Saddam spent $8 Billion in facilities, to build a
bomb that didn't require testing
Some facts from Desert Storm
in 1991. At the end of the war, United Nations inspectors visiting Tarmiya, Iraq, found a
huge facility containing over a hundred calutrons or parts of calutrons. This discovery
was a shock to many of us. Calutrons were invented by Ernest Lawrence in the early 1940s,
and he named them after "Cal"—the nickname for the University of California
at Berkeley, my school. His idea was to use industrial-scale mass spectrometry on the
isotopes of uranium, and perhaps separate enough U-235 to be able to make an atomic bomb.
His program was an outstanding success. By 1945, Lawrence's calutrons (massively installed
at Oak Ridge, TN) had separated enough U-235 to make one weapon.
That bomb was never tested. It didn't have to be. A bomb based on U-235 can use a
"gun" style configuration, and this was considered so reliable (and uranium was
so difficult to separate) that no test was needed. The famous "first atomic
bomb" tested at Alamogordo, NM, by contrast, was a plutonium bomb. Such a bomb
requires implosion, a very tricky business, and it was not clear that it would work. So it
was tested, and it worked. The uranium bomb built using calutrons, never tested, was first
used over Hiroshima, destroying the city and its population. A few days later a plutonium
bomb, a copy of the Alamogordo bomb, did the same to Nagasaki.
Why were we shocked to find calutrons in Iraq? Because we were too stupid to have
anticipated them. The inspectors were looking for centrifuges, for laser separation, for
diffusion plants—in other words, for some modern method of preparing nuclear
material. Apparently, nobody guessed that Saddam Hussein would revert to the simplest,
most reliable method, the one that had worked for the United States in its desperation
five decades earlier.
Saddam had constructed facilities, at an estimated cost of $8 billion, to build a bomb
that didn't require testing. How far did he get? Does he have a bomb? According to
official values released by the U.S. Government, a critical mass of plutonium is about 6
kg. They haven't released the value for uranium, though many popular values are stated on
the Web. But 6 kg of plutonium, less than a half a liter in volume, will clearly make a
bomb. Did Saddam separate enough uranium to do so? Most commentators seem to think he did
not. The facility was destroyed before it could become truly productive, before it
produced a critical mass.
As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq was to allow ongoing inspections by UNSCOM, the
United Nations Special Commission. Those visits continued until August 5, 1998, when
Saddam abruptly terminated all inspections.
If you want to put a benign interpretation on this, you could argue that Iraq felt that
its rights as an independent country had been denied, and that the UN had no right to
inspect its facilities. Those who are more wary of Iraq say the end of inspections was the
inevitable consequence of good detective work by UNSCOM. These skeptics say that the
inspectors would never have been allowed to find the nuclear weapons plants Saddam was
building; all they could do was get close enough that Saddam would eject them. After that,
it would be up to the President and the U.S. military to do the rest.
It is useful to remember the character of Saddam Hussein. He is the man who ordered that
Kuwait be set on fire, with the expectation that it would burn for decades. There was no
military value to this act. It was done out of vengeance, out of hatred, out of a
viciousness that even today is hard to believe.
Do you believe that Saddam has stopped developing nuclear weapons? Does anybody? Some
people ask for hard evidence that he is doing so. The implication is that the absence of
evidence is evidence of absence. Others question the assumption that Saddam is guilty
simply because he refuses inspections, saying that this is denying him due process.
Shouldn't we assume innocence, until proven guilty? Doesn't Saddam have rights too?
I'm not going to answer those questions. My role is not to advise, but to predict.
On September 11, the U.S. was attacked. Now imagine that you are President Bush. You know
3,000 people were killed by terrorists with no warning, with no demands, just out of the
blue. You know that Saddam was once, a few years ago, caught in the process of trying to
build an atomic bomb. You know that he burned Kuwait out of spite. You know that he
ejected the inspectors over three years ago. Can you take the risk that Saddam is not
developing nuclear weapons again? The horror of September 11 was great, but it was nothing
compared to the potential devastation of a nuclear explosion.
Of course, you (Mr. or Ms. President) will first demand that inspections resume. You may
even give a deadline. Will Saddam accede? Maybe, and then the crisis will end. Whew! But
if he doesn't, what will happen? I think the answer is obvious. It has nothing to do with
politics, nothing to do with past grievances (Iraqi agents allegedly tried to assassinate
George W. Bush's dad when he was visiting Kuwait in 1993). It has nothing to do with the
reports from Iraqi defectors (they could be lying). It has to do solely with the
responsibilities of the U.S. President, as he (and many U.S. citizens) perceive them to
be.
It is as predictable as the coming seasons, and as taxes. The U.S. is going to attack
Iraq.
Article by Richard A. Muller. Muller a 1982 MacArthur Fellow, is a professor in the
Physics Department at UC-Berkeley and a faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. Muller has advised the U.S. government on national security since
1972.
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