STATEMENT OF

ROSE GOTTEMOELER
Senior Associate of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

HEARING OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY,
VETERAN AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE

September 24, 2002

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the chance to testify before you today on the critical question of whether the United States is doing enough to prevent nuclear terrorism.  To begin, I would like to express my appreciation, Mr. Chairman, for the leadership role that you have played in bringing the House and Senate together on this important issue. I would also like to state my view that of all the countries of the world, the United States has taken this problem the most seriously.  In the past decade, this country has expended $7.1 billion to ensure that nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from the former Soviet arsenal do not fall into the wrong hands, whether terrorists or rogue leaders, who would use them to attack the United States.  I frankly wish other countries would do more, and I welcome the recent agreement at the G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, wherein the other G-8 countries agreed to expend $10 billion on these problems in the next ten years, to be matched by $10 billion from the United States.  This initiative is an excellent investment in the national security of every country involved in it.

Despite this important progress, however, puzzling doubts about these programs have persisted in the United States.  The most recent manifestation of this phenomenon has been the hesitation of some in Congress to provide a permanent waiver for the Cooperative Threat Reduction or Nunn-Lugar program.  As you are no doubt aware, the Bush Administration determined that it was unable at this time to certify that the Russian Federation intends to fulfill certain commitments to the Biological Weapons (BW) and Chemical Weapons (CW) Conventions.  Instead, they asked for a permanent waiver from the Congress for the legislative certification requirement, arguing that the programs are important for U.S. national security. 

Although I would underscore that we must continue to work with the Russian Federation to clear up on-going concerns about BWC and CWC implementation, I agree that the programs are important, indeed I would say vital, for U.S. national security.  We cannot take the chance that the next terrorists attacking the United States could make use of nuclear material that escaped through a hole in a Russian facility fence that would have been repaired had Nunn-Lugar cooperation been allowed to continue.  The burden of such an outcome would be difficult to bear for all in our policy and government communities.  I therefore support fully the concept of a permanent waiver for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, as proposed by the Bush Administration, and urge this body to consider it in a positive light. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like next to discuss the resources and expertise that terrorists might need to build radiological or nuclear weapons, and by what means they might acquire them.  First, I would like to stress that in terms of terrorist access, there is an enormous difference between nuclear explosive devices, i.e., nuclear bombs, and radiological devices.  Even a simple nuclear device of the Hiroshima type would be difficult for a proliferator to acquire, be he a terrorist or a rogue state actor.  Although the design is now almost fifty years old, the Hiroshima device, also called a “gun-type” weapon, requires a large amount of nuclear material to achieve a nuclear explosion.  We assume that 15-30 kg of highly enriched uranium or 3-4 kg of plutonium are needed for a sophisticated nuclear weapon. Cruder devices require more. One estimate, for example, places the likely size of a Pakistani weapon at around 1,500 pounds. Therefore, although achieving a workable trigger device and other components would not be a trivial matter, the principal barrier to acquiring a nuclear weapon is the large amount of weapons-usable material that is needed. 

For this reason, international nonproliferation policy has focused on keeping nuclear material production and enrichment technologies out of proliferators’ hands.  The crisis begun in 1994, when North Korea threatened to pull out of the Nonproliferation Treaty, was over its production of plutonium at the Yongbyon reactor.  The disagreement with Russia over its potential sale of laser isotope enrichment technology to Iran is another example.  More recently, attention has focused on Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubing that might be used in the manufacture of centrifuges for uranium enrichment.  In all of these cases, the acquisition of sufficient nuclear material to achieve a nuclear detonation is the goal of would-be proliferators; it is the goal of U.S. nonproliferation policy to prevent that acquisition.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the possibility that large amounts of weapons-usable material could be stolen from former Soviet nuclear facilities has become a major concern for the nonproliferation policy community worldwide. What would have had to be achieved through years of arduous and expensive production, enrichment and separation work—a sufficient amount of nuclear material to build a bomb—could be acquired in an instant through thievery.  And these concerns have proven real.  As early as 1992, an employee of the Luch Scientific Institute near Moscow was caught stealing 1.5 kg of highly enriched uranium, and such incidents have continued to be discovered in the years since.  Therefore, in the past decade, an enormous amount of attention and significant U.S. dollars (nearly $300 million in FY 02 alone) have been spent on cooperative projects to enhance the physical protection of weapons-usable materials in facilities that housed the Soviet weapons complex. 

