U.S. Disputes Report on New Pakistan Reactor:NYT

August 3, 2006: New York Times
U.S. Disputes Report on New Pakistan Reactor
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

A dispute has broken out between federal officials and a private arms-control group over its claim that a new reactor being built in Pakistan is unusually large and could make fuel for up to 50 nuclear warheads a year.

“We have consulted with our experts and believe the analysis is wrong,” said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.”

A large reactor could foreshadow a significant expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, currently estimated at 40 to 50 nuclear weapons.

The report last week by the private group came amid debate over the Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India and raised fears that Pakistan was trying to speed ahead in a South Asian arms race.

Yesterday, the group’s experts said they stood by their report, which is based mainly on the examination of commercial satellite images of the half-built reactor.

But in interviews, federal officials said their own intelligence indicated that the emerging reactor appeared to be roughly the same size as the small one Pakistan currently uses to make plutonium for its nuclear program, and said the new model might be intended to replace the old one. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of prohibitions on the public discussion of secretive intelligence issues.

“This has been looked at for a long time and hasn’t generated a lot of hand-wringing,” a senior intelligence official said of the new reactor. “It could be a replacement.”

The episode underscores the uncertainties that often surround nuclear intelligence. In recent years, the government has come under fire for warnings of nuclear dangers that have turned out to be false, most notably in the case of Iraq’s efforts. Critics say the analyses are often subject to political spin.

Pakistan is a major ally of the United States in its effort to prevent terrorism, and Washington might conceivably try to mute criticism of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

But the United States also closely monitors Pakistan’s nuclear work because the government of President Pervez Musharraf is considered the most unstable of any nuclear power — and its relevant facilities are seen as prime targets for Islamic terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.

The reactor dispute began July 24 when the Institute for Science and International Security, based in Washington, issued a report publicly disclosing the reactor’s existence and estimating that, when completed, it would be quite powerful — about 1,000 megawatts. That would be a twentyfold increase over Pakistan’s current plutonium reactor, which arms analysts estimate at 40 to 50 megawatts and able to make fuel for about two warheads a year.

The group’s paper, first reported in The Washington Post, contained many caveats, including that its estimate of the new reactor’s power “remains uncertain.”

The two reactor sites are near each another south of Khushab, Pakistan, and can be seen on Google Earth near 32.015 degrees north latitude and 72.190 east longitude. In the satellite image, the old site is circular, and the new one square.

Both old and new reactors were said to require heavy water, a costly substance. But federal officials, including some specializing in nuclear intelligence, said they had seen no evidence in Pakistan of an ability to make the far larger amounts of heavy water that a big new plutonium reactor would require.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, defended the accuracy of his group’s report and noted the Bush administration’s poor record on nuclear intelligence.

“We’re confident in our evidence and calculations,” he said in an interview yesterday. “If the administration wants to produce the reasons it thinks we’re wrong, we’ll be happy to examine them with an open mind.”

Mr. Albright said that the circular reactor vessel of the new Pakistani reactor was clearly visible in satellite photos and that its diameter — about 16 feet — was similar to those of heavy-water reactors at the Savannah River plant in Aiken, S.C. Over the decades, the government used them to make plutonium for many thousands of nuclear arms.

But Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, a private group that has long monitored atomic developments around the world, said Mr. Albright’s group had apparently misinterpreted the purpose of the circular object.

Rather than a reactor vessel, he said, it probably represented thick rings of metal and concrete shielding meant to block high heat and dangerous radiation from a reactor that will prove to be much smaller.