ArmsControlWonk.com

If there were an award for journalism on matters nuclear, it would be the Mark Hibbs Award and the eponymous author would be permanently ineligible just to give everyone else a chance.

Six of his competitors have recently published a trio of books, of varying quality, on AQ Khan and Pakistan’s bomb:

• America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise, by David Armstrong and Joseph Trento,

• Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, and

• The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… and How We Could Have Stopped Him, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins.

Mark Hibbs, writing in the Nonproliferation Review, reads them so you don’t have to — or at least so you can avoid the real clunker among the three.

Hibbs also discusses his own reporting, including a forthright analysis of the motives behind the leaks leading to one of his biggest stories:

In 1994, I never anticipated that Pakistani officials would tell me about a clandestine plutonium production reactor project hitherto subject to vague rumors. But at the time I never questioned why they did that. Thirteen years later, sources in the United States suggested to me that Pakistan had a good reason for confirming this project to me when it did.

As the Khushab project geared up during the 1980s, U.S. experts handling intelligence on Pakistan began ringing alarms about it both at the Department of State and at the White House. But during the four years following the inauguration of President George H.W. Bush in 1989, officials in the trenches had been unsuccessful in getting Bush to persuade Pakistan to abandon it. Initial drafts of talking points for the president had included stopping the plutonium project. But the matter never got to the top of the agenda and was never raised by Bush during meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif.

In 1993, however, Clinton succeeded Bush, amid some uncertainty in Pakistan about how the Democrats would handle the nuclear issue. In the fall of 1994 both sides started preparing for a Bhutto-Clinton summit in Washington. The meeting eventually took place the following April. U.S. sources said that the decision by Pakistani officials in 1994 to expose Khushab was taken to handcuff Clinton from persuading Bhutto to agree to halt the project.

Like their counterparts in Pakistan, for about a decade U.S. officials kept the existence of this project a secret. The reason, one participant in deliberations told me last year, was straightforward. “So long as Khushab wasn’t public, there was a chance the president could get them to stop it,” he said. “But as soon as the Pakistanis told you it was real, we had no card to play. Once it was out in the open, Pakistan would never back down.”

(If you pick up a hard copy, you will notice an article by Gregory Kulacki and myself entitled “Understanding China’s Antisatellite Test”.)

Comment [3]

Greetings from Beijing

We now have David Albright’s essay on the advanced nuclear weapons design, as well as stories in the New York Times and Washington Post. (David Sanger, Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Weapon, June 15, 2008; David Sanger and Bill Broad, Officials Fear Bomb Design Went to Others, June 16, 2008; Joby Warrick, Smugglers Had Design For Advanced Warhead, June 15, 2008.) There is a lot to sort through.

I have only a few comments to add to James’s excellent post.

This is the second design peddled by the AQ Khan network — and it seems to be considerably more advanced that the Chinese design found in Libya. (If you are interested in the Chinese design, which had a yield of 10 kilotons and mass of 500 kilograms, check out my post: More on Libya’s Bomb Design, October 8, 2005.)

According to Sanger, the design “is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon…” and, writing with Bill Broad, and happens to “bear a strong resemblance to weapons tested by Pakistan” in May 1998.

The statement about 1/2 the size and 2x the yield is probably not true — though it may not matter very much. What does seem likely is that the device is small enough for the Nodong family, which includes Pakistan’s Ghuari and Iran’s Shahab.

1/2 the Size

In the second story, Sanger and Bill Broad describe the device as “miniaturized — using about half the uranium fuel of the older design to produce a greater explosive force.”

Warrick describes the Chinese design as “bulky and difficult to deliver”; Sanger and Broad, “unwieldy but effective.” That language suggests the issue is not mass, but diameter.

Note that half the diameter, half the mass and half the fissile material are all very different things. For example, a bomb with 1/2 the diameter would have 1/8 the mass.

I find the fissile material statement plausible — Hibbs and Albright claim that Pakistan used about 15 kilograms of HEU in its design. Cutting that number in half is quite plausible — Paine and Cochran calculated that a state with medium technical skill could squeeze 10-20 kt out of 7-9 kilograms of HEU. So, that’s in the neighborhood.

But reducing mass — and more important diameter — is more about reducing the amount of conventional high explosive (HE) that surrounds the fissile material. (See my discussion on this topic in the context of North Korea.) A physics package of this sort is, by mass, probably 90-95 percent explosives.

A desire to reduce the amount of explosives would explain the emphasis on advanced electronics in the Sanger and Broad story — less jitter, less explosive:

Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”

If the device is, say 60 centimeters instead of 90 cm, than it might weigh as little as 200 kilograms instead of nearly 600.

You may remember the issue of electronics from James Risen’s State of War — the allegation that the US paid a Russian to give the Iranians a faulty firing set design to retard their program. Same thing, as far as I can tell from the news reports.

Oh and 60 centimeters isn’t an arbitrary number. More on that is a moment.

2x the Yield

Alright, this one I have more trouble with.

Pakistan’s nuclear tests on May 28 and May 30 had yields of 9-12 kt and 4-6 kt, based on the seismic signals. (The announced yields were 40-45 kt in five devices and 15-18 kt in the sixth device.)

In other words, I don’t understand how a Pakistani device that was tested can have twice the yield of the 4th Chinese test, because those two events had about the same bang.

Indeed, Warrick — in contrast to Sanger — implies that the yield is the same:

The lethality of such a bomb would be little enhanced, but its smaller size might allow for delivery by ballistic missile.

“To many of these countries, it’s all about size and weight,” Albright said in an interview. “They need to be able to fit the device on the missiles they have.”

I lean toward thinking the yield of the device is about the same, though I am open to be persuaded otherwise.