These sites stretch in an archipelago across the former Soviet territory—a vestige of Stalin’s mania to spread industrialization to every corner of the Soviet land.  In the case of nuclear production, facilities were especially located in remote areas, away from prying eyes and imprudent questions.  In addition, operational weapons such as those deployed with the Russian Navy are often located at remote bases in the Arctic and Far East.  The United States is currently working with the Ministry of Atomic Energy and Russian Navy to improve security of nuclear material and weapons at 95 sites in Russia and the former Soviet Union.  This program complements and strengthens efforts to control exports such as nuclear enrichment technology.  Multiple barriers to the acquisition of weapons-usable nuclear material must be put in place and sustained.

In contrast to bombs that would produce a nuclear detonation, radiological weapons are a much simpler capability for a proliferator to acquire.  There is a wide spectrum of radiological attack modes that could be devised. The spectrum ranges from low-level nuclear waste planted as a package in an urban location, through highly toxic nuclear material exploded as a “dirty bomb”, using conventional explosives to spread it over a wide area.  At the extreme end of the spectrum would be an aircraft attack on a nuclear facility that would turn the facility itself into a radiological weapon.  As Mohamed El Baradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said,  “We are not just dealing with the possibility of governments diverting nuclear materials into clandestine weapons programs.  Now we have been alerted to the potential of terrorists targeting nuclear facilities or using radioactive sources to incite panic, contaminate property and even cause injury or death among civilian populations.”

It is important to stress the differences among the types of radioactive materials that may come into play in a radiological attack.  From 1993 to 2001, the IAEA tracked 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials and 201 cases of trafficking in radioactive materials used for medical and industrial purposes.  Of all of these cases, however, only 18 involved small amounts of plutonium or highly enriched uranium, the “weapons-usable” material that is required to make a nuclear bomb. 

Therefore, a radiological attack would most likely involve lower-level radioactive material or even nuclear waste.  Depending on what the material was and the amount of conventional explosive that was used to spread it around, it would potentially sicken people and contaminate large swaths of territory.  However, it would not kill thousands of people outright, as would a nuclear explosive blast.  Relatively few people, for example, were killed in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 accidental explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.  They were mostly the firefighters who were bravely fighting the blaze, and succumbed within a few days from radiation exposure.  A thirty-kilometer area around Chernobyl remains a contaminated keep-out zone today, however, and many people have suffered thyroid cancer and other illnesses that are directly related to the Chernobyl disaster.

But even a small amount of radioactive material, if planted in an urban setting, would have the potential to sow considerable panic unless authorities were quickly able to neutralize the incident in the public’s mind.  Chechen operatives, for example, planted a package containing cesium in a park in Moscow in the mid-1990s and brought television cameras to the site to advertise that they had a “nuclear capability”.  The Russian authorities were quickly able to convey to the public that the material did not amount to a serious threat, thereby neutralizing the incident and preventing widespread panic.  Similar quick action to analyze and clarify for the public the nature of radiological threats should be an important goal of public policy in the current environment, both in the United States and in other countries where such incidents are a threat.

In my view, we now must begin to strike a balance between the most dangerous nuclear weapons threats, and the less lethal but profoundly disruptive radiological threats. For many years, we have rightly emphasized in our nonproliferation policy preventing weapons-usable nuclear material and weapons-related technologies from falling into the hands of would-be proliferators—the most urgent and dangerous threat to counteract, given that a taboo against using nuclear material in a terrorist attack seemed to be operating.  Nowadays, however, the taboo has disappeared.  As David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security, has said, “You’d always reach the point where you’d say, ‘yes, a terrorist could theoretically do it…and you’d look at the terrorists and say…they’re not capable or they don’t want to.’ That’s what’s changed. Al Qaeda could do it, and they want to.”

Given the disappearance of this taboo, the relative ease with which a proliferator might acquire radioactive material for use as a radiological device is a cause for strong concern.  I believe, therefore, that radiological threats deserve greater attention in our efforts to secure nuclear materials and technologies then they have had in the past.  At the same time, we cannot short-change the priorities that we have placed on preventing the proliferation of weapons-usable material and weapons-related technologies.  We have to do both.    

But resources are limited, and new funding for nonproliferation and nuclear threat reduction activities will have to compete with other urgent priorities in the conduct of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.  Clearly, ongoing programs in the nuclear threat reduction arena should continue. Programs to enhance the protection of warheads and weapons-usable materials are receiving resources, and should not be interrupted. 

