Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation [Hardcover]

This book is a strange blend of technical and historical fact and political cautionary tale. These mixed motives are carried off with varying degrees of success.

As it was written by two insiders in the nuclear establishment, you'd expect it to excel in technical detail, and so it does. The entire history of nuclear weapons, from the moment that it was realised that a nuclear chain reaction was possible to the present day, is covered very thoroughly and comprehensibly, along with good explanatory appendixes. The technical information is pitched at the perfect level for intelligent laymen (and me) - comprehensive, but not overly complex (the technology of making fissile material go bang in a big way is extremely sophisticated). It is full of all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information - I hadn't realised that the nuclear generators in submarines had to use weapons-grade uranium (95%+ pure, as opposed to nuclear power stations' about 5% pure), because it was the only way to make them sufficiently compact.

Alongside this, the authors provide histories of the countries involved in the nuclear enterprise, of their motivations and of the people involved. To me, these were extremely interesting, and they seem generally accurate, with just the occasional hint of tailoring to fit particular personal or political agendas. Occasionally, there are historical goofs, such as Muslim terrorists being said to want to reverse the results of the Crusades. As the Muslims actually won the Crusades (a Kurdish gentleman known as Saladin was involved), I don't think that this is likely.

It naturally points out how the situation has changed. When countries possessed nuclear weapons, they naturally refrained from using them, as this would have been tantamount to suicide. However, terrorists do not have capital cities or major population centres or industrial complexes that can be identified and destroyed. Add to that the willingness, even desire, of some terrorists to become martyrs for some cause or other, and the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the possibility of terrorists obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material and even complete weapons. And of course there is the possibility that "rogue" states may make such things available to terrorist groups and look suitably innocent when one goes off.

For me, the most interesting thing is that, in the view of the authors, the "rogue" state to watch is China. The authors remind us of China's former greatness, when China sent large fleets of huge ships (which dwarfed Columbus's ships and even big sailing vessels such as Nelson's "Victory") under Admiral Zheng He to explore the world. These ships reached Africa and the Middle East (and perhaps even Australia, long before Tasman and Cook). However, the Chinese decided that the world was full of barbarians and unworthy of notice, so the big fleets came back and were burned, and China turned its back on the world.

The authors see China as seeking to return to its former world greatness by exploiting the nuclear situation. They believe that China would never attack the USA with nuclear weapons, but that it would be advantaged by such an attack. Having virtually no Muslim problem of its own (a small problem with the Uighurs in Xinjiang in the far west, easily fixed in the normal police state fashion), it can quietly make available nuclear information to dubious governments (Pakistan, North Korea) and others, knowing that this will be Someone Else's Problem, and believing that China will inevitably benefit from any misuse. The trick is to ensure that, when a nuclear device goes bang somewhere, your fingerprints aren't all over it.

This is a rather scary premise, but is it realistic? Impossible to say, of course, but the fact that the authors have long acquaintance with both the people and the facilities of the Chinese nuclear establishment means that they are not without basis for it. Chairman Mao famously said that the Chinese would be the beneficiaries of a major nuclear war because China's enormous population made the odds on its survival that much better. The authors believe that the present Chinese Government has a more sophisticated version of the same thinking. One hopes not. The book ends with an epilogue that describes how the authors propose to counter what they see as the dangerous double duo of China and Islamic extremism.

The book could do with a bit of editing. Some of the sentence construction is poor (and in some cases non-existent). Then there is the spelling. These are technical experts, yet "hexafluoride" as in "uranium hexafluoride" (the gas made as one step in the purification of uranium) is irritatingly frequently rendered as "hexaflouride", making it sound like a baker's ingredient. And I didn't think that even non-metallurgical Americans could misspell "nickel" ("nickle").

Two authors with decades of experience in nuclear weapons have combined to write a riveting account of the origin and proliferation of nuclear weapons (but alas they too have no sure way to prevent a future disaster). One could hope that this book was the outline for briefing President Obama during the turnover from the Bush administration. I would be more comfortable if I saw the dust jacket of Nuclear Express peeking out from a shelf in the oval office at the next photo op. Or carry it in your hand, Mr. President, as you walk the dog. I trust that this brilliant young president already knows that the number one military question is not General Motors.

