The United Nations plan envisages that reactors and other atomic facilities will be distributed among the nations according to “quotas” and a “strategic balance”—whereby no one nation, by seizing the plants within or near its borders, could gain an undue military advantage over innocent nations. This “quota” feature has been criticized as unnecessary and as likely to hinder individual countries in developing the peacetime uses of atomic energy to the maximum extent.
Does the fact that reactor fuels, if seized by an aggressor, might make available H-bomb “triggers” tend to render all the more desirable the “quota” idea? How long a time would an aggressor require to make enough deuterium and tritium for H-bombs in seized plants? Could a world control authority, by requiring that certain design features be incorporated in the plants under its control, extend this time period? What should be done with plants in existence at the time a control agreement takes effect and well suited to H-bomb production but poorly suited to peacetime uses? How should such plants, if they were not dismantled, figure in “quota” allotments?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
From its very inception the quota system was totally impossible of realization. Today it is likely to prove a snare and a delusion, giving a false sense of security, since it could not guarantee against the clandestine production of at least one H-bomb a year. The plutonium for the trigger could be produced in hidden small reactors, while the deuterium and tritium could be produced in other small plants that could be equally hidden. As we have seen, tritium production does not even require a nuclear reactor.
Like the “quota system,” the system of “stages” has also become completely out of date, since it was predicated on the control system taking effect before Russia developed her own atomic bombs or had built her own nuclear reactors. Today there is no longer any logical reason for any stages, since any delay would make effective control more difficult. Even today, if an international agency were to take over stockpiles, it could never be certain that considerable amounts had not been hidden away. In other words, even if the UN plan were to be adopted today, it would not give security against a surprise atomic attack, which is the very purpose of the plan.
14. How does the H-bomb bear upon research to be performed by the United Nations control agency?
Under the United Nations plan, individual nations would be forbidden to engage in atomic weapons research, but such research would be performed by the world control agency itself, as a means of keeping it at the forefront of knowledge in this field and thereby enabling it to detect violations which might otherwise pass unnoticed through ignorance. Is research upon H-bombs so dangerous that not even the world control agency should be allowed to undertake it?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
If an international agency is ever established, it is obvious that it would have to carry on research on H-bombs for the same reason that would make it vital for it to carry on research on A-bombs—“to keep at the forefront of knowledge” so that it would be in a position to “detect violations.” This would become all the more imperative just because the H-bomb is so much more dangerous.