IT IS being billed as one of the most serious cases of nuclear espionage
ever. The news that a weapons designer at the nerve centre of America鈥檚 bomb
programme has been accused of passing secrets to China made headlines worldwide
last week.
But while this lapse of security is acutely embarrassing, proliferation
experts say that it probably didn鈥檛 significantly affect China鈥檚 development as
a nuclear power.
Last week, Wen Ho Lee of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was
accused of giving China the technology to make miniature hydrogen bombs. These
small nuclear devices can allow rockets to be equipped with MIRV
warheads鈥攎ultiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, in the jargon
of the bomb labs.
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This is harder than it sounds because a hydrogen fusion bomb must be
triggered by a primary fission bomb made of plutonium. This must first implode
symmetrically鈥攁ny asymmetry and the plutonium squirts out of one end of
the bomb and the fission reaction never gets going. As a result, early plutonium
bombs were spherical鈥攁nd spheres don鈥檛 pack very easily into the nosecones
of missiles.
The key to packing rockets with MIRVs is to design primary fission bombs
shaped like American footballs, says Chuck Hansen, a writer on military
technology based in Sunnyvale, California. It is these designs that Lee
allegedly passed to the Beijing government.
But Robert Norris, a nuclear weapons expert at the National Resources Defense
Council in Washington DC, believes this would have merely saved China some time
and money. 鈥淭he Russians and the French solved these problems鈥攖he British
as well,鈥� he says.
Norris notes that the China鈥檚 bomb programme still lags behind those of the
other nuclear powers. 鈥淭hey were always a generation or two or three behind,鈥� he
says. 鈥淭hey still are.鈥�
Norris says China is thought to have tested miniature warheads in its latest
series of nuclear tests from 1990 to 1996. But he argues that MIRVs were never
central to its nuclear strategy. 鈥淭he Chinese have no intention of running up a
huge arsenal of thousands of weapons,鈥� he says.
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, agrees. 鈥淟et鈥檚 say the worst
is true and they鈥檝e got this technology. The impact on US national security is
marginal at most,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no strategic difference between China
having 20 five-megaton warheads and having 100 half-megaton warheads. It鈥檚 still
a tiny force compared to the 5500 missiles we have.鈥