U.S. Response:  Pentagon to Test Chemical-Detecting UAV

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency plans to test a new unmanned aerial vehicle next month that is designed to detect chemical and biological agents. The new UAV will be deployed by a larger Predator UAV, Aerospace Daily reported last week (see GSN, March 6).

The Predator has successfully deployed the smaller vehicle — the Naval Research Laboratory’s Flight-Inserted Detection Expendable for Reconnaissance, also called FINDER — four times, but next month’s test would be the first time the it has actually been used to detect chemical agents, according to the daily.  Military researchers tested the vehicle last July and October in Nevada by sending it through vapors of chemical precursors and surrogates.

The system is designed to allow the Predator to carry the smaller UAV near an area where a chemical facility has been destroyed and release the vehicle to collect samples from a cloud that the Predator’s chemical detector has identified as possibly containing particles of chemical weapons.  The vehicle would also collect data that ground control could use to predict the cloud’s path (Jefferson Morris, Aerospace Daily, July 11).

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U.S.-Russia:  Nonproliferation Programs Need 20 More Years, U.S. Official Says

U.S.-Russian nuclear nonproliferation programs should probably continue for at least another 20 years, David Zigelman, a U.S. program manager of the Nuclear Cities Initiative, said in a recent interview with Insight Magazine (see GSN, July 15).

The Nuclear Cities Initiative is a program run jointly by the U.S. Energy Department and the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry and is designed to help find employment for Russian nuclear weapons scientists to prevent them from selling their expertise to rogue states (see GSN, Feb. 8).  The program is important since Russia can no longer pay scientists at the level they earned during the Cold War-era, Zigelman said.

“We must find commercial jobs for them at $50,000 to $100,000 a year or risk their defection,” he said.

Many Russian scientists would prefer to go back to work on weapon-related projects, Zigelman said.  Russian nuclear weapons scientists often miss the benefits and prestige that came with their former work, he said.

“Working in those cities meant working for the protection of the motherland ... Now they must find commercial jobs, some as menials manufacturing plastic dinnerware,” Zigelman said.  “When suddenly one does much less important work, it can seem degrading.  Many yearn for the good old days.”

Zigelman said he has a good relationship with the scientists in the closed cities where they formerly worked to develop Soviet nuclear weapons.

“In the closed cities, they call me ‘The Godfather,’” he said.  “I go to a city and sit down at the end of a table while group after group comes and pitches projects.  I have become their sugar daddy.  It’s like the movies:  ‘Godfather, I need money for this; Godfather, I need money for that.’”

U.S. officials have a more combative relationship with those in the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry, Zigelman said.

“We have a rocky relationship at times and can get tangled up in pissing contests,” he said.  “Luckily one group will recognize the importance of the program when another views us as a threat” (Brandon Spun, Insight Magazine, August 5).

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United States:  Laboratory Plans to Begin Purifying Plutonium

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory officials said yesterday they plan to revive efforts to purify plutonium for nuclear weapons research.

The laboratory wants to resume using equipment to purify “isotopes for experiments,” said Bruce Goodwin, associate director for defense and nuclear technologies at the laboratory.  Understanding plutonium’s properties is important to properly maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile without conducting full nuclear tests, laboratory scientists said.

The laboratory would use the pure isotopes for weapons research, including using some in non-nuclear underground explosions, Goodwin said.

Scientists purify plutonium by using special equipment to heat it until it turns to vapor and then shining lasers through the vapor to separate isotopes.  The laboratory’s equipment was built a decade ago to demonstrate plutonium purification in preparation for constructing a full-scale plutonium production plant in Idaho.

The plant was never built, however, and the laboratory never used the equipment after two groups — the Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and the Natural Resources Defense Committee — filed a lawsuit claiming that the laboratory had not conducted required environmental studies, according to the San Jose Mercury News.  The equipment is now housed in a guarded building at the laboratory.

Researchers have resumed testing the equipment with alternative materials to plutonium, according to the Mercury News.  Using the equipment to purify plutonium would not harm the surrounding community, laboratory officials said.

Activists Oppose the Project

The Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and other activists oppose the laboratory’s plan start using the equipment.

“It poses a very serious hazard,” said Marylia Kelley, head of Tri-Valley CARES.  “We’re going to insist on a full environmental study.”

