With Iran and North Korea in the spotlight for debates surrounding nuclear weapons, one ASU professor said he is concerned with the possibility of a nuclear attack on the U.S.
Law professor Orde Kittrie said there is a lot of proof fora possible nuclear attack in the U.S.
Kittrie was a lawyer in the U.S. Department of State for nearly a decade before he came to ASU. During his time working for the department, the Soviet Union collapsed and there were unprotected nuclear material and unemployed nuclear scientists in Russia. His work caused him to take a deeper look into nuclear weapon issues, he said.
Kittrie said there should be as few nuclear weapons in the world as possible.
“The U.S. and Russia should be working to reduce them and, in fact, they are,” he said. “There are currently nine countries with [nuclear weapons], and every additional country that has them increases the possibly of the fact they could be used.”
The U.S. government was concerned this material might later be used to attack the country, he said.
As a lawyer, Kittrie helped the U.S. form agreements with Russia to create programs to employ scientists, as well as clean up and protect the nuclear material. During the time of negotiations, he made 16 trips to Moscow to help the two parties form five different agreements.
Because he remained in contact with many of the people he worked with at the time and is still considered an expert on the issue, Kittrie was chosen to serve on a National Academies of Science committee to report to a Congressional committee that worked to strengthen the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the U.S.’s agreements with Russia.
The committee was formed in 2008 to have recommendations ready for the then-incoming Barack Obama administration. The report was finished in January 2009, but all the recommendations have yet to be implemented.
Two of Kittrie’s suggestions, however, were made into U.S. laws on Oct. 28.
People should be more than a little concerned about a possible nuclear attack on the U.S., he said.
“I think the concern level should be extremely high,” he said. “A number of people, including Graham Allison and Robert Gallucci, from the [Bill] Clinton Administration … agree. The two both have estimated within the next 10 years, it is more likely than not that a nuclear bomb will go off in a U.S. city.”
Second-year law student Sam Efird reads something that makes him wonder about the possibility of a nuclear attack about every two weeks and he said he is concerned about a potential attack.
“I think it’s more likely for a nuclear weapon to be snuck across the borders and detonated in a U.S. city,” Efird said. “Nuclear or biological weapons are probably the greatest threats.”
Efird said he is most concerned about North Korea and Iran.
“I think [it’s] because they have the resources as nations to develop these things and both countries seem friendly with terrorists groups who would be willing to help detonate a weapon,” he said.
However, Kittrie said he’s most concerned with Iran.
“I’d say the biggest challenge right now is Iran’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons. President Obama said he is working with U.S. allies to impose sanctions and to stop their nuclear weapons program,” Kittrie said, adding that he supports this effort.
Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering professor Keith Holbert said there are two types of nuclear weapons — the type North Korea and Iran are trying to make are fission nuclear weapons, like the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan during World War II.
Fission nuclear weapons can be uranium-based or plutonium-based, he said.
“It seems to be easier for a state to make a plutonium-based nuclear weapon, but it’s hard to get the material,” Holbert said. “For uranium, it’s the opposite.”
While he has concerns, it is unlikely that a nuclear attack would come by air, he said.
“First I think it is more likely for a country or a terrorist group to put a nuclear weapon in a container and get it to a port, get it on a train, now it has reached Phoenix and then they would detonate it,” Holbert said. “That’s why our government has spent a lot of money putting radiation detectors in major U.S. ports as well as partnering with many countries to detect something like that before it even gets here.”
The possibility of a nuclear weapon detonating in the outer atmosphere is also a concern, he said.
“If a nuclear weapon was detonated that way, it could create an electromagnetic pulse. Your laptop, your cell phone — gone. Your car wouldn’t work,” he said. “Because we are such an electronically prevalent society, if you start knocking out grids, you can bring that grind of society to a halt. There would be a lot more damage with an electro-magnetic pulse.”
The stress of knocking out electronic grids would be very traumatic, Holbert said.
“It could cause mass hysteria [or] deaths,” he said. “Our society is fragile and not necessarily stable. This stuff might be fried, and we might not have a spare.”
Efird said that while more countries shouldn’t be creating more nuclear weapons, he isn’t sure what can be done.
“I don’t know how we would stop them,” he said. Maybe we should limit it to the countries that practice international law, but then the ones who already don’t follow it would continue to not. It’s a difficult question.”
Reach the reporter at
sheydt@asu.edu
