Nuclear Weapons addressed by Drell in Sacramento

Well known for his quantum mechanics texts and a distinguished career at

Stanford University, Sidney Drell, like many physicists, has built up an

expertise on nuclear arms control because of his concern about the subject.

Serving as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, he

shared his insights and concerns with the American Association of Physics Teachers

in Sacramento, CA, in a 3 August 2004 plenary talk in which he characterized

"Nuclear Weapons and Their Proliferation" as "The Greatest Danger."

Scientists have a moral obligation to inform society of the benefits and

risks of scientific and technological progress, Drell began, and one aspect of

scientific and technological risk has been warfare. Although history has

known scientists best-known for their military applications, most notably

Leonardo Da Vinci, Drell noted, it was World War II that saw the first massive

military collaboration of scientists -- to develop two important developments:

radar and nuclear weapons. He added that the post-World War II hydrogen bomb

eliminated war as an option if civilization were to survive.

The mutual exclusion of nuclear warfare and the survival of civilization

was realized by all the nuclear powers, Drell went on: they recognized that

nuclear weapons could serve only as a deterrent. Physicists played a prominent

role in controlling nuclear weapons, he added, and it will continue to be a

challenge in the future as we look ahead to new threats of nuclear

proliferation following the end of the Cold War.

Drell stated that the challenge of the future is to keep nuclear weapons

out of the hands of the "worst" people, some of whom could plot suicide

missions with them. He iterated the following list of members of the "nuclear

club": the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan -- with

uncertainty about Iran and North Korea. He noted that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and

Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons after breakup of the USSR and that

Argentina, Brazil, and Taiwan had foregone earlier intentions to develop them. Among

the "nuclear club" members, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are

presently non-signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which forbids

nuclear weapons states from transmitting nuclear weapons technology to non-nuclear

weapons states but requires them to render assistance to non-nuclear states in

peaceful nuclear technology and requires that nuclear technology in non-nuclear

states be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Drell expressed that controlling nuclear weapons requires cooperation of

both nuclear and non-nuclear states. "We can't say that 'Nuclear weapons are

good for us but not for you,'" he said, adding that we need to have carrots as

well as sticks. Tracking the development of nuclear weapons is currently

funded by only a billion dollars per year by the US, with matching amounts

contributed by other G-8 nations.

Developing nuclear weapons, Drell noted, requires acquiring uranium and

enriching its percentage of the fissionable isotope, U-235. A football field

of centrifuges needed to outfit a power plant with U-235, but an order of

magnitude less than that is needed to enrich enough uranium sufficiently to make a

bomb.

Drell iterated President Bush's 11 February 2004 proposal to remedy

deficiencies in the NPT: a proliferation security initiative to coordinate

interdiction efforts, additional protocol to allow the IAEA to conduct challenge

inspections of clandestine activities, a preclusion on the acquisition of new

complete fuel cycles (which would be done instead at regional centers under IAEA

supervision), expansion of cooperative threat reduction (originally proposed

by former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN)), criminalization of

nuclear proliferation by a UN Security Council resolution, a strengthening of

the IAEA, and prohibition of states investigated for violations from serving

on an IAEA board.

Drell stressed that more is needed than accentuating the difference

between nuclear and non-nuclear states. He was particularly critical of the April

2002 Nuclear Posture Review, which advocated developing capabilities to defeat

hard and deeply buried targets. (These are 300 m deep, hardened to withstand

1000 atmospheres of pressure, and there are 1000 of them suspected in 70

countries.) This program runs contrary to the policy that nuclear weapons are

weapons of last resort, and Drell noted that hundreds of kilotons are needed to

exceed 1000 atmospheres of pressure and that 15 meters is the maximum

penetration of hardened rock from an air-dropped weapon. Moreover, such a weapon would

need to be precisely targeted. Thus, Drell felt that the military value of

nuclear weapons in this context is really limited. He would use conventional

weapons to deny access to hard and deeply buried targets.

The more serious problem concerning nuclear weapons, he felt, is rogue

nations or terrorist groups whose planned use of nuclear weapons is suicidal.

But, citing the 7 September 2002 National Security Strategy of Secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which calls for acting against emerging threats "before

they are fully formed," Drell cautioned that we need to distinguish between

preventive action and peremptory action. The US did not take military action

to prevent the USSR or China from developing nuclear weapons, he observed, nor

are we taking it in North Korea or Iran. Excluding discussion of Iraq, he

counseled an antidote of "patient diplomacy," noting that it is ineffective

without the backup of military power.

Drell concluded his remarks by turning to the Comprehensive Test Ban

Treaty, which would ban all underground nuclear tests. The US was its first

signatory in 1999, but the US Senate failed to ratify it that year. Meanwhile, by

February 2004 170 nations have signed, with 109 ratified, including 32 of 44

"nuclear capable" nations (among them France, Germany, UK, Russia, and Japan)

required for the treaty to go into effect.

Stressing the title of his talk, Drell concluded that it would be sad to

resume testing to make new nuclear weapons. We cannot tire in our efforts to

prevent their use.

Shortly prior to Drell's address Michael May of the Center for

International Security and Cooperation, also at Stanford University, had spoken on the

topic of "International Security and Arms Control Issues." Agreeing with

Drell's counsel of carrots as well as sticks, May observed that the number of

radioactive sources in the world which could cause damage numbered in the hundreds

of thousands, with thousands of them "lost" every year. More serious than the

damage caused by a radioactive source is the cleanup required and the

standards for achieving that cleanup. Thus prevention is the preferred alternative.

May also cited the plutonium available for nuclear weapons in members of

the "nuclear club" -- which is a more difficult route to nuclear weapons than

enriching uranium in centrifuges, because it requires a special handling

facility to extract plutonium from fuel rods in nuclear reactors. There is the

plutonium equivalent of 100 megatons of TNT in the US, 130 in Russia, 7.6 in UK,

5 in France, 4 in China, 0.51 in Israel, 0.31 in India, 0.005 in Pakistan, and

between 0.03 and 0.04 in North Korea.

The inclusion of teaching about nuclear weapons in introductory physics

course was addressed on August 4 in a subsequent session by Art Hobson of the

University of Arkansas and Lynda Williams of Santa Rosa Junior College (CA).