COMMENTARY: Nuclear Weapons: Pressure Tactics Aren’t Working

In dealing with dangerous nations such as Iran and North Korea, an attitude of wary toughness is appropriate but all too obvious in America’s foreign policy. Respect and understanding are also essential if we really want to solve these problems rather than just thump our own chests.

No nation, including us, reacts well to other nations telling it, under threat of punishment, what it should do. When North Africa around 1790 pressured the young United States for ransom, under threat of attack by Barbary pirates, we created the U.S. Navy and fought two Barbary Wars that helped end the extortion.

North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test on Feb. 12, detonating a far more powerful bomb than its previous partial fi zzles in 2006 and 2009. This latest blast was comparable to the U.S. bomb that destroyedHiroshima in 1945.

We all need to know a little about nuclear weapons: They are arguably humankind’s most potent present threat (the future threat is global warming). There are three kinds of nuclear weapons fuels: uranium, plutonium and hydrogen. Neither North Korea nor Iran are developing hydrogen “fusion” bombs, which can be far larger than uranium or plutonium “fi ssion” bombs.

Uranium bomb fuel is obtained from natural uranium by the dift cult “uranium enrichment” process. Enrichment builds up the fraction of “fi ssionable” (explodable) uranium, which forms lessthan 1 percent of natural uranium. Iran obtained the centrifuges needed for enrichment by 2006, when it enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, suitable for nuclear reactors but too low for bombs. North Korea obtained enrichment centrifuges by 2010.

Plutonium does not occur naturally on Earth but is instead obtained from fuel rods that have been used in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. The uranium fi ssion process during the reactor’s operation creates this plutonium as a by-product.

As you can see, there are important connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, namely the “enrichment connection” (the enrichment process used for uranium reactors can be used to make uranium bomb fuel) and the “used fuel rod connection” (used fuel rods from uranium reactors contain plutonium that can be used for bomb fuel).

North Korea’s fi rst twobombs used plutonium extracted from used fuel rods at their Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex.

North Korea demolished that complex’s cooling tower and shut down the associated nuclear fuel reprocessing facility by 2008, in return for U.S. political concessions. It would take years to restart that reactor. This leaves North Korea with enough plutonium for “only” a few bombs. They tested one such bomb in 2009. Experts don’t know whether last month’s test involved a third plutonium bomb, or a uranium bomb produced using North Korea’s new centrifuges. A uranium bomb would be a game-changer, because North Korea has uranium deposits and could build up a stockpile of bombgrade 90 percent enriched uranium for its own use or for sale.

Iran is in a similar situation, but hasn’t tested a bomb. Its thousands of centrifuges have created hundreds of poundsof 20 percent enriched uranium. Twenty percent is higher than needed for nuclear power, too low for a bomb, and right for medical applications. The danger is that enrichment is an “exponential” process, implying a specifi c “doubling time.” Since one doubling gets you to 40 percent, and another gets you to 80 percent, 20 percent enrichment isn’t far from bomb-grade fuel. So it’s dangerous for Iran to have large amounts of 20 percent enriched uranium.

Coercive diplomacy isn’t working. President Obama has announced we will attack if Iran is on the verge of obtaining a bomb.

This threat might satisfy American chest-thumpers, but it’s a perilous policy that is unlikely to solve the problem. The last thing we need is a war with Iran.

There are far better options: Get serious about mideast peace talks and a two-state solution; take the practical and realisticproposal of a mideast nuclear-free zone seriously.

And open up these countries. Kim Jong-un hasn’t traveled abroad since 2001; Ayatolla Khamenei never travels. They run fearful, insular nations that need to be opened and visited, not shunned and sanctioned at every turn.

Some of us remember the “ping-pong diplomacy” that helped pave the way for a pathbreaking meeting between President Richard Nixon and China’s Chairman Mao. We must keep our guard up, but also talk with these governments, and shower them with trade in peaceful goods, with humanitarian aid, with as many Dennis Rodmans as possible, and with other peaceful connections.

We need to solve this problem, not simply congratulate ourselves for being tough.

ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.

Opinion, Pages 16 on 03/24/2013

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