NUCLEAR THEFT

Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards by M. Willrich and T.T.Taylor is a report commissioned by the Ford Foundation's Energy Policy Project. It has been extolled by Business Week, which between calls to legislate automobile design and to nationalize the railroads has been screaming about the "Faustian bargain" of nuclear power. Every ecofreak in the country is repeating fifteenth-hand quotations from the book. It must therefore be real junk, right?

Wrong. It is a serious and important work, and well worth studying. This is neither Naderite rabblerousing nor Sierra Club hypocrisy; it is written by scholars (lawyer and nuclear physicist) who know their facts. The hysterical crusaders have never been near the book, or they would see how enormously difficult it is to steal fissionable material and then make a bomb from it. Some of the authors' conclusions are highly debatable, but the basic point is this: The authors know the benefits of nuclear power and they discuss ways of making it safer; nowhere do they even remotely advocate its prohibition.

The book has been criticized as "imbalanced;" but that can be said about almost any monograph devoted to a single subject. The benefits of nuclear power, though not stressed, seem to be clear enough to the authors. Besides, as an argument for outlawing nuclear power, the point of theft is irrelevant. To combat criminals and international terrorists by prohibiting fissionable material, in the civilian sector only, and in one part of the world only, is the ultimate absurdity. It is an absurdity promoted by the frustrated fanatics; but not by Willrich and Taylor.

The risk of theft and blackmail is now greater than that of nuclear accident. Like any risk it can, with sufficient effort, be made arbitrarily small, but not zero. In the authors' formulation, it should be made "as small as practicable."

The possibility of equipping the animals of the PLO with Soviet nuclear material and know-how would seem less far fetched than some of the scenarios discussed in the book; in any case, it is a possibility that rests in the humanitarian and responsible hands of the Soviet politbureau. The four successive lines of defense in all such cases are prevention, detection, recovery, and response. What should the response of a government facing nuclear blackmail be?

On a lesser level, some governments - Israel, Thailand, and others - have refused to buy the lives of a few hostages by condemning to death thousands of hostages in the future. On the other hand, several West European governments have opted for having their democratic institutions eroded by political terrorists. The US government has never really been put to the test, but the signs are not very encouraging. When a hijacker demands $5 million in one-dollar bills, the airline policy, sanctioned by the FBI and other government agencies, is simple: "Would you take $2 million in five-dollar bills?"

Willrich and Taylor recommed that the US government should have a stated policy on responding to nuclear bomb threats; they also leave little doubt that they favor a "hardline" policy:

"The government, in adopting such a policy, and the American people, in accepting it, would recognize frankly and simply...that [they] are prepared to accept the risks involved in order to obtain the benefits of nuclear energy; but that they are not prepared to subject their political institutions to attack through nuclear bomb threats; that, if necessary, they are prepared to suffer the disruption and even the devastation of. . .nuclear violence, but that they will insist on and support a safeguards system to keep the risk of nuclear violence as low as practicable."

Amen.