Kerry Promises No Loose Nukes

From the NY Times:

Evoking images of mushroom clouds and terrorists "with their fingers on a nuclear button,'' Senator John Kerry vowed Tuesday to significantly speed the timetable for securing the world's nuclear weapons and materials, saying it would be his No. 1 security goal if elected president.

Geez, when Bush talked like that some folks thought he was referring to an imminent threat. Times change.

Continuing:

Mr. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, promised to appoint a White House nonproliferation coordinator and to safeguard weapons as well as raw plutonium and uranium in Russia and 40 other countries within four years instead of the Bush administration's expected 10 to 13.

Faster is better! But the Times digs up a Republican response:

Richard Falkenrath, a proliferation expert who left his post as deputy assistant to President Bush only two weeks ago, denounced Mr. Kerry's speech as "me-too-ism" filled with "hollow promises and empty rhetoric." Mr. Kerry's timetable is unrealistic, he said, arguing that the easiest of Russia's hundreds of nuclear sites had been secured under the first President Bush and President Bill Clinton, and that those remaining involve more complex bureaucratic challenges.

"It's simply a preposterous claim for anyone to be able to say that the American government could compel the Russian government to transfer its nuclear materials from one facility to another - no amount of bribery or coercion or arm-twisting could ensure that," Mr. Falkenrath said in an interview. "Senator Kerry suggests there's some magic wand he can wave to make this move faster. There is none. We're making progress where progress is possible."

But the Kerry team has a response:

James P. Rubin, a senior Kerry aide on foreign policy, said he was unsure what it would cost to secure the world's nuclear weapons in 4 years rather than 13, but that it was a "doable task" that relied principally on the commitment of a president.

"Mostly it is not a money problem, mostly it is a question of whether an administration's leadership has decided to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to put it on the agenda," Mr. Rubin said, suggesting that a White House coordinator - similar to ones for drugs or terrorism - would underline its importance. "If there are additional funds necessary, Senator Kerry is going to find ways to pay for them."

D'oh! Appoint a White House coordinator! That's why the war on drugs is nearly over, and Richard Clarke, terror czar, managed to stop Osama in 1998.

Left unreported is whether Mr. Rubin managed to avoid bursting into laughter while delivering this panacea; because he is a former State Department spokesperson under Bill Clinton, we assume his professionalism triumphed.

Here are Kerry's speech and Cliff Notes. From his speech, which is replete with exhortations to multilateral activity, we extract this comment about North Korea:

We should maintain the six party talks, but we must also be prepared to talk directly with North Korea. This problem is too urgent to allow China, or others at the table, to speak for us. And we must be prepared to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that addresses the full range of issues of concern to us and our allies.

My two cents is that this is simply "Anything But Bush" run amok. It may be the case that the decision to pursue multi-party talks a few years ago was a mistake that cost us critical time (and it may have been a case of the Bushies experiencing "Anything But Clinton"). However, that water is under the bridge, and at this point we are working towards some sort of multi-lateral solution. To abandon that simply to placate a few ex-Clintonites seems silly; to suggest that both sets of talks can go forward and be viewed as equally important seems unrealistic.

That said, I see Kerry's problem - admitting that, having come this far, the multilateral path is the one to walk down might be too painful an admission for his party to hear.

Comments

[SaveFarris]

So when we demand that every soverign nation w/ nuke capabilities and/or raw materials (including the good folks in, say, Niger) to unilateraly hand it all over, and they then tell us to go to Hell, what then Mr. Kerry?

[J_Crater]

I would wonder how the Ketchup lady would feel if some Russian bureaucrat came in and took away 56 of her varieties claiming it was a mutlilateral decision to speedup convergence to a single ketchup ?
Well that's roughly the way the Russian feel about running off with all their nuclear material. They know it is dangerous, but it is theirs. Offering to help remove their problem is one thing, to impose a timetable is sure to cause problems.

[Mitch H.]

I love the bafflegabbing about how money isn't an issue, followed immediately by an admission that the flack had no actual idea of the costs involved. Way to be prepared, poindexter.

Wasn't there some sort of corruption and accountability issue with the current program?

