Safeguards implementation ------Review of hot cases: Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria .....and Pakistan

Bruno Pellaud, Switzerland

Iraq, a close call

• Early activities: Large Osirak reactor built by the French in the 70s, bombed by Israel in 1981. Then a 10 billion $ clandestine programme with 10’000 persons. • Safeguards: agreement since 1972; sharpened controls after the 1991 Gulf War by decision of the Security Council. No IAEA inspections between 1998 and 2002. • Violations: totally clandestine weapon programme. • Danger level: was high; in 1990, two years from a first device; reduced to nil in the 90s; uncertainty between 1998 and 2003.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 2 The Tuwaitha Research Centre

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 3 Calutron destroyed in 1991

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 4 Russian research reactor destroyed in 1991

..... and searched by international inspectors

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 5 What did the IAEA do?

Before 1980, the IAEA saw nothing of the clandestine programme of Iraq in the 80s and 90s. Intelligence services did not see as well (or did not tell the IAEA…) Between 1991 and 1998: > 50,000 m2 of factory space destroyed ~ 2,000 equipment items destroyed > 600 tonnes of special alloys destroyed All HEU material removed from Iraq

Early 2003, international inspectors (under Hans Blix) stated the absence of weapons of mass destruction. The US ignored these findings and went to war. Late 2003, 1400 American inspectors (under David Kay) confirmed the Hans Blix!

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 6 Iraq: the lessons learned

• The IAEA failed to detect the Iraqi weapons programme. Not that the inspectors failed; it’s the politically- constrained verification system that was not adequate. • Reason? The political restrictions imposed on inspectors, that limited verification to declared facilities. • Iraq led to a major revamping of the IAEA safeguards system in the 90s - with strengthening measures targeted at undeclared clandestine activities, the objective being more information about and more access to facilities.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 7 North Korea, in China’s shadow

Early activities: in the 80s, 5 MWe research reactor, followed by two unfinished “power plants” with gas-graphite reactors. Safeguards: agreement since 1992; no inspection since 2002. NK stepped out of the NPT in 2003 without sanctions!! Violations: undeclared plutonium separation detected by the IAEA in 1993; then denial of international inspections. Danger level: very high; has separated 30-50 kg of plutonium. Has exploded two devices in 2006 and 2009. Enough plutonium in store to assemble many more nuclear devices/weapons.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 8 Bruno Bruno Pellaud

The Yongbyon nuclear sites WNU WNU Summer

Institute Institute 2012

9

The old 5 MWe and the new PWR reactors

Reactor

Fuel storage

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 10 Yongbyon’s reprocessing facilities

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 11 Yongbyon’s enrichment facility

In November 2010, Dr. Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University visited the Yongbyon nuclear site. Hecker saw a building containing 2’000 gas centrifuges dedicated to producing low enriched uranium, according to his hosts.

This enrichment facility did not exist in this building as of April of 2009. To outfit a plant with 2’000 centrifuges this quickly suggests that this may not be the first gas centrifuge plant that North Korea has built.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 12 Yongbyon’s enrichment facility

Left: the fuel rod fabrication plant for the 5 Mwe reactor (for plutonium production) has been dismantled and replaced with the centrifuge plant with a blue roof below

Right: Until further notice, yes, for the production of LEU….

In strategic terms, this means moving from the plutonium route to the uranium route…

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 13 From Siegfried Hecker

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 14 North Korea: the outlook

• North Korea left the NPT - The Security Council did nothing! • After two nuclear tests, North Korea’s protector, China, hesitates to use its patronage and leverage to force North Korea to the negotiating table. • The “Six-Party Negotiations” have failed and are unlikely to resume. NK wants to negotiate directly with the US. • A large hidden store of good weapon grade plutonium exits in North Korea. The nuclear threat from North Korea could destabilise the whole region. China should awake!

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 15 NK wants to negotiate directly with the US

A first step?