Kelley said that the laboratory’s safety documents say some release of plutonium into the environment is inevitable.  She and others also expressed concern that the laboratory might produce radiological weapons — known as dirty bombs — or manufacture plutonium spheres for nuclear weapons (see GSN, June 3).

The laboratory is only planning to purify isotopes, and the project will not involve dirty bomb designs or plutonium pit production, Goodwin said (Dan Stober, San Jose Mercury News, July 17).

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Russia:  Demonstrator 2 Launch Was Fourth to Use Submarine Missiles

Russia’s launch Friday of the Demonstrator 2 spacecraft is the fourth Russian launch of a space vehicle using a converted submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Moscow Trud reported Saturday (see GSN, July 12).

Russia first SLBM-launched space vehicle was orbited in 1996, when a German research module was launched a Volna booster rocket — the same rocket used for the Demonstrator 2 launch, the newspaper reported.  In 1998, a Russian Delta IV submarine launched a German satellite into orbit aboard a booster rocket based on the SS-N-23 ballistic missile (Moscow Trud, July 13, in FBIS-SOV, July 13).

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Threat Assessment:  Experts Debate Restrictions for DNA Industry

The announcement last week that scientists had built a specimen of polio virus from scratch has led to concerns that the DNA synthesis industry should be better regulated to prevent proliferation of biological weapons, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 12).

There are concerns that someone could discreetly purchase individual strands of made-to-order DNA, which are themselves harmless, and connect them to create a biological weapons agent, the Post reported.

“The customer gets to design the sequence they want manufactured and there is a limited ability for us to know what people are going to do with it,” said Roman Terrill, vice president of legal and regulatory affairs at Integrated DNA Technologies in Coralville, Iowa.

A scientist would need very little — about $10,000 and a few months — to develop the genetic components of a biological weapons agent, Terrill said. 

“You could buy your own used DNA synthesizer and make whatever you want in the comfort and privacy of your own garage,” he said.

There are about six U.S. companies that produce and sell small strands of DNA, called oligonucleotides or “oligos,” the Post reported.  While some scientists have said they are not in favor of new restrictions on oligo producers, which have become critical to the biotechnology industry, others have said that now might be the time to begin a public discussion on the issue.

U.S. restrictions prohibit shipment of pathogens classified as “select agents,” but those restrictions do not apply to shipments of DNA components within the United States, according to the Post.  The U.S. Commerce Department does require a license to ship DNA considered to be a potential threat oversees.  The department’s requirements, however, are vague and can easily be circumvented, scientists said.

Commerce’s restrictions on DNA shipments apply to strands “associated with pathogenicity,” which means the strands can lead to the ability to cause disease, Terrill said.

“The problem is the bureau has not released those sequences, so ... we would have to decide for ourselves whether a sequence is associated with pathogenicity,” he said.  “But how pathogenic?  And what does ‘associated’ mean?  The phrase is difficult to get a grasp on.  It’s not really a scientific term.  It’s a lawyer’s term.”

Any restrictions that are based on the pathogenicity of DNA strands, however, have little meaning now that scientists can take individual strands that are harmless and use them to create a biological agent, scientists said.

“I don’t know how you could overcome that problem,” said a Commerce official.  “You could get one part (of the sequence) from one company and another part from another company and completely circumvent the law.”

Some experts have suggested that there should be better oversight of the DNA synthesis industry, according to the Post. 

“We propose that ... those companies that produce the oligos should be asked to routinely check the sequences against those of known pathogens,” said Eckard Wimmer, who led the project to build the polio virus.

Other experts have suggested institutional review processes for scientists who plan to use DNA strands to develop viruses or other pathogens.

“I would argue there needs to be more oversight in terms of getting approval,” said Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania ethicist.  “Are we going to be seeing this kind of thing done in a science fair soon?  I’m in favor of tighter controls” (Rick Weiss, Washington Post, July 17).

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OPCW:  Executive Council Nominates New Director General

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, has nominated Argentina’s ambassador to the OPCW to replace former Director General Jose Bustani (see GSN, April 25).

