The Proliferation Game: How the World Helped Pakistan Build its Bomb

[antigop]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174867

Consider here, yet another atomic beginning: Pakistan, a poor, backward country, with little indigenous technical or industrial infrastructure, made next to no progress on the nuclear front, despite Bhutto's enthusiasm, until the arrival of Abdul Qadeer Khan at the end of 1975.

The Indian-born Khan had fled his home in Bhopal in the 1950s to settle in the new state of Pakistan. There, he went to university, quickly becoming frustrated by the lack of opportunity. Study and advanced degrees in Europe followed until, finally, Khan found himself working at the Physics Dynamics Research Laboratory in Amsterdam in the spring of 1972.

At the time, powerful companies like Westinghouse and General Electric controlled the facilities that provided enriched uranium to civilian reactors throughout the Western world. In 1971, in an effort to protect the fledgling U.S. commercial nuclear industry, President Richard M. Nixon had ordered that the closely guarded enrichment technology not be shared with any other country, not even allies. That led other nations to begin developing their own enrichment technology to ensure continual access to an adequate fuel supply. The lab where Khan was employed, known by its Dutch initials FDO, was the in-house research facility for a Dutch conglomerate that worked closely with Urenco, a consortium formed by the governments of Britain, West Germany, and the Netherlands to design and manufacture centrifuges.

To cut right to the chase, Khan, who was able to work at the lab without serious scrutiny from the Dutch security police, found that he had easy access to the latest uranium-enrichment technology. Within three years, he had left the lab -- in possession of plans for Europe's most advanced centrifuge and a shopping list of relevant equipment manufacturers, experts for hire, and sources for the necessary raw materials to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb, all scattered across the globe.

Before leaving the lab, Khan wrote Prime Minister Bhutto, offering his services and returned to Pakistan to launch that country's own uranium-enrichment laboratory.

[Deja Q]

1. Oh no, it's the wrath of

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!