Nuclear Black Markets

Nuclear Black Markets
Author: Mark Fitzpatrick (M.P.P.)
Publisher: IISS
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780860792017

"The arrest and public confession of Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in 2004 revealed the existence of a global proliferation network which had, over almost two decades, provided nuclear technology, expertise, and designs to Iran, North Korea, Libya and possibly other countries. Khan was not the only nuclear arms merchant and Pakistan was not the only country implicated in his shadowy network. It spanned three continents and eluded both national and international systems of export controls that had been designed to prevent illicit trade. The discovery of the network highlighted concerns that nuclear technology is no longer the monopoly of industrially advanced countries, but can be purchased off-the-shelf by both states and terrorist groups. The IISS Strategic Dossier on nuclear black markets provides a comprehensive assessment of the Pakistani nuclear programme from which the Khan network emerged, the network's onward proliferation activities, and the illicit trade in fissile materials. In addition, the Strategic Dossier provides an overview of the clandestine nuclear procurement activities of other states, along with the efforts made both by Pakistan and the international community to prevent the reoccurrence of further proliferation networks and to secure nuclear technology. The final chapter assesses policy options for further action.

Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology

Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology
Author: Matthew Bunn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2018-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316730441

Every nuclear weapons program for decades has relied extensively on illicit imports of nuclear-related technologies. This book offers the most detailed public account of how states procure what they need to build nuclear weapons, what is currently being done to stop them, and how global efforts to prevent such trade could be strengthened. While illicit nuclear trade can never be stopped completely, effective steps to block illicit purchases of nuclear technology have sometimes succeeded in slowing nuclear weapons programs and increasing their costs, giving diplomacy more chance to work. Hence, this book argues, preventing illicit transfers wherever possible is a key element of an effective global non-proliferation strategy.

Smuggling Armageddon

Smuggling Armageddon
Author: Rensselaer W. Lee
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2000-01-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312224561

Smuggling Armageddon looks at one of the most troubling international concerns of the 1990s and beyond: the illegal trade in nuclear materials that has erupted in the Newly-Independent States (NIS) and Europe since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Rensselaer Lee raises the seldom-asked question of whether such traffic poses a threat of consequence to international security and stability while showing readers a Russia beset with a variety of criminal proliferation channels, increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations, and nuclear stockpiles with breached security. Smuggling Armageddon is sure to provoke controversy and raise the specter of nuclear destruction once again.

Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy

Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy
Author: Graham T. Allison
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262510882

Nuclear materials have never been more plentiful or more accessible to rogue states and terrorists. In this study, the authors analyze the consequences of such nuclear leakage for United States national security and argue that it is possibly the nation's h

The Atomic Bazaar

The Atomic Bazaar
Author: William Langewiesche
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2003-07-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429934344

In his shocking and revelatory new work, the celebrated journalist William Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning global threat of nuclear weapons production. The Atomic Bazaar is the story of the inexorable drift of nuclear weapons technology from the hands of the rich into the hands of the poor. As more unstable and undeveloped nations find ways of acquiring the ultimate arms, the stakes of state-sponsored nuclear activity have soared to frightening heights. Even more disturbing is the likelihood of such weapons being manufactured and deployed by guerrilla non-state terrorists. Langewiesche also recounts the recent history of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist at the forefront of nuclear development and trade in the Middle East who masterminded the theft and sale of centrifuge designs that helped to build Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and who single-handedly peddled nuclear plans to North Korea, Iran, and other potentially hostile countries. He then examines in dramatic and tangible detail the chances for nuclear terrorism. From Hiroshima to the present day, Langewiesche describes a reality of urgent consequence to us all. This searing, provocative, and timely report is a triumph of investigative journalism, and a masterful laying out of the most critical political problem the world now faces.

Being Nuclear

Being Nuclear
Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2012-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0262300672

The hidden history of African uranium and what it means—for a state, an object, an industry, a workplace—to be “nuclear.” Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa's other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something—a state, an object, an industry, a workplace—to be “nuclear.” Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear—a state that she calls “nuclearity”—lie at the heart of today's global nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.

Shopping for Bombs

Shopping for Bombs
Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2009-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0195375238

Here is the riveting, inside story of the rise and fall of A.Q. Khan and his role in the devastating spread of nuclear technology over the last thirty years. Drawing on exclusive interviews with key players in Islamabad, London, and Washington, as well as with members of Khan's own network, BBC journalist Gordon Corera paints a truly unsettling picture of the nuclear arms bazaar. Corera reveals how Khan operated within a world of shadowy deals amongst rogue states and how his privileged position in Pakistan protected his unique and deadly business empire.

Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance

Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance
Author: Richard K. Betts
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2010-12-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815717083

In numerous crises after World War II—Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East—the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion. Rejecting standard explanations of our leader's logic in these cases, Betts suggests that U.S. presidents were neither consciously blufffing when they made nuclear threats, nor prepared to face the consequences if their threats failed. The author also challenges the myth that the 1950s was a golden age of low vulberability for the United Stateas and details how nuclear parity has, and has not, altered conditions that gave rise to nuclear blackmail in the past.

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation
Author: Allan S. Krass
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2020-11-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 100020054X

Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.