The council decided on Monday to recommend Rogelio Pfirter during its 19^th meeting at The Hague, the OPCW said in a press release.  It had been decided during the organization’s first special session, when Bustani was voted out of his position, that OPCW members from Latin America and the Caribbean would have the first chance to recommend a replacement to the council, OPCW spokesman Peter Kaiser said last month.

The Latin American-Caribbean group of OPCW members notified the executive council at the end of May that they probably would not be able to present a qualified candidate, Kaiser said.  The council then decided to open the nomination process to all OPCW members, with developing countries encouraged to put forward a candidate, he said.  Latin American and Caribbean countries were not restricted from nominating a candidate at that time, he added.

The council will make its recommendation to the Conference of States Parties when the first special session reconvenes, which is scheduled for July 25.  The full OPCW decision on the new director general would probably be made through a consensus, since an actual vote would imply that some members did not favor the candidate and would thereby erode support, Kaiser said.  Bustani was chosen as director general through a consensus vote, he added.

The United States, which led the campaign for Bustani’s removal, did not attempt to influence the nomination process, Kaiser said, adding that no member offered preconceptions for a director general candidate (see GSN, April 30).  There are no signs that the “rancorous debate” that occurred before Bustani was removed from the director general position will occur when the organization decides on his replacement, Kaiser said.

“Everyone is hoping that this process will come to a swift and smooth conclusion,” he said.

For further information, see:

CWC Text

OPCW

CWC Parties

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United States:  Worker Exposed to Sarin at Utah Chemical Incinerator

Army officials have confirmed that a worker at the Tooele, Utah, chemical weapons incinerator was exposed Monday to residual traces of sarin, a gas that attacks the nervous system, the Anniston Star reported today.  The incident was the first confirmed exposure in the facility’s history (see GSN, Jan. 8).

The employee, whose name was not released, was working with other staff to change equipment used to destroy sarin to prepare the facility to incinerate VX nerve agent.  The plant completed sarin destruction in March and is not processing agent at this time.

An alarm indicating sarin in the air sounded in the room where the employee and a co-worker were conducting maintenance work on a line that blows leftover agent into a furnace.  The two workers put on gas masks and reported to the clinic, where decontamination continued and a health worker checked their blood.  One worker tested positive for agent and after an observation period returned to nontoxic duties.

The Army and the facility’s contractor EG&G Defense Materials are investigating the incident, the Star reported.

“Incineration has failed to protect workers,” said Jason Groenewold, director of Utah’s Families Against Incinerator Risk (see GSN, May 3).  “The best way to ensure the safety of workers is to use a safer disposal technology.”

Meanwhile, staff and management at the Anniston, Ala., chemical weapons incinerator, which is scheduled to begin destroying sarin later this year, will learn from the Tooele incident, Anniston depot official Mike Abrams said (see GSN, July 11).

“We are training our people to work very, very safely so we can consequently destroy the weapons very, very safely,” he said (Matthew Creamer, Anniston Star, July 17).

For further information, see:

CDC List of Chemical Agents

Federation of American Scientists Information on Chemical Weapons

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North Korea:  Official Visits Libya and Syria to Renew Arms Sales

North Korea is sending high-level officials to Libya and Syria to begin talks on renewing arms sales, Middle East Newsline reported, according to Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules (see GSN, Feb. 21).

Senior North Korean official Kim Yong Nam met in Libya with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi over the weekend.  Kim was scheduled to travel to Syria next and meet with President Bashar al-Assad, sources said.  Libya and Syria have purchased ballistic missiles and missile technology from North Korea in the past (Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules, July 15).

For further information, see:

Carnegie Endowment World Missile Chart

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Syria:  Damascus Ready to Produce New Scud-D

Middle East Newsline has reported that Syria is ready to begin producing its Scud-D medium-range ballistic missiles, Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules reported last week (see GSN, April 8).  Syria developed the new missile with North Korean assistance, but a U.S. intelligence source has said the Syrian version might be inferior (see related GSN story, today).

“There are a lot of questions regarding the capability of the Syrian Scud-D,” said a U.S. intelligence source.  “What we do know is that the Syrian Scud-C is significantly inferior to the North Korean model” (Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules, July 12).