Coauthor Danny Stillman was a top physicist at Los Alamos and for many years the director of the Technical Intelligence Division there. His extraordinary background includes multiple trips to the Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons complexes as an official guest in the 1980s and 1990s during a period when giving one's adversaries a closer look was thought to promote respect and restraint. These trips are recounted in some detail in the book, and Mr. Stillman counts the top Chinese nuclear leader and others as personal friends.

Coauthor Tom Reed was an H-bomb physicist, secretary of the Air Force, and a top Reagan political advisor. He was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union.

I am an Annapolis grad who later earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering. I had rather minor collateral assignments in my Navy days in nuclear weapons security and nuclear weapons accident response. The technical level of this book is sufficient for the intent of the book (an explanation and warning of the need to keep the Nuclear Express on the track) but won't overtax the general reader.

Most of the book is a detailed chronology of nuclear proliferation from the days of the Manhattan project up until the end of the George W. Bush's administration. Currently the nuclear club numbers nine states with one or more nuclear weapons with North Korea the latest member. (The number would be ten if South Africa had not voluntarily given up its weapons and in 1991 signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.)

The authors praise the Chinese for nuclear weapons competence and technical excellence of development installations. The Chinese are as yet only third or fourth best in numbers of warheads (not yet 5% of the Russian or US individual totals, which are roughly equal) and no better than that in scope and reliability of geographic deployment and delivery vehicles.

Nuclear weapons development requires tests, normally including some of at least several kilotons capacity. Such tests are quit easily detected by the intelligence agencies of the advanced states. The dates of the tests and the approximate yield and weapons characteristics of the tests provide a large body of generally accepted data describing the path of what the authors call the "Nuclear Express." The authors connect these factual dots with expert knowledge, conjecture, and opinion to provide a more complete narrative that includes dozens of charts and tables and an extensive index.

While the arrival of the Express at each milestone station usually is accompanied by an earth-shaking detonation, the future movements and the composition of its crew and passengers between stops is shrouded in more secrecy. Who is on board and when will it arrive in Iran or Syria? How has Egypt avoided the Express so far? Who was on board when it rolled through Iraq, Libya, and Algeria and why did it not stop in these countries? Did President Eisenhower just wave as it headed towards Israel? Is there a station already prepared for the Express in Saudi Arabia? And why and how did the Express back out of outlying republics of the old Soviet Union? See the book.

The book mentions many riders and crewmember, including American, Russian, French, British, Pakistani, Chinese, and South African scientists as frequently being on board. Regardless of nationality, degrees from top American research universities are very common and prized, and a copy or simple adaptation of the American Fat Man weapon (implosion devise with plutonium core) dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945, is often the first weapon attempted at each stop of the Express. For example, India's entry in 1974 is commonly called Smiling Buddha and is similar to Fat Man. (The Little Boy, a primitive gun-tube type device dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, can be replicated with little expertise but requires about 150 lbs of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. Enrichment requires large, elaborate installations - cascaded centrifuges or other. A Fat Man is much more intricate as a weapon, but its plutonium core is produced in many electrical-power reactors. Atoms for peace often have more sinister cousins. )

Experience, scientific expertise, arduous scholarship, and a large circle of contacts in the express train business when coupled with writing skills and a sincere attempt to create a realistic history are more than sufficient to make this book a valuable resource. It is only as the book in its final chapters looks to the tasks in the future needed to slow the Express and keep it on the tracks (no accidents, no deliberate use) that the book can be said by some to be confrontational or political. Certainly the authors themselves do not show much confidence that the politics of nuclear weapons can be known and planned with the same accuracy as the physics. But then has anyone espoused a solution to this dreadful problem that has stood the test of even a decade?

Forget swine flu and look to the nuclear express for real urgency. Read the following excerpt from the book and recount it to your friends. It got my attention. I saw 9/11 from Midtown and live today within site of Manhattan.

