DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION: JUNE 29, 2001 1 Civilian Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons Programs: The Record Matthew Bunn1 In considering how to reduce the contribution of the civilian nuclear energy system to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the future, it is important to examine what aspects of civilian nuclear energy have contributed to nuclear weapons programs in the past. Below, we provide a brief summary of the contribution of civilian nuclear energy to many of the known nuclear weapons programs of individual states (both successful programs and ones that were terminated short of acquiring nuclear weapons).2 Three points should be kept in mind in considering this history: (1) while the availability of technology and expertise is important to a nuclear weapons program, the available data suggests that states’ decisions on whether to move toward or away from nuclear weapons are more affected by a variety of security, political, and bureaucratic factors;3 (2) safeguards and export control arrangements have been greatly strengthened since some of these events occurred, making it difficult for them to be repeated in the future (though at the same time, technologies have continued to diffuse); and (3) states seeking nuclear weapons have also acquired important technologies – from precision explosives to flash X-ray cameras to high-speed switches for setting off a bomb – from other civilian industries unrelated to nuclear energy. United States, Soviet Union, Britain: These states’ nuclear weapons programs had no significant contribution from civilian nuclear energy; nuclear weapons were developed in dedicated military programs before civilian nuclear energy existed. Once civilian programs were established, there were substantial interconnections between civilian and military programs, including transfers of civilian material for military use (a connection that was largely severed after a time in the United States and Britain). 1 Matthew Bunn is the Assistant Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. For more information, see the web page of BCSIA’s Managing the Atom project: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/bcsia/atom. The author is grateful to a number of colleagues for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, especially James Walsh.2 The list in this paper is intended to be illustrative, not comprehensive. Nuclear weapons efforts or explorations that took place in Switzerland, Australia, Egypt, Germany, Japan, Italy, Indonesia, Norway, Canada, and Algeria are not discussed. It is worth noting that a number of these countries have access to large quantities of fissile material and high levels of nuclear technology but chose not to acquire nuclear weapons. Useful summary discussions of many of the programs described here can be found in Rodney W. Jones and Mark G. McDonough, Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998 (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998), available at http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/track98.htm.3 Indeed, if those who argue that institutional factors are particularly crucial in shaping states’ nuclear weapons decisions are correct, it may be that nuclear energy’s impact in building up groups of nuclear experts and advocates, and providing a power base for them, may be at least as important as any specific technological factor. In the words of one advocate of the instutional influence school, “the biggest proliferation impact of Atoms for Peace may not have been the spread of little reactors but the spread of little Atomic Energy Commissions, many of which became bomb advocates.” James Walsh, personal communication.DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION: JUNE 29, 2001 2 France: France’s initially civilian nuclear program provided the base of expertise (and some key advocates) for its later dedicated military program (which had substantial interconnections with the civilian program, with both under the Commissariat de L’Energie Atomique, and material for the weapons program sometimes produced in power reactors).4 China: China’s nuclear weapons were developed in a dedicated military program with no major technological contribution from civilian nuclear energy. Civilian energy served as a fig leaf for an agreement with the Soviet Union under which critical weapons assistance was provided, which was justified as an agreement on “peaceful uses” of atomic energy. Some minor uranium processing procedures were adapted from U.S. technologies declassified for civilian purposes.5 Israel: Israel’s plutonium production reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona were provided by France, ostensibly for civilian purposes, but without safeguards requirements and under cover of substantial secrecy (particularly in the case of reprocessing). Heavy water was provided by Norway under peaceful use assurances (later violated). Weapons activities were successfully hidden from limited 1960s-era U.S. visits intended to confirm peaceful use.6 Israel was perhaps the only case where lack of uranium supplies was a significant constraint. Israel reportedly acquired uranium from South Africa, Argentina, Niger, and others;7 in 1968, Israel apparently acquired 200 tons of uranium for Dimona by removing it from a Belgian ship on the high seas (after it had been purchased in a front transaction by firms acting as Israeli agents).8 Allegations that a large incident of HEU unaccounted for at the U.S. NUMEC facility in the 1960s was caused by theft of some 100 kg of HEU for transport to Israel, while never fully resolved, are probably incorrect.9 India: Plutonium for India’s first nuclear test (ostensibly of a “peaceful nuclear explosive”) was produced in a research reactor provided by Canada for civilian purposes under a 1956 agreement not requiring safeguards (which did not yet exist); the 4 For brief discussions of the early days of the French, British, and Chinese nuclear weapons programs, see Robert S. Norris, Andrew S. Burrows, and Richard W. Fieldhouse, British, French, and Chinese Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Weapons Databook Volume V (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994). For a fuller discussion of the French program, see Lawrence Scheinman, Atomic Energy Policy in France Under the Fourth Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). 5 For the classic discussion of the