If Iraq Can Go Nuclear, Any Third-Rate Power Can : Proliferation: While the West guards the newest technology, Saddam Hussein’s scientists make sparks fly with the oldest.

In nuclear-weapons development, as in the Olympics, the strongest states feel they must go for the gold; but a bronze beats being shut out. Iraq’s third-class nuclear program has surprised the world with its potential for enriching uranium to atomic-bomb grade. Knowledgeable people now believe that Iraq would have conducted a full-scale nuclear test before the end of 1991 had the Gulf War not occurred.

While the reigning nuclear powers focused on the highest of high-tech ways to procure enriched weapons-grade uranium, the Iraqis went back to the first process that ever worked, electromagnetic separation. Instead of tackling the hard job of circumventing export controls on exotic technologies, Saddam Hussein’s scientists decided to follow the path that is the most completely described in the scientific literature: They assembled calutrons, devices named for the University of California, where they were invented at the start of the Manhattan Project.

Learning to build a calutron is not difficult; a 1958 book sitting on my desk describes the equipment and processes in technical detail, explains the areas that gave the scientists at Berkeley and Oak Ridge the greatest difficulties, and tells how to overcome the problems. Since no single book can contain all of the information needed, references to other useful literature are helpful; this book comes with a particularly rich reading list.

Indeed, calutrons are easier to build and operate than any other enrichment process known; they merely require a lot of electricity, a product that Iraq had in abundance.

To make the job even easier, solutions to most of the 1945-vintage problems encountered in the design of calutrons have been mastered as part of general engineering practice. What were thought of as extremely high vacuums and gigantic vacuum pumps in 1945 are commonplace today throughout the world. They are essential to industries as diverse as semiconductor manufacture, optics and the anodizing of colors onto aluminum. The iron cores and copper wire needed to make the magnets for a calutron are so common, their export could never be controlled. Machining such magnets to high enough precision is tough, but obviously not out of reach for a country in the backwaters of technology, like Iraq.

But Iraq’s rediscovery of the calutron, although interesting by itself, is most important as a symptom of an underlying problem in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and guided missiles. While the intelligence agencies of the world and professional students of weapons transfers had their collective eye on modern methods of producing nuclear weapons, the Iraqis found sufficient potency for their purpose--intimidation--in a 50-year-old technology.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. No supercomputer was needed to design most of the operational American missiles; no supercomputers and no gaseous centrifuges were available in 1952 when the world’s first hydrogen bombs were designed and built. The Soviet scientists who built their nation’s first atomic bomb in 1949 were operating on a far lower level than what’s now available in the technological K-Marts of the world.

Intelligence analysts who study the raw data gathered about nations on the list of nuclear threshold countries are now reminded that virtually anything needed to follow the low road to nuclear weapons or guided missiles is readily available on the world market--and must be in order to support even the low level of industrialization in a country such as Iraq. The conundrum for the gatekeepers of the nuclear club is that this holds true for other countries and for other weapons of mass destruction or great range.

Yes, some details of modern, compact, and efficient bombs or highly accurate guided missiles do remain secrets. But in searching for the proper paradigm to use for missile limitations, the weapon to look at is the V-2 of 1945, not the Pershing II of 1985. Similarly, the Manhattan Project is the place to look for tips on how to build a nuclear warhead to mount on the missile.

The Iraqis mastered a technology that allows the rapid and efficient enrichment of uranium, and all the while they were being observed by American intelligence, which perhaps saw the activity but certainly did not recognize it for what it was. Had not a chance defector come our way, the calutrons and the massive amounts of enriched uranium that they may already have produced would remain Saddam Hussein’s secret.

Now that Iraq has shown that bronze is as good as gold, others will surely follow. And the whole world will be in jeopardy unless ways are found to eliminate the perception of so many nations that they ought to have nuclear bombs and missiles in order to feel secure. Gold-medal weapons projects are no longer good enough.