AUTHOR’S COMMENT
The language makes it obvious that the United Nations plan “foresees and carefully takes into account the possibility of an H-bomb.” In view of Russia’s attitude, however, and to leave no room for future quibbling, the present plan should be explicitly elaborated to include hydrogen weapons. On the other hand, since Russia will have none of the plan, such elaboration would at best be purely academic.
As for protecting informants, certainly no plan could contemplate that citizens would act as spies against their own country, even if they find that their country is violating an international agreement. The plan is designed so that such violations could be detected by the official employees of the international control agency. Obviously, such official employees stationed in any country should not be nationals of that country and should be protected by diplomatic immunity. Each country, in selecting its representatives to the control agency, would naturally subject them to a most careful screening as to their character and loyalty, and would use all necessary checks to make certain that they are faithful and loyal to the objectives of the agency.
4. Is control over fissionable materials sufficient to prevent the production of hydrogen bombs? If so, is the existing UN plan adequate to this task?
The technical facts suggest that H-bombs may be regulated in at least two ways: (1) Control over the fissionable material usable as a “trigger” and (2) control over deuterium and tritium.
Perhaps control over all fissionable material would give effective control over hydrogen weapons. However, by way of specific example, the introduction to volume VI of the Scientific Information Transmitted to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946-October 14, 1946 (see State Department Publication 2661, pp. 151–152), comments as follows:
It is difficult to define the amount of activity in the illicit production of atomic weapons which is significant. The illicit construction of a single atomic bomb by means of a decade of successful evasion would not provide an overwhelming advantage, if it can be assumed that it would take another decade to produce a second bomb. But the secret production of one bomb per year would create a definite danger, and the secret production of five or more per year would be disastrous. This report assumes arbitrarily that the minimum unit of noncompliance is the secret production of one atomic bomb per year or a total of five bombs over any period of time. [This example is chosen because UN documents published later omit concrete illustrations, although the stress which these documents place upon international ownership, operation, and management clearly reflects a determination to reduce to the rock-bottom minimum any illicit mining or production.]
Considering that five illicit A-bombs might, under certain circumstances, lead to five illicit H-bombs, what margin of inefficiency—if any—in controlling source and fissionable material is permissible? Is absolute protection against illegal diversion of source and fissionable material technically possible? Does the existing UN plan provide absolute or near-absolute protection? Can greater technical protection be secured than under the present UN plan?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
It can be stated unequivocally that, in the absence of complete mutual faith and goodwill on the part of all concerned, neither the existing UN plan nor any other technical plan that can be devised will provide absolute or near-absolute protection. No plan could be devised that would provide assurance against the diversion of enough material in any one year to make at least one atomic bomb. In five years this would mean the secret production of five hydrogen bombs.