Aftermath: in 1995, doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo hit Tokyo’s subway (Image: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)

To rid the world of bioweapons and nukes, we must accept paradoxes and understand the complexities of the technology, argue two fascinatingly forensic books

IT is called Fogbank and it is a type of foam – toxic, explosive and highly flammable, and vital to the W76 nuclear warheads on Trident missiles. But the US government forgot how to make it. Over the nine years to 2009, the US National Nuclear Security Administration spent $69 million trying to remember how. A previous plant had been dismantled, few records had been kept and staff had left. The wheel simply had to be reinvented.

The story of Fogbank, first reported in żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ” in 2008, is highlighted by as an example of . When it comes to weapons of mass destruction, she suggests, this is an advantage, because it makes controlling their proliferation easier.

Her fascinating book, Barriers to Bioweapons, also shows that anyone wanting to develop biological weapons faces a raft of other difficulties. Of the five main bioweapons programmes to date, their key feature has been their failures, not their successes. In a forensic and compelling analysis, she describes how the Soviet Union, the US, South Africa and the Japanese terrorist group , all fell well short, despite spending billions of dollars over decades.

Then there’s Iraq, where the government spent $80 million over 20 years on bombs that its scientists knew would not deliver most of the anthrax and other toxins they contained, but simply destroy them on impact.

The living microorganisms at the heart of these programmes are fragile and unpredictable, and the main barrier to producing bioweapons isn’t access to materials and technologies, but the practical and organisational difficulties of actually getting devices to work. These weaknesses should be exploited to stem bioweapons development, she says. Present policy, stressing how easy it is to make bioweapons, only encourages terrorists.

“Present policy, stressing how easy it is to make bioweapons, only encourages terrorists”

The approach taken by is different, and for good reasons. They argue that the way to get rid of nuclear weapons is to control the fissile materials that cause the explosions.

To back up their argument, they give a succinct, authoritative account of all the fissile material produced in military and civilian nuclear programmes since 1945. They conclude that, as at the end of 2013, there were about 1400 tonnes of highly enriched uranium and 500 tonnes of separated plutonium – together enough for more than 100,000 nuclear weapons.

Most of this material went into nuclear weapons programmes, mostly in Russia and the US. Some powered submarines, while plutonium separated from electricity-producing reactors was being stockpiled in Russia, the UK and France.

To ensure nuclear disarmament, the authors argue, all these materials have to be eliminated, using something like proposed by the UN in 1993. Since civil nuclear technology can be used to make bombs, they write, “it might be necessary for the world to do without nuclear power altogether”.

Along with Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, they have another suggestion. International law should make working on nuclear or biological weapons a crime against humanity, thereby helping scientists and engineers exercise their consciences.

This is the kind of moral force that succeeded in ridding the world of slavery in previous centuries. These authors remind us, however, that the nuclear dangers we face are immediate, and that time is not on the side of humanity.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Taping over the red button”

AS DUSK falls, Grangemouth starts to glow. Cloaked in clouds of steam and lit by flares like giant candles, Scotland’s biggest oil refinery has a strange beauty. Situated roughly halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the Firth of Forth, the 700-hectare petrochemical complex is a vital hub of UK oil production. Should Scotland vote for independence, it will be one of the new government’s key assets.

According to the industry, there are between of recoverable oil and gas left under the North Sea. About 42bn barrels have been extracted since production began there in 1967. Because prices have risen, 24bn barrels could be worth £1.5 trillion – more than the value of all the oil and gas extracted so far. “That gives us one of the best financial safety nets of any country in the world,” the . If the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine base moves from the river Clyde after independence – as Scottish nationalists say it must – then prospecting off the west coast could begin too. It is currently banned in case it interferes with naval operations there.

There will be a few other tricky issues to resolve, like where the lines are drawn to demarcate which fields belong to an independent Scotland and which to the UK, and how the ÂŁ35-ÂŁ50bn cost of decommissioning old oil rigs would be divided up.

