11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting and scary book, November 5, 2009
This review is from: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Hardcover)
This book is a strange blend of technical and historical fact and political cautionary tale. These mixed motives are carried off with varying degrees of success.
As it was written by two insiders in the nuclear establishment, you'd expect it to excel in technical detail, and so it does. The entire history of nuclear weapons, from the moment that it was realised that a nuclear chain reaction was possible to the present day, is covered very thoroughly and comprehensibly, along with good explanatory appendixes. The technical information is pitched at the perfect level for intelligent laymen (and me) - comprehensive, but not overly complex (the technology of making fissile material go bang in a big way is extremely sophisticated). It is full of all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information - I hadn't realised that the nuclear generators in submarines had to use weapons-grade uranium (95%+ pure, as opposed to nuclear power stations' about 5% pure), because it was the only way to make them sufficiently compact.
Alongside this, the authors provide histories of the countries involved in the nuclear enterprise, of their motivations and of the people involved. To me, these were extremely interesting, and they seem generally accurate, with just the occasional hint of tailoring to fit particular personal or political agendas. Occasionally, there are historical goofs, such as Muslim terrorists being said to want to reverse the results of the Crusades. As the Muslims actually won the Crusades (a Kurdish gentleman known as Saladin was involved), I don't think that this is likely.
It naturally points out how the situation has changed. When countries possessed nuclear weapons, they naturally refrained from using them, as this would have been tantamount to suicide. However, terrorists do not have capital cities or major population centres or industrial complexes that can be identified and destroyed. Add to that the willingness, even desire, of some terrorists to become martyrs for some cause or other, and the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the possibility of terrorists obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material and even complete weapons. And of course there is the possibility that "rogue" states may make such things available to terrorist groups and look suitably innocent when one goes off.
For me, the most interesting thing is that, in the view of the authors, the "rogue" state to watch is China. The authors remind us of China's former greatness, when China sent large fleets of huge ships (which dwarfed Columbus's ships and even big sailing vessels such as Nelson's "Victory") under Admiral Zheng He to explore the world. These ships reached Africa and the Middle East (and perhaps even Australia, long before Tasman and Cook). However, the Chinese decided that the world was full of barbarians and unworthy of notice, so the big fleets came back and were burned, and China turned its back on the world.
The authors see China as seeking to return to its former world greatness by exploiting the nuclear situation. They believe that China would never attack the USA with nuclear weapons, but that it would be advantaged by such an attack. Having virtually no Muslim problem of its own (a small problem with the Uighurs in Xinjiang in the far west, easily fixed in the normal police state fashion), it can quietly make available nuclear information to dubious governments (Pakistan, North Korea) and others, knowing that this will be Someone Else's Problem, and believing that China will inevitably benefit from any misuse. The trick is to ensure that, when a nuclear device goes bang somewhere, your fingerprints aren't all over it.
This is a rather scary premise, but is it realistic? Impossible to say, of course, but the fact that the authors have long acquaintance with both the people and the facilities of the Chinese nuclear establishment means that they are not without basis for it. Chairman Mao famously said that the Chinese would be the beneficiaries of a major nuclear war because China's enormous population made the odds on its survival that much better. The authors believe that the present Chinese Government has a more sophisticated version of the same thinking. One hopes not. The book ends with an epilogue that describes how the authors propose to counter what they see as the dangerous double duo of China and Islamic extremism.
The book could do with a bit of editing. Some of the sentence construction is poor (and in some cases non-existent). Then there is the spelling. These are technical experts, yet "hexafluoride" as in "uranium hexafluoride" (the gas made as one step in the purification of uranium) is irritatingly frequently rendered as "hexaflouride", making it sound like a baker's ingredient. And I didn't think that even non-metallurgical Americans could misspell "nickel" ("nickle").
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Authoritative, Urgent, a Nuclear Briefing Book for Obama and You, May 31, 2009
This review is from: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Hardcover)
Two authors with decades of experience in nuclear weapons have combined to write a riveting account of the origin and proliferation of nuclear weapons (but alas they too have no sure way to prevent a future disaster). One could hope that this book was the outline for briefing President Obama during the turnover from the Bush administration. I would be more comfortable if I saw the dust jacket of Nuclear Express peeking out from a shelf in the oval office at the next photo op. Or carry it in your hand, Mr. President, as you walk the dog. I trust that this brilliant young president already knows that the number one military question is not General Motors.
Coauthor Danny Stillman was a top physicist at Los Alamos and for many years the director of the Technical Intelligence Division there. His extraordinary background includes multiple trips to the Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons complexes as an official guest in the 1980s and 1990s during a period when giving one's adversaries a closer look was thought to promote respect and restraint. These trips are recounted in some detail in the book, and Mr. Stillman counts the top Chinese nuclear leader and others as personal friends.
Coauthor Tom Reed was an H-bomb physicist, secretary of the Air Force, and a top Reagan political advisor. He was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union.
I am an Annapolis grad who later earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering. I had rather minor collateral assignments in my Navy days in nuclear weapons security and nuclear weapons accident response. The technical level of this book is sufficient for the intent of the book (an explanation and warning of the need to keep the Nuclear Express on the track) but won't overtax the general reader.