North Koreans, Americans, three Germans and one Swiss… Somewhere in Europe, sometime in the Spring of 2011

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 16 Kim Jung Un, the new boss… As a kid, he spent 8 years at school in Switzerland, 4 in English (good), 4 in German (poor). He liked Michael Jackson, Nike and NBA basketball. Now, as the new boss, he just fired the top army general, he shows off his wife and together they visit an amusement park....

A new era ??

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 17 Iran: a long nuclear story

• Early activities: thousands of scientists and engineers were trained in Western countries under the Shah in the 60s and 70s; an American 20 MW research reactor fuelled with HEU was bought in 1961. • Safeguards: agreement since 1972 (under the NPT).

• Violations : undeclared purchases from China of 1800 kg of UF6, UF4 and UO2, undeclared Pu separation; work with metallic uranium and polonium sources; etc. In the 80’s and 90’s, yes, an embryonic, but real weapon programme with purchases of equipment (centrifuges) from Pakistan and others. Intense domestic R&D in weaponisation. • Facilities: labs, uranium conversion, heavy-water reactor, pilot centrifuge facility and large-scale enrichment plant in Natanz. • Risk level: increasing rapidly, with large stocks of low-enriched U up to 20%. On-going IAEA inspections, but clandestine facilities….

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 18 TRIGA Mark II – purchased from the US General Atomics in 1961

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 19 Entrance to the underground industrial facility. Some 8000 P1 centrifuges are installed.

Pilot facility: Where new centrifuges are being tested and LEU enriched to 20%

ISIS

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 20 Centrifuges - Model P1

Installed in Natanz (Iran) From Pakistan, seized in Libya

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 21 New IR-2 centrifuges on display

In 2008, the President visited Natanz. Its Office released 48 photographs of the tour, providing a public look inside the research facility!! The Minister of Counterintelligence and the Minister of Defence are also shown on the picture...

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 22 3000 new centrifuges in an underground facility Iran has decided to relocate the 20 per cent enrichment at its fortified Fordow enrichment facility near Qom and install there advanced centrifuges that would triple output. These steps will make it easier for Iran to quickly break out to nuclear weapons, if so decided…

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 23 Iran: the outlook • NPT: Iran is entitled to uranium enrichment, as is Brazil. • IAEA: All nuclear materials are said to be accounted for; but what about clandestine activities and facilities? • Slowing down of weapon programme after the 2003 elimination of Saddam Hussein, but apparent resumption in 2007 after the closing of the 2003-2007 negotiation window with Western Europe. • Mismatch between the enrichment and the power plants programme. Iran is indeed acquiring a “virtual weapon capability”. Today, the apparent weakening of the religious leadership and the dominant position acquired by army and revolutionary guards create a new risk.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 24 Iran: the negotiating status

• A series of recent meetings in Istanbul, Bagdad, Moscow • No serious discussions yet, but …. the process is still alive • Western stance: – suspend 20% enrichment (stay below 5%), – store LEU fuel outside Iran, – close-down the underground site of Fordow • Iran: We give away nothing! • Stalemate will continue, but Israel will not bomb… • No progress before Obama’s second term after January 2013 and before the presidency of Ali Larijani after June 2013. Both men would be strong enough to negotiate.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 25 United Nations General Assembly 2006

The West was ready to grant Iran the right to enrich uranium “for research Ali Larijani, now purposes”; Iran accepted the proposal. Speaker of Parliament In his opening speech, President Bush announced the imminent agreement. The Europeans would meet the Iranians first, then Ms Rice would enter the room solemnly for a very first negotiation.

