THE NUCLEAR UNDERWORLD

There is a brisk arms trade among the countries of the world, almost all of it done secretly, and much of it known to intelligence services, which leak it to the press. Sometimes Congress publishes its estimates of the global arms trade, but the nuclear underworld is rarely mentioned.

The known new members of the nuclear club are India, Pakistan and Israel. India made its plutonium bomb by breeding it in a heavy-water research reactor (the heavy water was supplied by Canada, which stopped deliveries after the explosion). Where the other two get the materials, I do not know, but the important point is that they have their own experts and do not have to import them from the US, Europe or Russia.

The Third World countries now building their own bombs and delivery systems rely on the big bad boy, Bush's most favorite na-lion Red China, which is the main source of illicit nuclear materials, equipment (including missiles) and know-how.

Either directly, or via North Korea, Bush's buddies with whom Snowcroft and Baker drank champaign, supply Iran, Libya and Syria with just about everything they ask for and pay for in hard currency. Particularly worrisome are the improved SCUD missiles with a 600 mile range, now being delivered to Bush's ally Assad, the Syrian butcher. (It turned out after the war that US raids on the old-type SCUD missiles in Iraq had hit mainly decoys and had left the real launchers intact). The new SCUDs are delivered to Syria via North Korea, you might say almost under the protection of the Bush administration, at least in the sense that the State Department protests when Israel monitors these deliveries by overflights, because they might irritate Bush's new Arab ally. These SCUDS, as far as is known, do not yet have nuclear war-heads, but as Saddam has shown, the main problem is delivery, not the bomb itself. Syrian nuclear capabilities are as unknown as were Saddam's; the only thing one can say is that the nuclear program of any Third World country have always been underestimated and when discovered have taken the West by surprise. The main dif-ference compared to the case of Saddam is the uranium, plutonium, nuclear equipment and above all the nuclear experts, that have already begun leaking out of the ex-USSR.

The other ominous case of a country to whom China is willing to supply expert aid, materials and equipment (it is already supplying missiles) is Iran. For hard currency, China's nuclear shop is open. The Iranians, like any other Third World country, is at present more likely to build Hiroshima type uranium bombs, with the necessary uranium enrichment easily split up into many dispersed and easily concealed stages of the enrichment cascade [AtE Aug 91]. Plutonium has to be bread from uranium ore, which is easy enough to get, but needs a production reactor not as easily con-cealed and not divisible into small parts.

Technology does not stand still, of course. Uranium enrichment by laser, the last time I wrote about it [AtE May 85, described Feb 75], was still in the lab; by now it may be in the back of a camel sty or a mosque or in a straw hut.