Implications for Iran

First, let me begin by noting that the Chinese design was deliverable by a missile — it was tested on a DF-2. But that’s just being pedantic — the DF-2 had significantly more throw-weight than the Nodong/Ghuari/Shahab. The 1966 Chinese design, as I have said before, wouldn’t be much good for Iran.

Some of you may recall the question that David Albright raised about the so-called Laptop of Death — that the RV was designed to accommodate a warhead of only 60 centimeters in diameter:

Another important question that is sidestepped by the misleading use of warhead in the article is whether Iran can build the relatively small nuclear warhead able to fit into the triconic re-entry vehicle apparent in photos of a 2004 flight test. Based on publicly available photos of the 2004 test launch, the nuclear warhead would require a diameter of about 600 millimeters. Achieving such a diameter would be challenging for Iran. For example, the diameter of the warhead in the design provided to Libya (and perhaps to Iran) by A.Q. Khan was about 900 millimeters. A legitimate question is whether Iran could successfully build such a small nuclear warhead without outside help.

Obviously, then, the 1998 Pakistani design may be helpful for a state like Iran.

On the other hand, it isn’t clear to me that simply receiving a design, without any domestic testing experience, is enough to have confidence. As North Korea discovered in trying to jump to a weaponizable device, there are apparently still a few tricks of the trade.

Still, interesting stuff.

Comment [9]

Golly, I had no idea that Qatar Airlines has an entire premium Terminal for First and Business class patrons. Wow.

The other day a reader, Tom, asked about rumors that one of Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998 involved North Korean supplied plutonium:

Weren’t there credible allegations that at least one of Pakistan’s May 1998 nuclear tests involved a Plutonium based weapon which used (allegedly) North Korean supplied Plutonium?

There doesn’t seem to have been much revisiting of the issue lately that I can find.

Does anyone have anything that can elaborate on or discredit those allegations?

As far as I can tell, like a lot of things in life, it is complicated. I don’t buy it, though obviously it is worth verifying in the Six Party process or maybe wringing out of AQ Khan.

Pakistan claims to have tested six nuclear devices in 1998 — five on May 28 and one on May 30, all using highly enriched uranium.

About a year later — in January 1999, Dana Priest published an article in the Washington Post about a dispute between Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. (“U.S. Labs at Odds on Whether Pakistani Blast Used Plutonium,” January 17, 1999, A2, full text).

Priest claimed that:

• A US aircraft — presumably a WC-135 — collected an air sample that contained plutonium shortly after Pakistan’s May 30 test.

• Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted the preliminary analysis and concluded that Pakistan had tested a device involving plutonium. Given that Pakistan did not have a plutonium production capability in May 1998, North Korea was an obvious suspect.

• Analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory disagreed with the Los Alamos conclusion, “alleging that Los Alamos contaminated and then lost the air sample from the
  Pakistan blast.” One official confessed to Priest (sorry, couldn’t help it) “there is some disagreement here, and experts at the labs need to sort it out.”

• A second sample existed. Officials disputed whether it was “identical” — whatever that means — but the bottom line, according to Priest, was “scientists believe it will be possible to positively determine whether the initial analysis was faulty.”

This all leaked because it was included in a briefing materials prepared for President Clinton’s December 1998 meeting with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Washington.

About a year after that — presumably enough time for the second sample to be examined — Mark Hibbs (subscription only; full text) reported that the source of the plutonium in the air sample was from one of the Indian tests.

But on Feb. 3 U.S. officials close to the matter confirmed instead information from other sources suggesting that, when analysts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the National Nonproliferation Center of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) obtained the raw data collected in Pakistan, a battle broke out among experts on how to evaluate it. Since then, sources said, the report that Pakistan used plutonium in its devices has been discredited.

Sources said it is currently believed that the plutonium found in the environmental samples in Pakistan was instead of Indian origin, and that comparative isotopic analysis suggests the plutonium was vented to the atmosphere by the explosions at Pokaran carried out two weeks before. One official said that meteorological data corroborated the hypothesis that small amounts of plutonium which were dispersed by an Indian blast out of the test shaft were transported by air currents to the area surrounding the Pakistan test site, which is located about 500 miles northwest of Pokaran.

(Vented Indian Plutonium Deemed Source of Reports Pakistan Tested Pu Weapons, Nuclear Fuel, February 7, 2000.)

I figured that pretty much settled the matter. Apparently, folks at LANL didn’t agree. So, when A.Q. Khan copped to assisting North Korea in 2004, someone called the New York Times.

David Sanger and Bill Broad reported in February 2004 “the old argument has been reignited in the United States’ national laboratories” (” Pakistan May Have Aided North Korea A-Test,” February 27, 2004).

In a clash between old rivals, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory raised questions, claiming Los Alamos had erred, experts familiar with the dispute said. The problem was inadvertent contamination of the sample by American researchers, Livermore experts said. Eventually, a consensus emerged that the plutonium did come from Pakistan.

In April 2004, Sanger would repeat the claim in another story about Khan (“Pakistani Says He Saw North Korean Nuclear Devices,” April 13, 2004).

The problem, of course, is that the claim given to Hibbs was not contamination by American researchers (though Priest raised that possibility) but debris that vented from the Indian test.

As far as I can tell we have two assertions that are at odds — Hibbs reports a consensus that the plutonium was from India; Sanger and Broad report a consensus that the plutonium was from Pakistan.

I suppose we don’t know who is right — Los Alamos or Livermore, Sanger and Broad or Hibbs.

But perhaps the North Korean declaration will shed some light on the issue. And, of course, if any of my readers with appropriate zip codes feel chatty, you know how to reach me.

Comment [11]

Over at Verification, Andreas has put up the first two in a series of posts commemorating the tenth anniversary of India and Pakistan’s test series. Well worth checking out.

Comment [1]