In the current era, proliferation of nuclear weapons poses a great threat to international peace and security. Defense is the most sensitive, critical and important issue for any regime. In these circumstances, the Nuclear powers, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), United Nations have an important role to stop this massive development. Verifying ban on the production of fissile materials for nuclear explosives would, therefore, be a key building block in a comprehensive strategy to contain and eliminate nuclear weapons.
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To start with, any conscientious person will go for “Identification of Enrichment Plants” first. There are two reliable identification and monitoring approaches, Feature Oriented Identification of Enrichment plants and Thermal identification to ensure working of plants.
Feature Oriented Identification
With the advancement in Remote Sensing, high resolution imagery
(of 1m) from commercial satellites (like IKONOS, LANDSAT etc.) is easily available. One can easily identify the huge typical structures of a nuclear constellation like Reprocessing Plant, Gaseous Diffusion Plant and Reactors. Let’s look at their respective observable features (Table 1).
Table 1: Observable Features of a Nuclear Facility
Reactors Have cooling towers or natural water body (with intake and discharge ports), a high narrow stack (or its shadow); a reactor building, security perimeter; rail roads; an isolated site etc.
Reprocessing plants A very high stack (or its shadow); a long "canyon like" building; some holding ponds or reservoirs for waste or sludge; security perimeter; rail roads; an isolated site etc.
Gaseous Diffusion Plants Large area (roof) process buildings (roof of most buildings have ventilation shaft); cooling towers or a nearby river or lakes; a nearby fossil fuel power plant; large electric switchyard (substation); waste management and disposal facilities; security perimeter; rail roads; an isolated site etc.
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In images of important nuclear facilities of Russia, India and Pakistan, one can easily pin-point in 1m IKONOS images almost all the features mentioned above (Fig. 1, 2, 4).
Fig 1. 1m resolution IKONOS satellite image (captured July 2000) of site of plutonium production reactors at Tomsk-7, Russia. (credit: spaceimaging.com)
Fig 2. 1m resolution IKONOS satellite image (captured Feb 2000) of reprocessing plant at Trombay, India. (credit: spaceimaging.com)
Facing this new challenge of widely available high resolution satellite imagery, states in future will opt deceptions and anti-satellite imaging counter measures to make their dedicated nuclear facilities hidden. For example concealment can be done by building sites that are difficult to detect from satellite imagery, but this could increase safety concerns as no state untill this time has tried it, for instance if one tries to go unde ground the cost would be extremely high. Such program will require many personnel, instrument and such activities will be easily observable in these high resolution images.
Consider one smart solution by Russia at Krasnoyarsk-26, where three plutonium production reactors, a reprocessing plant, and associated storage and processing facilities were built entirely inside a granite mountain on the side of Yenisey river. From declassified Corona satellite images one can clearly identify security fence around site, the railroads and the entrances to the underground site. Cooling water reservoirs were visible near the river which could be used to provide cooling water piped in from the river. The discharge point of the cooling water could be detected by the visible photos through the absence of ice on river in the winter. Also ventilation shafts and a high stack used to release gaseous fission products from reactor or reprocessing plants. Also it can detect the underground reprocessing waste injection wells to the northwest of the underground complex. [2]
Facing this new challenge of widely available high resolution satellite imagery, states in future will opt. deceptions and anti-satellite imaging counter measures to make their dedicated nuclear facilities hidden. For example Concealment can be done by building sites that are difficult to detect from satellite imagery, but this could increase safety concerns as no state up-till this time has tried it.
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