U.S. and Israeli sources have said that Syria has also begun production of an extended-range version of its Scud-C ballistic missile, Space & Missile reported last month.  The upgraded Scud-C, formerly a short-range missile, now has a range of 700 kilometers due to increased fuel capacity.  Syria might have the capacity to produce about 30 Scud-C missiles annually, according to Space & Missile (Space & Missile, June 27).

For further information, see:

Carnegie Endowment World Missile Chart

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U.S. Plans:  Kadish Unsure When Systems Will Beat Countermeasures

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon does not know whether its most prominent national missile defense program will be able to defeat enemy countermeasures, and it may not know even when it deploys an initial “emergency” system in Alaska by 2004, a senior Pentagon official testified before Congress yesterday.

“We certainly have not answered the question [of] how effective is this midcourse system … against the variety of decoys that it might go up against,” Missile Defense Agency Director Ronald Kadish said at a hearing of a House Government Reform subcommittee.

“That, however, doesn’t mean that the system is ineffective,” he added.

Critics led by physicist Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have argued that pursuing the estimated $60 billion Ground-based, Midcourse Defense program is a waste of money (see GSN, May 17).  They assert that an enemy using technologically simple decoys or other countermeasures could easily defeat the system, which is being developed to destroy enemy warheads in space using ground-launched “kill vehicles.”

“Only time will tell in our tests just how effective we will be against countermeasures,” Kadish said (see GSN, July 3).

Asked when the program might have a system that is able to identify a decoy from a warhead well enough to warrant moving into production, he said, “If I had to guess, it would be somewhere in the 2004 to 2008 timeframe.”

Solution:  Many Backups

Kadish said the agency intends to apply various “techniques” to help make the ground-based midcourse and other missile defense systems more resistant to countermeasures.  He suggested, however, that the military’s main answer to the challenge would be to develop many layers of defense to catch an enemy warhead in the event that a single layer fails.

“Our basic approach to countermeasures is the layered defense system that we’re trying to build,” he said.  “Now certainly, within each of those phases, we want to get as good as we can.  And there are techniques that we will use to make each one of those phases more countermeasure resistant, but the idea that we put forth to handle this problem is that we want a layered defense system that takes multiple shots at our adversary in each of the phases that the missile has to pass through.”

“That sounds like a very, very expensive system,” said Representative Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), one of several subcommittee members to question whether the agency has been making the tests too easy to provide examples of success while simultaneously reducing congressional oversight (see GSN, June 26).

Republican members said aggressive, expensive pursuit of various missile defense programs is necessary given the likelihood of a threat from countries such as North Korea.

“Defending against ballistic missiles will never be easy nor inexpensive, but such difficulties and expense should not be any excuse for inaction,” said Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.).

Successes Cited, Questioned

As in previous testimony, Kadish cited several recent flight tests of various missile defense systems where targets were destroyed as evidence that the program is making progress (see GSN, March 18).

The ground-based midcourse system has intercepted its target in each of three attempts over the past year, and in four out of six attempts overall.  The tests have demonstrated the system’s ability to destroy a dummy warhead in space, 240 kilometers in altitude, with a closing speed of 15,000 miles per hour.  Several subcommittee members, however, questioned the realism of those tests.

Under questioning from Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Kadish acknowledged that during midcourse system testing, the warhead interceptor had prior data concerning the speed, trajectory, target launch time and location of the target and information on the decoy used.  The target also contained a transponder for pinpointing its location in flight, but that information was not fed to the interceptor in at least one situation, he said.

“These are early developmental tests, Congressman.  We have a very stylized approach.  They are very complex,” Kadish said.

Kucinich said the tests were misleading about the level of success in the program so far, but Kadish said tests were intended to test hit-to-kill technology and not techniques for defeating countermeasures.

After 2004

Also at the hearing, Kadish said that officials plan to use the missile defense site at Ft. Greely, Alaska for testing missile defense capabilities.

“The way that we look at it is that the primary focus of the test bed is to do testing,” he said.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty last month, the Missile Defense Agency broke ground for constructing test missile silos at Ft. Greely, Alaska, which Pentagon officials have said could be used in an emergency by 2004, achieving the administration’s goal of deploying an initial missile defense capability by then (see GSN, June 17).