Mr. Chairman, it is a welcome sign, as I stated at the outset, that the international community is stepping up more to this set of problems, and it is here that I see the answer to this difficult resource problem.  In addition to the G-8 countries, other countries on the periphery of Russia have placed increasing emphasis on international cooperation to tackle problems of special concern to them.  For example, the dismantlement and disposition of Russian general-purpose nuclear submarines are of special interest to Japan, which is a G-8 country, and Norway, which is not.  Some 120 of such submarines have been decommissioned by the Russian Federation and await dismantlement at Arctic and Far Eastern naval bases.  Many of them are in very poor condition, and some have sunk or are listing at their mooring places with their nuclear reactors still on board.  I have seen the submarines at the Far Eastern naval base on Kamchatka, and it is a frightening sight.  The reactors are a proliferation threat, should their fuel be stolen; they are a nuclear safety threat, should their fuel go critical; and they are an environmental threat, should their fuel and its coolant spill into the seas around them.

The special interest of countries such as Norway and Japan in tackling this problem is a good illustration of how more of an international partnership might be created to address nuclear and radiological terrorism threats.  Indeed, Norway and Japan are among the countries that have contributed resources in the past ten years to address nuclear security problems in the former Soviet Union. However, their efforts, like those of the United States, have often taken place in isolation, with little reference to the fact that a division of labor or cooperative effort with other countries might make sense.

In the current era, with burgeoning concerns about a larger, more wide-spread threat, especially involving radiological materials, international efforts to set priorities, divide labor, and establish partnerships will be critical.  The efforts to organize the new G-8 initiative are a step in the right direction.  In these efforts, Russia should be called upon to play a responsible role, both in facilitating the initiative and contributing resources.  With the Russian economy improving, Russian should be capable of contributing more budgetary resources to it own nuclear security.

The private sector is another group of partners who should be embraced to help solve the resource problem.  An excellent recent example of this approach is the project to withdraw highly enriched uranium from the Vinca reactor site in Yugoslavia, from which it was returned to Russia for safe disposition.  This project was partially financed by $2 million from the Department of Energy, and partially by $5 million from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a private foundation funded by Ted Turner.  While DOE paid to package the material and transport it, NTI paid for the continuing work that will have to go on at the reactor site, for remediation and decommissioning. 

In addition to private foundations, the business community can also play a role.  The HEU deal, the so-called "swords into ploughshares" project that has taken Russian weapons uranium and blended it down for sale as commercial powerplant fuel, was designed to have a major commercial element, although it has frequently in its history required the support of U.S. government funds.  Now, commercial means should be sought to finance new projects.  For example, the general-purpose submarine dismantlement project described above might be at least partially financed through commercial sale of low enriched uranium downblended from fuel removed from the submarines.  The goal should be to discover public-private partnerships that lessen the burden of these projects on national budgets, whether that of the United States or other countries.  Such partnerships, in my view, will be an important piece of the resource base necessary to tackle the expanded nuclear terrorism threat. 

Another important aspect will be finding effective ways to engage other countries.  Mr. Chairman, you asked how effective are existing safeguards in countries such as Russia, India and Pakistan against proliferation of a radiological or nuclear weapon.  My answer to you is that national leaders around the world take their responsibilities in this regard very seriously.  Countries that have nuclear capabilities, whether civilian or military, pay close attention to how they are safeguarded; many have developed good practices to do so.  No one treats this matter lightly, a fact that is reflected in official statements.  The Pakistani foreign ministry, for example, last year issued a statement that "Pakistan has an impeccable record of custodial safety and security free of any incident of theft or leakage of nuclear material, equipment or technology."

At the same time, countries cannot prepare for all events and contingencies.  No one predicted the speed with which the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1992, nor the depth of the economic crisis that followed in the newly independent states.  Therefore, it makes sense for every country to consider, as a part of the international community, what steps we should take to enhance the physical protection of nuclear and radiological assets.

Furthermore, as I stated at the outset, we are facing a new era of threat, when terrorists are clearly capable of going after weapons of mass destruction assets in any country where they are present.  If a country has nuclear or radiological materials, it could be a target.  For that reason, it is important for all countries to work together to share their best practices, to learn from each other, and to bring their nuclear facilities to a high standard of security.  The United States is among those that may learn from the best practices of other countries in securing nuclear materials.

