The Nonproliferation Emperor Has No Clothes: The Gas Centrifuge, Supply-Side Controls, and the Future of Nuclear Proliferation
The Nonproliferation Emperor Has No Clothes: The Gas Centrifuge, Supply-Side Controls, and the Future of Nuclear Proliferation
复制标题
防扩散皇帝没有穿衣服：气体离心机、供应侧控制和核扩散的未来
作者：
R. Scott Kemp
长期以来，人们一直认为技术在限制核武器扩散方面发挥着核心作用。然而，不断发展的核技术、更多的信息获取以及设计和制造工具的系统改进，最终应能缓解扩散挑战。最终，即使是发展中国家也可以拥有足够的技术能力。有证据表明，这种转变已经发生。1960年代开发的基本铀浓缩气体离心机具有几乎所有国家都能达到的技术特性，无需外国援助或获得出口可控材料。二十个国家的离心机发展史支持这一观点，美国和英国政府以前进行的秘密研究也是如此。使问题复杂化的是，离心机还具有使秘密计划的检测变得非常困难的特性。如果秘密和本土生产武器的条件已经出现，那么以技术为重点的不扩散机构将是不够的。虽然这将代表核安全政策的一个近乎根本性的转变，但技术格局的变化现在可能需要回到专注于动机的机构。
Technology has been long understood to play a central role in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Evolving nuclear technology, increased access to information, and systematic improvements in design and manufacturing tools, however, should in time ease the proliferation challenge. Eventually, even developing countries could possess a sufficient technical ability. There is evidence that this transition has already occurred. The basic uranium-enrichment gas centrifuge, developed in the 1960s, has technical characteristics that are within reach of nearly all states, without foreign assistance or access to export-controllable materials. The history of centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective, as do previously secret studies carried out by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Complicating matters, centrifuges also have properties that make the detection of a clandestine program enormously difficult. If conditions for the clandestine and indigenous production of weapons have emerged, then nonproliferation institutions focused on technology will be inadequate. Although it would represent a near-foundational shift in nuclear security policy, the changed technology landscape may now necessitate a return to institutions focused instead on motivations.