The breakup of the Soviet Union offers a unique opportunity to reduce the dangers posed by the superpowers' bloated nuclear arsenals.
Proposals ranging from wholesale hiring of Soviet nuclear weapons scientists to outright purchase of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal have been offered.All rest upon the persuasive premise that the Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and others are oversupplied with nuclear warheads and undersupplied with food and hard currency, and thus they are motivated to parley the former into the latter as soon as possible.
The United States is in a special position to effect such an exchange more quickly than any other international entity. Our own arsenal, our immense resources, our insight into the problems of command and control of vast numbers of nuclear weapons, and our status in the world system as an honest broker lead us to the following proposal:
The United States should purchase the fissionable material in the former Soviet arsenal and dilute this high-purity weapons-grade material with low-purity materials to render it unsuitable for military purposes.
This dilution will not destroy the value of these materials as peaceful energy sources, which will permit our resale of this diluted material to responsible buyers in the international marketplace.
At the same time, the United States would dilute in similar fashion an equal part of the fissionable material in its own arsenal.
From conversations with nuclear chemists, political scientists and Russian physicists, we conclude that this basic proposal is scientifically simple, politically feasible and would be well received by the former Soviet population as well as the rest of the world.
Everyone benefits: The former Soviet Union receives hard currency, rids itself of responsibility for monitoring the security of this material and effects a decrease in the threat from the American nuclear arsenal.
The United States gains greater peace of mind concerning the former Soviet nuclear threat in exchange for its monetary aid, may recoup part of the purchase price by resale of this material to other responsible buyers and is able to reduce its own nuclear arsenal without qualms.
The rest of the world benefits from a decrease in the superpower nuclear threat, a presumed increase in stability in the former Soviet Union due to the influx of hard currency from the United States and the establishment of an open and controlled market for commercially valuable reactor grade material.
It is marvelous to contemplate that it takes only minutes to dilute what would take a vast industry and many years to restore to H-bomb quality.
A formal proposal would contain the following components:
1. Our offer to purchase weapons material would depend on an agreement to sell exclusively to the United States. All sales, processes, material transfers and ultimate uses will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This restriction is intended to prevent all sales to terrorists and terror-sponsoring regimes (and to remove the motivation for such sales). The IAEA would assist in the development of the necessary accounting procedures for tracking the former Soviet fissionable material.
2. Our government would offer to pay a generous bonus price, well above and beyond production costs, for the complete warheads. In order to prevent disclosure of weapons-design information, only bulk fissionable material would be acquired through such transactions.
3. The high-purity weapons-grade fissionable material will be mixed with a larger quantity of low-purity reactor grade material. In the case of plutonium-based weapons, the fissionable material would be mixed with the uranium and plutonium from spent reactor fuel rods, in suitable proportions. The process will take place on site in the former Soviet Union and under the close supervision of the IAEA - indeed, the dilution could be carried out by IAEA technicians. Weapons-grade material will not be transported off-site.
4. The United States would respond immediately with the IAEA-supervised dilution of an equal proportion of the U.S. nuclear stockpile of weapons-grade fissionable material.
5. The United States as a buyer would only offer to purchase that portion of the former Soviet stockpile that is mutually agreeable. In this way, both countries are free to maintain a comfortable deterrent force, while hopefully electing to eliminate first strike capability.
6. The United States would be free to resell the purchased diluted fissionable materials to responsible buyers in the world market at a mutually negotiated price.
We urge that the Bush administration seriously consider setting up this type of purchase/monitoring plan for the sale and dilution of former Soviet weapons-grade fissionable materials.
The time to implement this system is now, before clandestine brokerage arrangements take their toll on the world's security.
(J. Bart Czirr and E. Paul Palmer are professors of physics at Brigham Young University. Both have worked previously with nuclear weapons. Valerie M. Hudson is a professor of political science at BYU.)