Ending the n-race

Ending the n-race

By Zia Mian, M. V. Ramana & Hui Zhang

AFTER THEIR nuclear tests in May 1998, the Governments of India and Pakistan sought to placate international criticism by announcing that they did not intend conducting more tests and promising to control nuclear technology exports. They have also not yet deployed nuclear weapons. But, India and Pakistan have continued building up stocks of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons in a fissile material race with profound economic, environmental and health consequences for their people. Stopping this race would benefit both countries. Using newly available commercial satellite images they could verify a production freeze independently with considerable confidence.

In December 1999, India's Minister of State for Atomic Energy announced plans to construct a new plutonium production reactor comparable to its 100 MW Dhruva plant. The older 40 MW CIRUS reactor (which produced the plutonium for the 1974 nuclear test) is currently being refurbished. India's Rattehalli uranium enrichment plant is likely to be used only to produce fuel for the planned nuclear submarine, and is of less immediate concern. Pakistan, for its part, has recently completed its 40 MW reactor at Khushab and continues operating its older Kahuta uranium enrichment facility.

India and Pakistan would be better off if they stopped the production of fissile material for weapons purposes. However, the atmosphere of mistrust and tension between India and Pakistan, resulting from the May 1998 tests and the subsequent Kargil war, makes even starting talks a problem. Their limited nuclear weapons capabilities also put a premium on keeping secret the scale and operational characteristics of their facilities, severely restricting if not eliminating possible on-site inspections to assess compliance with any agreement. Rather than try to resolve these difficulties straight away, both India and Pakistan could follow the example of the other nuclear states and unilaterally declare a moratorium.

In parallel, India and Pakistan could call on the nuclear weapon states (the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China) to formalise their existing moratoria on fissile material production and, along with Israel (the only other nuclear weapon state), start negotiations on reducing existing fissile material stockpiles. This initiative could, in turn, help free up the global Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) that has been stuck at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. The nuclear weapon states refuse to discuss their stockpiles in that forum and most non-nuclear weapon states insist that stocks must be addressed if the FMCT is to have any disarmament value.

By instituting a moratorium, Pakistan and India would do more than limit the health, environmental and economic consequences of large-scale fissile material production. Pakistan could prevent the escalation of an arms race that it can ill-afford, and would certainly lose -- by an ever-increasing margin -- if India were to build and operate its planned new reactor. Indian hardline concerns would be addressed by a Chinese formal commitment to not resume fissile material production as a response to U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defence systems. India would also be able to engage with the other nuclear weapons states to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, thereby limiting the requirements on the size of its own prospective arsenal, and shape a disarmament agenda that it has long been claiming to support.

Unlike the other nuclear weapon states, India and Pakistan lack the capability to independently assess whether the others (and especially each other) were keeping their word. The U.S. and its allies, and Russia, use various forms of high-tech spying, including satellite imagery to closely monitor each other and everyone else. However, recent developments in commercial satellite imaging, notably the IKONOS satellite owned by Space Imaging Inc., make it possible for anyone to buy pictures showing structures on the ground about one meter in size.

While less capable than military satellites, commercial images are now sufficient to detect nuclear facilities and, often, to assess whether they are operating. For example, analysis of IKONOS pictures released by the Federation of American Scientists available on the internet at www.fas.org) suggests the presence of water vapour emerging from the large cooling towers used to remove the heat generated by the operation of Pakistan's 40 MW Khushab reactor. This telltale sign is the first independent confirmation that Khushab is in fact operational. Under an agreement to cease fissile material production, which would require shutting down the Khushab reactor, evidence of water vapour plumes would be a give-away. Thus, by independently obtain images of each other's key nuclear facilities that are very revealing, India and Pakistan can gain confidence in a declared moratorium. They could, of course, gain even more confidence if they were to allow for some monitoring within the country.

Similarly, the images of India's CIRUS and Dhruva, the two reactors that are used to produce weapon-grade plutonium and part of a larger complex near Mumbai, suggest characteristic patterns forming as warm water carrying heat from the reactors is discharged into the ocean and begins to mix with seawater. Infrared images from commercial satellites such as Landsat 7 and ASTER, launched last April and December respectively, would enhance the already existing ability to monitor these cooling water traces. Since discharges from both reactors flow into the same body of water, it would not be possible to separately identify which reactor is operating. A fissile material moratorium would require both to be inoperative, and this could be verified. The medical and commercial isotope production at Dhruva, and possibly at Khushab, could be moved to nuclear power reactors in the respective countries. To build confidence that these power reactors are not contributing to the nuclear weapons stockpile, they could be put under international safeguards. At present, both power reactors in Pakistan, and four of the 12 in India are safeguarded.

The shutdown of Pakistan's Kahuta uranium enrichment centrifuge plant would be more difficult for India to verify from current satellite images. One way around this problem would be to look not at the enrichment plant itself but at the facility that produces the uranium hexafluoride gas, which is fed into Kahuta's centrifuges. The production of uranium hexafluoride is an energy intensive, high temperature, chemical and electrochemical process and may be detectable in thermal images. Since Pakistan has no use for uranium hexafluoride other than producing fissile material for nuclear weapons it would be feasible for its production to stop under a moratorium.

Stopping fissile material production in South Asia, like any other arms control or disarmament measure, is a question of political commitment; the technical capability to verify such a commitment is available. A halt now to fissile material production for weapons in South Asia, announced unilaterally and independently verifiable by commercial satellite images, offers an opportunity for Pakistan and India to avoid the long, dangerous, and expensive race that the U.S. and the Soviet Union ran for 40 years.

At the same time, their initiative could help push the nuclear weapons states to deal more urgently with the reduction of the vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and fissile material they have accumulated. The fissile material gap could be closed by going down rather than up.

The writers are physicists, the first two at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University,
and the third at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.