This would be followed the day after by in-depth and extensive talks between the US and Iran. Through the Swiss Embassy, Ali Larijani, the nuclear negotiator, had requested US visas for a plane-load of 300 Iranians! But the plane never took off. At the last minute, Ahmadinejad and Khameini torpedoed the historical moment by pulling the plug. Larijani resigned.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 26 Libya and Syria

• Libya launched clandestine activities around 1985. It started to work with A.Q. Khan in 1984, placing an order in 2000 for 10’000 centrifuges. Libya did weaponisation activities as late as 2001. Under a grand bargain with the US and UK started in 1999 under the Clinton Administration, Libya dropped illicit nuclear activities. • Syria committed several violations before collaborating with North Korea in 2005 for the construction of a large Pu production reactor. The building was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in 2007. The Syrians did not complain; they just cleaned up the site! The IAEA went to the site and found traces of reprocessed uranium. Similar traces were found in a hot cell in Damascus.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 27 Pakistan shakes up the NPT

• Pakistan has not joined the NPT and has manufactured nuclear devices/weapons. It had the right to do so. • Still, with the support of the whole Pakistani government, the head of the programme, A.Q. Khan, peddled his nuclear ware around the world with the help of three Swiss engineers, the Tinner family. • Khan had been an employee of the Urenco enrichment company in the Netherlands. He stole critical technical documents and was about to be arrested when he fled. He fled because the then Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers was asked by the US (CIA) to let him go … • The Tinners are jailed in Switzerland since 2005. Hundreds of folders and compact discs were found, containing bomb designs and more. Surprise! Besides working for Khan, the Tinners were on the payroll of the CIA! Hence, the US Government refused judiciary assistance to Swiss courts to help convict them; it even asked for the destruction of the documents!

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 28 Post-mortem on Pakistan • The spread of nuclear weapons over the past thirty years is to a large extent the story of A.Q. Khan: Pakistan's own program, North Korea, Iran, Libya and the emergence of a black market in nuclear technology. A.Q. Khan of Pakistan was always lurking in the shade. • The U.S. knew a lot about Pakistan's programme. Just at the point at which pressure was being put on Islamabad, in the late 1970s, suddenly the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was transformed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistan became this indispensable ally for fighting the Soviet Union. • So proliferation was pushed way down the agenda, allowing A.Q. Khan to bloom and causing the so-called “Crisis of the NPT”…

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 29 Have the NPT and the IAEA failed?

• No, in essence no. Don’t forget President Kennedy who in 1963 predicted some 25 weapon states by 1990. The NPT and confidently 50 years of IAEA safeguards have made a difference. • Iraq was indeed a failure (IAEA could go only to declared facilities). • North Korea was a “success”. The IAEA detected the concealments through chemical analysis. The Security Council caused the fiasco. • Iran was not a failure (conventional safeguards were too weak to expose the concealments of the 80s and 90s). • Incidentally: Trafficking, for sure, the IAEA is not mandated and equipped to detect trafficking of nuclear equipment.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 30 The NPT, wobbly, but necessary • Discriminatory, yes. Nuclear Weapons States have an unhealthy influence on world affairs. • No significant disarmament efforts, yet, but at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, these are blocked ……. by Pakistan!!! • Not universal – yet, the three non-NPT States (India, Israel and Pakistan) will ironically sooner or later all enjoy the full benefits of international nuclear trade - without having to join. The US-India nuclear deal was a stab in the back of the NPT. • No sanctions on North Korea, which had left the Treaty and which “went nuclear” unhampered, well protected by its friends. • In spite of all this, NPT and IAEA safeguards remain essential tools to prevent further proliferation.

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 31 Key points to firm up the NPT

• No to prohibitions imposed to Non-Nuclear Weapons States (e.g. that all sensitive services should be provided only by an inner club of mostly Nuclear Weapons States). • Yes to the Additional Protocol – for all States. • Yes to Multilateral Nuclear Arrangements (MNA) and to regional facilities replacing one-country facilities. • Yes to predictable guidelines to handle violations of the Treaty in the IAEA Board of Governors and in the UN Security Council (where permanent members shelter their protégés rather than promote non-proliferation).

Bruno Pellaud WNU Summer Institute 2012 32