Although the Department of Energy dissented against other Departments' opinions on the Iraqi aluminum tubes its intelligence office went along with the prevailing view that Iraq was trying to “rejuvenate” its nuclear program.

This DIA article briefly describes Iraq’s effort to procure aluminum tubes from 1986 to 1991 and discusses the potential for their use for conventional military purposes.

This heavily excised report on the “well-educated committed cadre” that managed the Pakistani nuclear program demonstrates how the CIA protects its intelligence on Pakistani nuclear activities. This is the same version of the report that can be found on the Agency’s FOIA Web page; the recent version includes no new information. Details on Khan Research Laboratories and the gas centrifuge program are entirely withheld, but some information is made available on the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission and the Directorate of Nuclear Fuels and Materials. The latter includes details on the status and purpose of major projects, for example, the Kundian Nuclear Complex, also known as the Chasma Reprocessing Plant, which was not completed until 1990. For the purposes of producing plutonium for weapons, the Pakistanis were interested in a heavy water moderated reactor of the NRX (National Research Experimental) type that Canada built at Chalk River. In 1985, the Pakistanis started that project in earnest, with construction beginning in 1987 of what became known as Khushab Chemical Plant II.

Summary of Union Carbide’s 1964 study on gas centrifuge technology’s effect on nuclear proliferation. The summary provides Union Carbide’s estimations for how long countries of varying industrial capability would take to develop a nuclear weapon, which was redacted in the original document.

Union Carbide Nuclear Company updates their previous study on the ease with which other nations could secretly create nuclear weapon facilities using the gas centrifuge.

The AEC agrees to initiate talks with Western European nations in the attempt to control nuclear proliferation through the classification of gas centrifuge technology.

Having read the Union Carbide and General Electric reports on gas centrifuges, and taking into account West Germany and The Netherlands’ unwillingness to classify their programs, the AEC looks into other courses of action, including collaboration with the other two nations and even declassifying their own program.

As West Germany and The Netherlands developed ultra-centrifuges without a classification policy, the AEC discuss ways to keep the technology under wraps without arousing suspicion from the other members of Euratom.

A Union Carbide Nuclear Company study to determine how quickly and easily foreign countries could develop and utilize gas centrifuges with the goal of creating nuclear weapon facilities. The study determines that, due to the cheap cost and relatively small size of the centrifuges, even un-industrialized countries such as Cuba could achieve this technology within 8 years if helped by a larger nation.

The development of the gas centrifuge method, according to this report, would make production of U-235 (and by extension, nuclear weapons) possible for as many as 20-30 foreign countries. The U.S. is thus forced to consider its strategy for how to limit proliferation despite this new, cheap technology.