[Lord Whorfin]

To paraphrase Bill Whittle:

1. Kerry says, "Turn over all your nuclear materials and equipment to US!"

2. A miracle occurs

3. World peace breaks out, and Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon perform "Kumbaya" together in Tel Aviv.

[submandave]

Iraq: we must work with France, Russia, Germany, etc. to achieve a "multilateral" solution

DPRK: we must be prepared to have unilateral talks with them to address issues of concern to us and our allies

I'm sure ROK, Japan and PRC (an ally?) are happy we're willing to negotiate unilaterally for how their neighbor will handle/dispose of their nuclear devices. Oh, I forgot, they're just Asians, not Europeans, right?

[DANEgerus]

Anybody know we, the American Taxpayers, are already spending $Billions to help the Russians clean up their NuclearBiologicalChemical mess made behind the tissue of treaty-lies they signed to gain advantage?

[Diggs]

If he has a plan to make the world safer, and he has kept it hidden, hoping to use it in this campaign, then he has uneccesarily endangered the lives of his fellow Americans. That alone should show the true Kerry character - don't do something good because you should, only do it if it gets you something in return. Kind of like a foreign policy gigolo, one could say.

[paul]

I thought Al Gore was all over that whole pay-the-Russians-to-secure-their-nukes as Veep back in the early 90's. Apparently it didn't result in any kind of nuclear "Lock Box," but the Russians sure pocketed quite a handsome sum.

An ineffective and expensive "multilateral" solution--no wonder Kerry gives it lip service.

[Buddy Larsen]

If there were no war on, and nothing much in particular at stake in this election, then all the tortured tweakings of tenuous propaganda lines that have issued forth from the senator's campaign would be less destructive and more laughable. But, just for argument, forgive them, for a moment, and forget all that, and pretend otherwise; that he believes what he says, and that what he says is truthful, and that the foreign policy people around him are not worn smooth as river stones from eight years of being rolled by every problem they couldn't duck or hide for the next folks to woefully discover, and furthermore accept their charge that GWB and team are in all things stupid, mean, venal,greedy, perfectly inept yet somehow highly successfully manipulative, and, then, you STILL have to choose between a team that entitles itself to change positions at whim, versus a team that doesn't.

[Forbes]

OK, call me stupid. I thought we already did the unilateralist tap dance with the Norks. Remember, Clinton sent over Jimmy C, and the "treaty" (Agreed Framework) became a joke, in what, 3 or 4 days.

Oh, now I get it, this is nuance. We maintain 6 party talks, but also, on a parallel track, hold direct talks with the Norks. (What, has Kerry been taking night classes at Georgetown?)

We're going to negotiate an agreement that addresses our allies concerns?

Who can possibly take this guy seriously with a proposal like this?

[Tim]

Sheesh. Kerry, desperate to prove his "security" credentials, seeks to change the subject. It's as if he was a councilman, telling folks to ignore the serial arsonist (that the local fire and police chief just cannot seem to catch) because, after all, rampaging wildfires could destroy the entire town. Sure, the threat is real enough, but it isn't exactly the threat right now.

[JosephMendiola]

The key words-phrase(s) in Kerry's speech is "...WORST KINDS OF...", which for me strongly infers or alludes that he is willing to allow nations to keep some level of nuclear weapons; and "STARTING WITH THE US", read PRO-LEFTIST ABSOLUTIST, SOCIALIST [SHHHHHHHHHH,COMMUNIST] GLOBAL GOVERNMENT with the US no longer a sovereign, independent nation, but a mere world state and CANTON! Recall Bill Clinton, whom wants a world, and "warns" Americans to prep for, "THE DAY WHEN AMERICA IS NO LONGER THE 'BIG BOY' ON THE BLOCK - ala Clintonian alleged "CENTRISM", in ClintonSpeak is the same as saying that mainstream, allegedly Bush/FASCIST-led America is ALREADY MAJORITY, PREDOMINANTLY, OR MINIMALLY COMMUNIST and LEFT-BASED SOCIALIST, no different than post-1989 RUSSIA in having a Communist-controlled, Communism-centric or focused, allegedly FASCIST-RIGHTIST-NATIONALIST, ANTI-COMMUNIST COMMUNIST, Government!Any POTUS KERRY admin. is meant or intended to FAIL, and FAIL WHILE ALSO BEING HARMFUL OR DESTRUCTIVE TO AMERICA, in order to justify an America under anti-sovereign Global Government and Socialism, read COMMUNISM and COMMUNIST WORLD ORDER, with Global Government affairs being dominated by Russia-China, read ORIENTAL, ASIAN, and ASIAN COMMUNIST AGENDAS! Communist Absolutism is for Global Government, while FASCIST SOCIALISM is for ECONOMICS, read DE-REGULATED "COMPETITIVE" COMMUNISM i.e LIMITED/COMMAND CAPITALISM. subread COMMUNIST ASIAN WARLORDS NEED THEIR TRIBUTE AND TO BE FED BY GLOBAL PEONS-SLAVES!

