China's fissile-material production

Abstract

China's nuclear arsenal has long been an enigma. It is a small force, based almost exclusively on land-based ballistic missiles, maintained at a low level of alert and married to a no-first-use doctrine – all choices that would seem to invite attack in a crisis. Chinese leaders, when they have spoken about nuclear weapons, have articulated ideas that sound odd to the Western ear. Mao Zedong's oft-quoted remark that ‘nuclear weapons are a paper tiger’ seems to be bluster or madness. China's nuclear forces are now too important to remain a mystery. Yet Westerners continue to disagree about basic factual information concerning one of the world's most important nuclear-weapons states. This Adelphi book documents and explains the evolution of China's nuclear forces in terms of historical, bureaucratic and ideological factors. There is a strategic logic at work, but that logic is mediated through politics, bureaucracy and ideology. The simplest explanation is that Chinese leaders, taken as a whole, have tended to place relatively little emphasis on the sort of technical details that dominated US discussions regarding deterrence. Such profound differences in thinking about nuclear weapons could lead to catastrophic misunderstanding in the event of a military crisis between Beijing and Washington.

Notes

¹ See John Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 62

² Jiuquan is a prefectural-level municipality covering more than 190,000 square kilometres. Both the Jiquan Atomic Energy Complex and the Jiquan Space Launch Center are located within the large area of Jiquan prefecture, albeit separated by about 200km. The US intelligence community has historically referred to these facilities by the nearest populated place, Yumen and Shuangchengzi.

³ Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, p. 118.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 113–14

⁵ China Today: Defense Science and Technology (Beijing, National Defense University Press, 1993) pp. 41–59.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 58–59. See also Barry Naughton, ‘The Third Front: Defence Industrialization in the Chinese Interior’, China Quarterly, no. 115, September 1988, pp. 351–86.

⁷ Heping is a small Yi-nationality village in the Jinkouhe District. The US initially referred to this facility as ‘Chingkouho’. On the Deng and Bo visit, see China Today, Nuclear Industry, JPRS-CST-88-002, 15 January 1988, p. 6.

⁸ A timeline provided by the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA) lists this date. See China Nuclear Energy Association, China Nuclear Energy, 2009, 编者注, available at: http://www.china-nea.cn/html/2009-11/4239.html; direct translation of the original entry: ‘June 25, 1970: 814 Plant is completed and put into operation to achieve products meeting required standards.’

⁹ On the revelation of Fuling, see http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB372/docs/Underground-Clips.pdf.

¹⁰ ‘820’ may refer to the 20 August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

¹¹ See the timeline provided by CNEA at http://www.china-nea.cn/html/2009-11/4239.html.

¹² China also attempted to build an underground fast-breeder reactor near Beijing. Construction probably did not progress beyond tunnelling.

¹³ A history of Tsinghua University provides details. See http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/inet/3578/.

¹⁴ China Today, p. 58.

¹⁵ http://qxzc.net/gr/cuizh/4/4(8).htm.

¹⁶ China Today, Nuclear Industry, JPRS-CST-88-002, 15 January 1988, p.24.

¹⁷ Ann MacLachlan and Mark Hibbs, ‘China Stops Production of Military Fuel: All SWU Capacity Now for Civil Use’, Nuclear Fuel, vol. 14, no. 23, 13 November 1989. Albright and Hinderstein subsequently quote Hibbs stating that the cut-off was in 1987.

¹⁸ Robert S. Norris, Andrew S. Burrows and Richard W. Fieldhouse, ‘Nuclear Weapons Databook: British, French, and Chinese Nuclear Weapons’, Volume V (Boulder, CO: Natural Resources Defense Council, 1994), p. 350.

¹⁹ In March 2004, John Carlson, then director-general of the Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office, briefed US embassy officials on his 19–24 February trip to Beijing to begin talks on Australian uranium sales to China. William Stanton, then DCM in Canberra, summarised Carlson's briefing in a cable subsequently released by Wikileaks. See ‘Discussions begin for China to buy Australian Uranium’, 4 March 2005, http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05CANBERRA432_a.html.

²⁰ A.Q. Khan claims to have helped China construct a centrifuge plant at this location, in exchange for Chinese assistance to Pakistan's programme including 50kg of HEU. It's difficult to assess the veracity of Khan's claims, although CNNC subsequently located some of the modules at Lanzhou to maintain the local workforce.

²¹ David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, ‘World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996; World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies’, SIPRI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

²² See Zheng Jingdong's blog at http://blog.163.com/zjd_8213701/blog/static/33582026201171991110947.

