Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site randvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!edhall From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: poll (nuclear disarmament verifiability) Message-ID: <2331@randvax.UUCP> Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 11:50:55 EST Article-I.D.: randvax.2331 Posted: Fri Mar 1 11:50:55 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 05:32:03 EST References: <527@decwrl.UUCP> <680@sdcsvax.UUCP> <610@tty3b.UUCP>, <609@mhuxt.UUCP> <613@tty3b.UUCP> <2324@randvax.UUCP> Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica Lines: 40 Cruise missiles and various other things make complete verification of all nuclear weapons impossible. One approach I've seen proposed is a restriction on weapons-grade materials (plutonium, U-235, tritium). It still takes a lot of heavy (and messy) industry to produce these things, making verification simpler. There are (at least) three problems with this approach, although they don't completely invalidate it. (It was proposed, by the way, in a Scientific American article a couple of years ago, and by some of the more thoughtful freeze groups): (1) Power-plant fuel processing can look an awful lot like weapons material processing--and in the case of breeder reactors, they can be one and the same. The fuel cycle for nuclear power plants would have to be restricted, and breeders eliminated. (2) Existing stockpiles can still be used, and old weapons can be reprocessed into new ones. However, an upper bound is placed on things. (3) No bounds are placed on delivery systems. This goes along with (2)--there would be nothing to prevent the USSR from using their existing weapons and materials from their ICBM's and putting them on cruise missiles, or depressed-trajectory SLBM's, or whatever (and I'll give you one guess what they might do if we actually deployed a ballistic-missile defense system...) Not particularly water-tight, no? Alone, no one system can assure verification, and there are some things that simply cannot be verified. As much as I hate to say it, technology is making any ultimate form of arms control impossible (even as it makes some parts of arms control easier). We are stuck with deterence for the forseeable future; I think arms control, and weapons planning in general, should be aimed at making it a stable deterence. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall Of course, the Rand Corporation doesn't even know I'm writing this, so I have to take full responsibility for the opinions involved.