Greater international cooperation to enhance the physical protection of nuclear and radiological materials is the most important additional safeguard that I would recommend to preclude terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear weapons.  We are already expanding the number of countries willing to invest budgetary resources in cooperative international projects in Russia and the former Soviet Union, through the G-8 initiative and other avenues.  Now it is important to engage other countries in new regions, with the primary goal of ensuring the protection of nuclear and radiological assets from terrorists.  This goal is in the national interest of every country.  Where international cooperation benefits this goal, it should be embraced and expanded. 

However, we should have no illusions that it will be easy to establish.  For example, cooperation undertaken with India and Pakistan would raise questions associated with the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime.  Because neither India nor Pakistan is a member of the regime, political barriers exist in their own systems to undertaking such cooperation.  For the United States and other members of the regime, the non-membership of India and Pakistan creates serious complications in both law and policy. 

Therefore, we will have to work hard to establish such cooperation, with careful attention to legal and policy issues, but also a keen awareness of the urgency of the threat.  In a study that I recently completed for the MacArthur Foundation, I enumerated certain principles that I believe will be important in achieving successful international cooperation to enhance nuclear security in the counter-terrorism struggle.  Although this study focused on India and Pakistan as a new region for cooperation, these principles could apply to international efforts in any country of the world:

Projects should be set to match counter-terrorism priorities.  Thus far in the U.S.-Russian cooperation, lower-level nuclear waste or radioactive source materials have not usually been covered in material protection, control and accounting projects, because of the much higher priority of protecting weapons-usable nuclear material.  There is no question, however, that radiological or “dirty” bombs are an attractive weapon for terrorists, and have been receiving much publicity as such.  In this case, perhaps it is most important to stress projects that would immediately address the particular problems that radiological weapons raise.  These are primarily public panic and economic costs, including clean up.  In this case, projects to develop wide-ranging protection of radiological sources would perhaps be less important than projects that fall in the realm of emergency response and incident mitigation.  Such projects would have a technological component (e.g. developing more cost-effective sensing and monitoring systems), and could certainly have an international component.  The concept of international emergency response and incident mitigation teams could be built on already existing cooperation with Russia, Japan and the IAEA. For example, a project in this area could focus on the sabotage threat to civilian spent nuclear fuel.  Some countries, such as Japan, may be willing to contribute resources to such an effort.

Projects should draw on international partnerships.  The foregoing example has already highlighted this principle, but it is worthwhile considering how an international partnership might work in specific projects.  For example, if Pakistan is interested in assistance to improve the secure storage of its spent and fresh fuel at civilian nuclear reactors, it might benefit from partnership with a regional player as well as the United States.  Kazakhstan, in cooperation with the United States, has just completed the repackaging and establishment of safeguarded storage for about three hundred tons of fresh and spent fuel remaining at the Aktau reactor on the Caspian Sea.  Kazakhstan not only has the technical expertise to participate in such projects, but also has some important in-country hardware assets, such as a factory capable of producing nuclear material storage containers for this type of work.  Such regionally located assets may contribute considerable lowering of costs to a project of this kind.  Moreover, the presence of Kazakhstan on a team with the United States and Pakistan would be a powerful symbol.  Kazakhstan is a leading nonproliferation proponent, having given up the nuclear weapons that had been left on its territory at the break-up of the Soviet Union to become a non-nuclear weapon state under the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Projects should incorporate new technologies and capabilities, cooperatively developed.   International cooperation on nuclear emergency response is an attractive idea on the surface, but would be difficult under current circumstances, whether conducted in Russia, South Asia, or elsewhere in the world.  Because of the nature of the work, finding nuclear assets and orphan sources that have gone astray through accident or foul play, U.S. nuclear emergency response teams operate with the most sensitive information and equipment, and it is likely that their counterparts in other countries do as well.  However, technological developments may facilitate cooperation in even this most sensitive of arenas.  The advent of cooperatively developed information barrier technologies developed for the Mayak storage facility and related joint projects may enable future joint U.S.-Russian work in even this sensitive area.  Another idea, not so dependent on sensitive information or equipment, would be to develop a cooperative training program based on the U.S. Radiological Assistance Program (RAP), which was developed as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.  The RAP teams conduct on-site, real-time detection, survey, modeling and analyses activities using non-sensitive technologies.  One possible project, therefore, would be to cooperate in training national, regional or international teams to be first responders in case of a radiological accident or loss of materials.  Additional capabilities of this type in the international community might also benefit the United States.  A future nuclear terrorism threat in a broad swath of this country may require more search assets than the U.S. has to throw at it.  It would be good for any country facing such a threat to be able to call on additional resources in this kind of emergency, in much the same way that foreign relief crews are brought to bear in large natural disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires.