²³ China Today, Nuclear Industry, JPRS-CST-88-002, 15 January 1988, p. 15.

²⁴ The Soviet D-5 building at Novouralsk, which began operating over 1955–57, was 13 hectares with a given capacity of 650t SWU per year or about 40t SWU per year per hectare. The French Pierlatte was 12 hectares with a given capacity of 500t SWU per year or 50t SWU per year per hectare. The gaseous diffusion plant at Lanzhou is about 3.9 hectares. Such a method cannot be used to accurately estimate the capacity of gaseous diffusion plants, which may vary in terms of the flow rate, cascade configuration and barrier design. Nonetheless, physical size offers a rough approximation of capacity that can be used with electricity consumption and other information to provide a rough estimate.

²⁵ Mark Hibbs, ‘With More Russian Centrifuges, China will Close Lanzhou Plant’, Nuclear Fuel, vol. 22, no. 20, 6 October 1997. In 1989 Hibbs and MacLachlan quoted a ‘knowledgeable industry source’ stating that the throughput of the plant was 300t SWU per year. This number appears too high in light of the floorspace of the facility. Machlachlan and Hibbs, ‘China Stops Production of Military HEU; All SWU Capacity Now for Civil Use’, p. 5.

²⁶ Until the early 1990s, most nuclear-industry experts assumed the most important, if not only, uraniumenrichment centre in China was at Lanzhou. Most people in the commercial sector did not know China had a gaseous diffusion plant at Jinkouhe, or, if they did know, assumed it was smaller than Lanzhou. It is possible that conclusions made on the basis of China's demand assumed that Lanzhou accounted for most, or even all, of Chinese gaseous diffusion capability.

²⁷ Previous estimates have stated that the facility began operating in the mid-1970s, based on a 1972 DIA assessment that stated the facility was not yet operational. Data on annual radiation dose for workers at the plant confirms it began operating in 1970. See National Intelligence Estimate, China's Strategic Attack Programs, NIE 13-8-74, 13 June 1974, declassified version.

²⁸ This was the configuration – a pair of large enrichment halls – that the US intelligence analysts expected to see at Lanzhou, which in part led to estimates that the facility was not yet operational.

²⁹ An historical account notes that ‘At that time, those in charge of siting the new uranium enrichment plant had different views. The original site had a scattered layout and the water temperature was such that a new site for construction should be considered.’ See Memories of Deng Xiaoping (Beijing, Central Literature Publishing House, February 1998). Excerpt republished at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2003-08/19/content_1034042.htm.

³⁰ Wang Chengjian and Wang Dejin, ‘Data Analysis and Evaluation of the Measurement of Occupational Exposure of Radioactive Materials in Plant 814’, National Dose Monitoring and Evaluation Symposium, 2004, http://cpfd.cnki.com.cn/Article/CPFDTOTAL-EGVD200409001032.htm.

³¹ See Cui's memoir, available at: http://qxzc.net/gr/cuizh/4/4(2).htm.

³² Ibid.

³³ See Zheng's blog, available at: http://blog.163.com/zjd_8213701/blog/static/33582026201171991110947.

³⁴ China has, of course, expended some of the fissile material in its 45 nuclear-weapons tests. The simplest approach is to treat each of the 38 tests that used plutonium (CHIC-8– CHIC-45) as a single warhead expended. If one were to use the same 4–6kg range hypothesised for the average amount of plutonium in each warhead, that would suggest China consumed approximately 140–230kg of plutonium in nuclear tests. See also Zhang Hui, ‘China's Fissile Material Production and Stocks’, in Global Fissile Material Report 2010: Balancing the Books (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

³⁵ For a declassified US assessment of China's stockpile, see ‘China's Nuclear Weapons Testing: Facing Prospects for a Comprehensive Test Ban’, CIA, Office of Scientific and Weapons Research, 30 September 1993; and ‘China Seeking Foreign Assistance to Address Concerns about Nuclear Stockpile under CTBT’, Proliferation Digest, 29 March 1996.

³⁶ Viktor Yesin, ‘China's Nuclear Capabilities’, in Aleksey Arbatov, Vladimir Dvorkin and Sergey Oznobishchev (eds), Prospects of China's Participation in Nuclear Arms Limitation (Moscow: Institute of World Economic and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012). Translation available at: http://www.asianarmscontrol.org/content/prospects-chinas-participation-nuclear-arms-limitation. Philip A. Karber, ‘Strategic Implications of China's Underground Great Wall’, 26 September 2011, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/Karber_UndergroundFacilities-Full_2011_reduced.pdf.

³⁷ Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities (Washington, DC: National Academies, 2005) p. 209.