Ultimately the plan is to emulate Norway, and invest at least some of the created wealth for the future. Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, has promised to put aside about £1bn a year, with the aim of generating a £30bn oil fund over a generation.

“Alex Salmond promises to put aside about £1 billion of oil money a year, to create a £30 billion fund”

Norway’s equivalent, the , has amassed over from oil and gas revenues since it was set up in 1990. It is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and owns 1.3 per cent of all the world’s listed companies.

According to Bjþrn Vidar Lerþen, an adviser to Norway’s industry body, Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, there was political consensus on the fund from the start. “The oil belongs to the people and revenues from oil production shall be used to build a better society,” he says. The Norwegian fund has a wide-ranging ethical policy that forbids investments in more than 60 companies involved in tobacco, arms, environmental or human rights abuses. Ironically, it is now reviewing whether to disinvest from fossil fuel companies because of the damage they do to the climate.

But there is one way in which Scotland would probably not be able to copy Norway: the Norwegian government’s 67 per cent ownership of the oil company Statoil. “To try to nationalise companies would not be politically possible either in Scotland or the UK,” says , an oil specialist at legal firm Bond Dickinson in Aberdeen.

Perhaps the biggest conundrum, though, is the climate. According to WWF Scotland, burning 24bn barrels of oil and gas could put more then 10bn tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – more than 120 times Scotland’s current annual emissions. “The science is clear,” says the environmental group’s director, . “The planet certainly can’t afford to allow all the oil left in the North Sea to be burned.”

Read more: “Four futures for an independent Scotland“

This article appeared in print under the headline “Oil and gas is at heart of Scots’ future wealth”

Yet US firm has so far failed to convince regulators that its AP1000 reactors can withstand such events. “At this stage Westinghouse has not presented an adequate safety case for external hazards,” .

This echoes , which said the firm must rethink the “fundamental engineering standards” of the reactor housing. The US plans to build 14 AP1000s; China four.

For its nuclear programme, the UK is considering the AP1000 and the European pressurised water reactor (EPR), developed by and . The EPR is the front runner, but its design was also criticised by the HSE.

Kevin Allars of the HSE adds that neither reactor is unsafe and the criticisms are a normal part of the regulatory process. The nuclear companies say they are addressing the problems.

For the first time in eight years, countries are contemplating giving nuclear stations carbon credits in the run-up to the crucial world summit on in December. This could greatly boost prospects of a global nuclear expansion.

Draft text currently under negotiation at by 182 countries in Bonn, Germany, includes an option to make nuclear facilities eligible for funding from 2012 under two schemes meant to help poorer countries develop low-carbon technologies: the (CDM) and Joint Implementation.

Nuclear power was excluded from these schemes under the in 2001, after opposition from European and developing countries. Now the nuclear industry is hoping to overturn that, and open the door for funding to flow to nuclear stations across the developing world.

“The whole world will benefit if we can encourage developing countries to meet their rapidly increasing energy needs through low-carbon technologies like nuclear energy, drawing on international support,” says Jonathan Cobb, from the (WNA).

New figures from the association reveal that the amount of nuclear electricity generated globally in 2008 was the lowest for five years because of a number of decommissions. The WNA is, however, expecting a “new wave of nuclear build” after 2012.

‘Safety and security issues’

But, “it’s a survival strategy for the nuclear industry not the planet”, according to Shaun Burnie, a nuclear energy consultant and former Greenpeace campaigner: He estimates that carbon credits could cut the capital cost of building new nuclear stations by up to 40%.

Climate change experts are cautious. , director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester and East Anglia universities in the UK, has “serious reservations” about the CDM. However, he thinks that nuclear power should be considered “provided safety and security issues are satisfactorily addressed”.

, director of a project on international climate agreements at Harvard University, argues that a “carefully designed” provision to include nuclear power could be “helpful” in combating climate change. “But the promotion of nuclear power also brings with it a host of other environmental concerns,” he says.