Projects should reinforce international arms control and nonproliferation regimes.  India and Pakistan are not signatories to the Nonproliferation Treaty, but they do participate in parts of the nonproliferation regime; for example, certain activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  Although these two countries may not wish to embrace an international team urged on them by the United States or Russian Federation, they may be willing to accept one under the aegis of the IAEA—with the very same international participants.  The Agency’s International Physical Protection Advisory Service offers countries, even those not cooperating in other aspects of the regime, the opportunity for consultations on improving the security of their civilian nuclear facilities.  Use of this mechanism, in turn, reinforces the role of the IAEA and the overall nonproliferation regime.

Adversaries in nonproliferation policy should be transformed into nonproliferation partners.  India and Pakistan have for many years taken a combative stance with regard to the Nonproliferation Treaty, branding it a discriminatory document in international forums and resisting policies developed on its basis.  In this context, the United States has often seen New Delhi or Islamabad as a kind of adversary in nonproliferation policy.  However, as I argued above, in the crisis era that has emerged since September 11, when terrorists are threatening to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and countries around the world, every country has an interest in ensuring that such assets do not fall into terrorist hands. I therefore believe that it is important to develop joint projects to reduce such threats in a cooperative manner.  At a minimum, countries such as the United States, India and Pakistan have each amassed individual experience over the years in protecting nuclear assets. Such experience can be shared in a way that could benefit others.  If the United States worked separately with India and Pakistan to share information on protection and control of nuclear assets, the United States would be taking the first step toward transformation of these countries from adversaries to partners in the nonproliferation arena. 

Mr. Chairman, we should have no illusions: The new cooperation will be difficult to maintain in a pristine state, linked solely to a sense of mutual interests in and responsibility for a high standard of nuclear security.  A state such as India, for example, is likely to seek resolution of its long-standing issues with the nonproliferation regime—perhaps to enable it to buy reactors for its civilian nuclear power program. The United States, in such a case, would have to consider whether it would adjust its long-standing policies affecting civilian nuclear cooperation with India, and what it would require of India in return.  In other words, the new cooperation will disturb the long-standing policy status quo in a complicated and not wholly predictable way.

However, if the United States is resolved to tackle the nuclear terrorism problem, then the potential for international cooperation is serious and wide-ranging.  For that reason, I fully support the proposal put forward by Senator Lugar to expand authorities for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, so that up to $50 million of unobligated CTR funds may be used to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism in new regions of the world.  I believe that this step would be a major contribution to U.S. national security, and I urge the Congress to support it. 

NOTES:

[1] Statement by G-8 Leaders, "The G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction," June 27, 2002; may be found at www.g8.gc.ca/kan_docs/globpart-e.asp.

[2] David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, “Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies,” SIPRI (Oxford Press, 1997), p. 8.

[3] William J. Broad, Stephen Engelberg and James Glanz, “Assessing Risks, Chemical, Biological, Even Nuclear,” New York Times, November 1, 2001.

[4] Joby Warrick, "Evidence on Iraq Challenged," Washington Post, September 19, 2002.

[5] A timeline of these incidents appears in “MPC&A Program Strategic Plan,” National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, July 2001.

[6] A useful summary of this program, with an excellent map of the sites, is contained in the “MPC&A Program Strategic Plan.”

[7] Quoted in Mark Henderson, “Terrorists ‘Could Make Atom Bomb By Raiding Hospitals,’” London Times, November 1, 2001.

[8] John Tagliabue, “A Warning From An Official About An Increased Possibility of Nuclear Terror,” New York Times, November 2, 2001.

[9] For further commentary on this issue, see Rose Gottemoeller, "Panic Is a Worse Enemy Than 'Dirty' Bombs," Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2002.

[10] Quoted in Broad, et. al., New York Times, November 1, 2001.

[11] "Custodial Controls of Strategic Assets are Ironclad," Statement of Pakistan Foreign Minister Mr. Abdul Sattar, Press Briefing, Foreign Office, Islamabad, November 1, 2001.

[12] Rose Gottemoeller with Rebecca Longsworth, "Enhancing Nuclear Security in the Counter-Terrorism Struggle: India and Pakistan as a New Region for Cooperation," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Global Policy Program, Non-Proliferation Project, Working Paper No. 29, August 2002.