terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. How to Build a Nuclear Bomb and other weapons of mass destruction FRANK BARNABY For Wendy, Sophie, and Ben How To BUILD A NUCLEAR BOMB and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction Copyright © 2004 by Frank Barnaby Published by Nation Books An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Incorporated 245 West 17th St., 11th Floor New York, NY 10011 Nation Books is a co-publishing venture of the Nation Institute and Avalon Publishing Group Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, with- out permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 1-56025-603-6 987654321 Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West Contents Preface to US edition (2004) ix Preface xix Introduction - the state we're in 1 Nuclear weapons are here to stay 2 Why countries "go nuclear" 4 Weapons of mass destruction: the next terrorist threat? 5 International terrorism and democracy 6 Reacting or overreacting to terrorism? 8 Fear of biological and chemical terrorism 10 Part I Weapons of mass destruction: What they are and what they do 13 1 Nuclear weapons 15 Nuclear history 15 How a nuclear bomb works 16 The nuclear powers 21 What a nuclear explosion does 23 The Reality of Nuclear Attack—Eyewitness Accounts 31 Nuclear terrorism 36 Effects of a radiological weapon 38 2 Biological weapons 41 What is a biological weapon? 41 vi Contents What are biological-warfare agents? 42 The making of biological weapons 48 How biological-warfare agents are spread 51 What biological-warfare agents do 52 Biological terrorism 52 3 Chemical weapons 55 What is a chemical weapon? 55 How chemical-warfare agents are spread 57 What chemical-warfare agents do 58 The Reality of Chemical Attack: Eyewitness Accounts 60 Chemical terrorism 63 Part II Weapons of mass destruction and the state 65 4 What does it take to make a WMD? 67 What is a nuclear-weapon program? 68 What do you need to make a nuclear weapon? 70 The making of chemical weapons 84 Biological and chemical munitions 84 5 Case Studies: Iraq and North Korea 85 Iraq's nuclear capability 85 Iraq's biological capability 90 Iraq's chemical capability 91 North Korea 92 6 What is the international impact of a WMD program? 95 Nuclear proliferation 96 Nuclear export controls 99 Biological proliferation 100 Chemical proliferation 101 Assessing the impact 103 Part III Weapons of mass destruction and terrorism 105 7 Terrorism with weapons of mass destruction 107 Nuclear terrorism 110 Biological and chemical terrorism 117 Contents vii 8 Which groups are capable of making and using a WMD? 121 The nuclear terrorist 121 The bioterrorist 123 The chemical terrorist 124 The prime suspects 125 The increased threat 131 9 What can counterterrorism do? 137 Protecting key materials 138 Regional and international agreements 144 The urgent need for effective intelligence 147 10 What does the future hold? 151 Nuclear terrorism 153 Genetic engineering 163 Biowar against ethnic groups 164 Cyberterrorism 166 Appendix 169 Countries with military expenditure over 5,000 million U.S. dollars p.a. (2001) 169 Further reading 170 Websites on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism 171 Source notes 172 Index 176 PREFACE to the US edition (2004) Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is out of action, having been captured on December 14, 2003, by American forces at Ad- Dawr, about eleven miles from his hometown of Tikrit. Yet weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) remain a, if not the, main cause of concern in the international community, especially among leading Western powers, fearful of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, a fear enhanced by evidence of nuclear-weapons programs in North Korea, Iran, and Libya, and anxious about the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan. However that concern has been complicated in the aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. When they went to war against Iraq on March 20, 2003, both US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invoked the scenario of Saddam Hussein deploying chemical and biological weapons. Saddam, an irresponsible and unpredictable leader, could not, they argued, be trusted with WMDs. Disarming Iraq of its WMDs and ballistic missiles was given as the primary reason for going to war. Yet as of writing no WMDs have been found, while a political firestorm has erupted in Britain about the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence reports on Iraqi's WMDs to sell the war to a skeptical British and American x Preface to the US edition (2004) public. One casualty of the scandal was the suicide of Dr. David Christopher Kelly. The Kelly tragedy made much more acute the deep division in British society about participating in the Iraq war. Fifty-nine-year- old David Kelly was a leading international expert in biological weapons and warfare. As a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, between 1991 and 1998, he made thirty-seven visits to the country, investigating Iraq's former biological-weapons program. He also led all the inspections at Russia's biological-warfare facil- ities from 1991 to 1994 under the 1992 US, UK, and Russian agreement. A microbiologist educated at the universities of Leeds, Birmingham, and Oxford he worked at the British Ministry of Defence's chemical-weapons research center at Porton Down, Wiltshire, becoming the head of microbiology before joining the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office as a consultant on arms control. Part of his job was to brief journalists on defense issues. A quiet man who normally shunned the limelight, Dr. Kelly was thrust into the media spotlight in July 2003 after he was iden- tified in the press as the man the Blair government believed leaked information about Iraq's WMD program to BBC reporter Andrew Gillingham. Kelly soon became embroiled in the furious row between the government and the BBC over claims that the British government's dossier on Iraq's illegal WMD capabilities, published on September 24, 2002 to mobilise public support for the coming invasion of Iraq, was "sexed up." On July 15, 2003, Kelly was called to give evidence at the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He told the Committee that he was not the source of the "sexed up" claim. On July 17, Kelly's family contacted the police after he failed to return to his home in Oxfordshire. On July 18, his body was found in the countryside a few miles from his home. He had bled to death from a wound in his left wrist, in an apparent suicide. On July 20, the BBC confirmed that Kelly was indeed the source of the Gillingham's report about the "sexed up" dossier. Preface to the US edition (2004) xi Dr. Kelly's death caused considerable public disquiet and criti- cism of Tony Blair and his government. The dignified way his wife Janice and three daughters handled the tragedy increased public concern. Kelly was clearly upset about his treatment and the hostile interrogation at the parliamentary committee, and wor- ried that the affair may have consequences for his pension. But many believed that David Kelly was made a scapegoat to divert public attention from the government's role in the affair. The circumstances of his death and the fact that David Kelly had, for a number of years, been a committed member of the Baha'i faith that condemns suicide added to the disquiet. Tony Blair bowed to public pressure and set up an inquiry, headed by Lord Hutton, to investigate the circumstances of Dr. Kelly's death. The events sur- rounding his death and the public sentiment against the Iraq war have severely dented Tony Blair's popularity. Only time will tell whether his premiership can survive. In the United States, ambassador Joseph Wilson's accusation that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq, along with the growth of American casualties there, has pro- duced a certain cynicism about the war that even the capture of Saddam has only partially allayed. Bush and Blair's problems have been compounded by the fact that despite the great efforts made since June 2003 to find them, WMDs have yet to be found in Iraq. David Kay, the head of the 1,200-strong Iraq Survey Group, the coalition's team dispatched to find WMDs in Iraq, has said that he plans to leave before the ISG's work is completed. The ISG's interim report, published in October, said that the team was unable to find WMDs or any active program to develop or produce them. In May 1991, after the first Gulf war, the United Nations Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency—the two international organizations responsible for finding and destroying Iraq's chemical-, biological-, and nuclear-weapons programs, its WMD arsenals and its stocks of chemical and biological agents—began their work.

Load more