Most of the book is a detailed chronology of nuclear proliferation from the days of the Manhattan project up until the end of the George W. Bush's administration. Currently the nuclear club numbers nine states with one or more nuclear weapons with North Korea the latest member. (The number would be ten if South Africa had not voluntarily given up its weapons and in 1991 signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.)
The authors praise the Chinese for nuclear weapons competence and technical excellence of development installations. The Chinese are as yet only third or fourth best in numbers of warheads (not yet 5% of the Russian or US individual totals, which are roughly equal) and no better than that in scope and reliability of geographic deployment and delivery vehicles.
Nuclear weapons development requires tests, normally including some of at least several kilotons capacity. Such tests are quit easily detected by the intelligence agencies of the advanced states. The dates of the tests and the approximate yield and weapons characteristics of the tests provide a large body of generally accepted data describing the path of what the authors call the "Nuclear Express." The authors connect these factual dots with expert knowledge, conjecture, and opinion to provide a more complete narrative that includes dozens of charts and tables and an extensive index.
While the arrival of the Express at each milestone station usually is accompanied by an earth-shaking detonation, the future movements and the composition of its crew and passengers between stops is shrouded in more secrecy. Who is on board and when will it arrive in Iran or Syria? How has Egypt avoided the Express so far? Who was on board when it rolled through Iraq, Libya, and Algeria and why did it not stop in these countries? Did President Eisenhower just wave as it headed towards Israel? Is there a station already prepared for the Express in Saudi Arabia? And why and how did the Express back out of outlying republics of the old Soviet Union? See the book.
The book mentions many riders and crewmember, including American, Russian, French, British, Pakistani, Chinese, and South African scientists as frequently being on board. Regardless of nationality, degrees from top American research universities are very common and prized, and a copy or simple adaptation of the American Fat Man weapon (implosion devise with plutonium core) dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945, is often the first weapon attempted at each stop of the Express. For example, India's entry in 1974 is commonly called Smiling Buddha and is similar to Fat Man. (The Little Boy, a primitive gun-tube type device dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, can be replicated with little expertise but requires about 150 lbs of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. Enrichment requires large, elaborate installations - cascaded centrifuges or other. A Fat Man is much more intricate as a weapon, but its plutonium core is produced in many electrical-power reactors. Atoms for peace often have more sinister cousins. )
Experience, scientific expertise, arduous scholarship, and a large circle of contacts in the express train business when coupled with writing skills and a sincere attempt to create a realistic history are more than sufficient to make this book a valuable resource. It is only as the book in its final chapters looks to the tasks in the future needed to slow the Express and keep it on the tracks (no accidents, no deliberate use) that the book can be said by some to be confrontational or political. Certainly the authors themselves do not show much confidence that the politics of nuclear weapons can be known and planned with the same accuracy as the physics. But then has anyone espoused a solution to this dreadful problem that has stood the test of even a decade?
Forget swine flu and look to the nuclear express for real urgency. Read the following excerpt from the book and recount it to your friends. It got my attention. I saw 9/11 from Midtown and live today within site of Manhattan.
From the book:
Instead of fertilizer, suppose that Mr. Yousef [first World Trade Center bombing] had been able to place a primitive, five-kiloton nuclear weapon in the back of his truck. Since that vehicle had a one-ton capacity and three hundred cubic feet of drayage space, the very low-tech South African nuclear device developed during the 1980s would have fit nicely. After that February 1993 fertilizer attack, the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories ran some calculations on the theoretical results of a five-kiloton explosion on the streets of lower Manhattan on February 26, 1993, given the wind and weather conditions on that day. The most frightening results of such an attack could have been:
* Most buildings south of Central Park destroyed, their inhabitants dead
* Millions of other New Yorkers, once living south of 125th Street, dying of radiation effects
* Millions more throughout the metropolitan area suffering acute radiation sickness
* Much of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Hoboken set on fire
Unless we are attentive to history, a terrorist organization will soon be able to assemble and place such an A-bomb within a truck, ship, or container and deliver the same to the heart of any number of U.S. cities. Even "small and inefficient" nuclear weapons could have a devastating effect on American society and its institutions. But is the simple raining of death and destruction on the West the only goal of these people? The jihadists and/or their patrons may have grander ambitions.
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22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitive and Well Written, January 4, 2009
This review is from: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Hardcover)
This is a finely detailed yet easy to read book. It is essentially a tracing of the history of nuclear weapons in various countries and seems to have a lot of information that will be news to most readers. The Nuclear Express is well-organized and should be a very handy on the shelves of any modern historian, as its reference value is high. On most topics the authors are authoritative and thorough. Their solutions for trying to prevent further use of nuclear weapons on US soil are not as radical as it might seem given the alternatives. I would assume that MAD is still on the table in response to an attack, but there is not much information on current US capabilities in that area although it would seem a given that they are still formidable.
The authors point out dangers from the Middle East but do not seem to know enough yet about that area, aside from Israel, to really point out nuanced solutions and be appreciative of the complexity of that part of the world. I don't say that in any manner of blame as admittedly the authors have extraordinary intellects and are well educated.
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