From the book:

Instead of fertilizer, suppose that Mr. Yousef [first World Trade Center bombing] had been able to place a primitive, five-kiloton nuclear weapon in the back of his truck. Since that vehicle had a one-ton capacity and three hundred cubic feet of drayage space, the very low-tech South African nuclear device developed during the 1980s would have fit nicely. After that February 1993 fertilizer attack, the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories ran some calculations on the theoretical results of a five-kiloton explosion on the streets of lower Manhattan on February 26, 1993, given the wind and weather conditions on that day. The most frightening results of such an attack could have been:
* Most buildings south of Central Park destroyed, their inhabitants dead
* Millions of other New Yorkers, once living south of 125th Street, dying of radiation effects
* Millions more throughout the metropolitan area suffering acute radiation sickness
* Much of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Hoboken set on fire
Unless we are attentive to history, a terrorist organization will soon be able to assemble and place such an A-bomb within a truck, ship, or container and deliver the same to the heart of any number of U.S. cities. Even "small and inefficient" nuclear weapons could have a devastating effect on American society and its institutions. But is the simple raining of death and destruction on the West the only goal of these people? The jihadists and/or their patrons may have grander ambitions.

The authors have impressive credentials. Both were involved in nuclear weapons design and had subsequent substantial involvement in nuclear proliferation issues. Reed had an impressive career in government, including service at high levels in both Democratic and Republican administrations. Stillman is a former Director of the Los Alamos Technical Intelligence Division with great expertise on foreign nuclear weapons programs. Given the authors' experience and expertise, this is a disappointing book. To begin with, it is overly ambitious. Something of a polemic, this book is intended to be a warning about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, a history of the spread of nuclear weapons technology , and a tour de horizon of this aspect of the strategic challenges facing the USA. The best parts of the book are those dealing with the history of nuclear proliferation. As the authors show well, this is the result of the impossibility of concealing the basic knowledge of these technologies and what appears to be an almost inevitable series of conventional strategic calculations. Given American possession of nuclear technologies, the Soviets were compelled to develop equivalent capabilities. Given Soviet and American nuclear capabilities, the Chinese followed suit. Given Chinese nuclear capabilities, the Indians pursue nuclear weapons. Given an Indian nuclear program, Pakistan develops its now notorious nuclear program, etc. Other states in particularly precarious strategic positions, like Israel and apartheid era South Africa, also develop nuclear weapons. Insert careless and/or unstable governments, egomaniac dictators like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, and a series of unscrupulous nuclear businessmen like the Pakistani AQ Khan, and the result is an unstable mess. Several sections of the book are concise and informative descriptions of how different nations, from Britain and France to Pakistan, developed their nuclear programs.

Other aspects of the book, unfortunately, detract significantly from these useful aspects. Partly because they are trying to cover so much ground, the authors do a poor job of providing context for the events and processes described. There are a fair number of factual errors and misstatements. Some of these are minor but embarrassing, like the statements that the Ming dynasty ended in 1911. Others are more significant. For example, the authors describe the Saudi embrace of Wahbihi ideology after the attempted fundamentalist takeover of the Mecca shrines in 1979. The authors leave the impression that this was a new development in Saudi life. But, the Wahbihi version of Islam was always was the state religion of the Saudi Kingdom and is one of the pillars of legitimacy of the regime. The authors may know better but leave an impression of ignorance of this basic fact. Similarly, the authors repeat the often heard cliche that iran doesn't need to develop nuclear power because of its riches of oil and natural gas. They later pursue the fairly sensible comparison of Iran with the later Soviet Union. The Soviets invested heavily in nuclear power in part because they wanted to use their oil to earn hard currency on the international market. This is precisely the rationale expressed by the Iranian regime. Does this preclude simultaneous pursuit of nuclear weapons? Of course not. But it does add an element of complexity to the discussion. Many, if not most of the authors' assertions are not backed by references. The authors are prone to speculation on controversial topics. Some of these are legitimate discussion, such as the discussion of whether the Israelis/South Africans did a nuclear test explosion. Others, such as the speculation about Beria poisoning Stalin, are a bit far fetched and tangential to the subject of the book. Some, such as the implication that the famous physicists Pierre and Irene Joliet-Curie wanted to assist the Chinese nuclear weapons program, could be considered libelous. The authors also have a tendency towards hyperbole on some topics, such as the nature of the Chinese state. The cumulative effect of these deficiencies is to degrade the authors' credibility.