Critics have suggested the missiles are not for testing, but rather an initial deployment of the system.  Philip Coyle, the former Pentagon director of operational tests and evaluation under the Clinton administration, has said the Pentagon does not plan to test-launch those missiles, and Kadish himself said in March that testing cannot take place because the Pentagon lacks paperwork required by environmental regulations (see GSN, June 11).

Representative John Tierney (D-Mass.) charged yesterday that the agency is rushing to field an unproven system.

“That’s why the administration pulled out of the ABM Treaty prematurely, and that’s why the administration is lurching headlong towards building missile interceptor silos in Alaska that have not been proven, cannot be fired in tests and will provide absolutely no protection by 2004, notwithstanding the administration’s numerous promises.”

Representative Janice Shakowsky (D-Ill.) called the overall missile defense effort a “fantasy-based device.”

Kadish said two more phases of testing would follow the current phase, though a decision to move to them is still pending.  Officials would show that the hit-to-kill system could perform reliably and could defeat countermeasures, he said.  Testing will probably involve unannounced target speed, launch time and countermeasure deployments “subsequent to 2004,” Kadish said.

Officials might run tests by 2004 involving a radar jammer, a decoy mimicking a warhead or a tumbling reentry vehicle, he said, without specifying which.

Kadish speculated that testing would approximate a realistic threat in less than five years.

“We will, at some point in this process, make a determination that we should go to more operationally realistic testing,” he said.  “I suggest that that will probably, for the ground-based system, be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2004, ’05, ’06 time frame.”

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Nuclear Waste:  Nevada Wants Changes to Yucca Mountain Licensing Rule

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The state of Nevada filed a petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Friday in an attempt to strengthen the licensing rule for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain (see GSN, April 12).

The Senate’s approval of the Yucca Mountain repository project last week has paved the way for the U.S. Energy Department to file an NRC licensing application (see GSN, July 10).  Energy has said it expects to submit its application by the end of 2004, NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said.

The commission has requested additional information from Energy on more than 200 outstanding technical issues related to the project, Dricks said.  Nevada has petitioned the NRC, however, to provide further assurances of the repository’s safety.

“Governor [Kenny] Guinn and I, and our congressional delegation, have vowed that we will not rest until this project is totally exposed for the dangerous albatross that it is,” said Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa.  “The Senate vote ... clearly illustrates that gross misunderstandings exist at the highest levels of our government relating to the safety of this project.”

Energy dismissed Nevada’s petition, calling it “an attempt to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

“I think that at every opportunity the state of Nevada will sue or attempt to hold up the [Yucca Mountain] process,” said Energy spokesman Joe Davis.

One of Nevada’s requests is that the commission require nuclear waste to be isolated primarily by the geological features of the repository site.  The issue of whether manufactured storage containers or the site’s natural features should be the primary means of isolating the waste has been one of the most debated of the Yucca Mountain Project (see GSN, July 16).  Nevada argued in the petition that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which establishes the creation of the repository, mandates that the site’s geology be the primary means of isolation.

The NRC should reinsert several disqualifying factors — such as groundwater travel time — into the Yucca Mountain licensing rule, the petition says (see GSN, March 13).  The commission removed the factors contrary to federal statue, the state wrote.

Nevada has also requested that the NRC require Energy to demonstrate that the Yucca Mountain repository is safe beyond the Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation standards.  The NRC should replace the term “reasonable expectation” of safety mentioned throughout the licensing rule with the term “reasonable assurance” of safety, the state argued.  The NRC’s rule does not require the department to show that the repository can prevent the release of high doses of radiation beyond the 10,000-year time period currently required, the petition says.

“DOE’s own models predict that radiation doses from Yucca Mountain releases to the accessible environment will not begin to peak until after the 10,000-year regulatory time period,” the state wrote.  “It is hard even to fathom an explanation for how such a repository could ever be licensed by the NRC.”

Energy’s scientists have been able to demonstrate that the repository will prevent radiation releases into the environment in excess of the EPA requirements for 100,000 years, Davis said.  Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the department does not plan to move forward on the repository unless it is shown to be safe, Davis added.

The NRC has begun to review Nevada’s petition to determine whether to accept it for further action, said NRC spokesman Dricks.

“We will review the petition carefully and take the appropriate action,” Dricks said, adding that the commission will attempt to make a full decision on Nevada’s petition within four months.

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