[Joseph Somsel]

One little known fact is that ~10% of the US electricity production is today fueled from former Soviet Union nuclear warheads (and submarine cores). We're making pretty good progress. Putin gets world market prices on the enriched uranium he is selling us. What he does with the dollars is his business.

The next challenge is bigger - what to do with the Russian plutonium. US reactor owners are fine with burning uranium fuel but don't want the extra hassle and expense of using plutonium fuel (aka "MOX fuel" for Mixed Oxides).

I wonder if Kerry would launch a massive building program for new US nuclear power plants to be fueled with surplused Russian (and US) plutonium? Would Jane Fonda still vote for him?

Of course, perhaps he intends to ban French uranium enrichment sales in the US - that would double the rate of burnup of Russian special nuclear materials.

[Tim Worstall]

Joseph hits the nail on the head. Uranium is being worked on at the maximum rate technically possible. Plutonium is the problem. MOX is the only reasonable solution, so to solve the warhead problem we need an expansion (or a restart) of the nuke building power plant program. Not something that the tree huggers will approve of.

[Pouncer]

Tim W, forgive me if I misremember, but aren't the French world-leaders in both percentage of national energy-production by nukes, AND percent of nukes using PuO and MOX cores?

IF so, it would seem the unspoken but plausible Kerry position is that the US would pay for plutonium from everybody else, then give it to the French. Or pay them to take it.

I mena, it's crazy, but it might work...

[Mitch H.]

Er, we're using uranium from Soviet nukes in domestic power production? At those levels? Do you have any links on that? It sounds kind of wild in a gonzo-Neal-Stephenson-Wired-article sort of way.

[Forbes Tuttle]

I've got to second the motion from Mitch H. Most nuclear plants run on something like six year refueling cycles. Manufacturers/fabricators of fuel rods are usually contracted with under with long term contracts. So the plant in Ohio--US Nuclear (I think is the name)--buying the Soviet nuclear materials, is reprocessing and selling the material to fuel rod fabricators, and it's already found its way into US nuclear plants? Call me skeptical. Sources backing up such assertions would be helpful. Thanks.

[Joseph Somsel]

Here's a link to the United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC); the US agent for the "Megatons to Megawatts" program.

http://www.usec.com/v2001_02/HTML/megatons.asp

To arrive at the ~10% figure (I'm guilty of rounding up my earlier estimate of 8+%), you need USEC's marketshare (50%) times USEC's use of Russian enriched uranium (about 100%) times the percentage of US electricity from nukes (~20%). A second order effect is any further downblending USEC does to match individual customer orders. USEC is a spin-off (privitization) of the US Government's uranium enrichment facilities.

This program was intitiated during the mid-Clinton years. There was a recent WTO flap about the Europeans dumping SWUs in the US market (separator work units for isotopic enrichment) that got me digging. Also a flap about our rejecting a shipment because the Russian stuff wasn't clean enough of a specific neutron-absorbing isotope. The Russians mix highly enriched uranium with natural, unenriched uranium in Russia then ship to USEC in the US.

So if Kerry is really serious, he would indeed ban EuroSWUs and increase USEC's (and hence the Russians) market share to 100%, thereby doubling the rate of Russian highly enriched uranium consumption by US electricity consumers. That would really PO his French friends but better achieve his stated goals.

BTW, the "Megaton" program has my complete support but I wonder if Senator Kerry voted for it?

Joseph Somsel
Nuclear engineer/MBA