Reply #55: Here is some more stuff on suitcase nukes, also

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http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/lebedlg.htm
Are Suitcase Nukes on the Loose?
The Story Behind the Controversy
By Scott Parrish
November 1997

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The existence of the W-54 and SADM undermines Valynkin’s claim that small nuclear weapons would be prohibitively expensive to maintain. Valynkin claimed that a small nuclear weapon would need to be disassembled every three months for its “nuclear core” to be recharged. However, American physicists familiar with nuclear weapons design consulted by the author have dismissed Valynkin’s argument. A small weapon would probably be a uranium or plutonium implosion device, possibly boosted with tritium to compensate for the reduced amount of conventional explosive used to compress the fissile core in the compact device. Neither the uranium nor plutonium metals used in the fissile core of such a bomb would need such frequent maintenance, and even tritium, which has a half-life of 12.3 years, and must be recharged periodically, would not need replenishing so frequently. While we do not know the details of Soviet weapons design, there is no obvious technical constraint that can account for Valynkin’s claim that small ADMs would require frequent and expensive maintenance. Since the United States maintained a stockpile of several hundred such systems for at least twenty years, it seems unlikely that the maintenance cost for such systems is so high as to have been prohibitive for the USSR.

The Russian official denials are also inconsistent and contradictory. While Valynkin denied that the US or USSR had built such weapons, other Russian spokesmen—like Georgiy Kaurov of the Ministry of Atomic Energy—admitted the existence of equivalent US weapons. General Romanov, of the National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, tried to discredit Lebed’s allegations by implausibly arguing that any nuclear warhead would need to weigh at least 200 kg, while others, like Valynkin, admitted that lighter, more compact weapons were technically feasible. Although ignorance or incompetence could account for both these inconsistencies and the glaring factual inaccuracies that mar the official denials, the pattern suggests a poorly designed “cover story.” So many of the official arguments explaining why the USSR did not construct ADMs are based on obviously false premises that one is led to wonder whether the denials are false as well. This circumstantial reasoning does not support the claim that such ADMs are currently unaccounted for, but it does suggest that Soviet ADMs may have existed and that the issue of their current disposition is a real one.

Most Russian media accepted the official denials without closely examining their specifics. Thus Komsomolskaya pravda published General Romanov’s claim that a nuclear weapon would have a minimum weight of 200 kg without comment. The most notable exception was the 51% state-owned ORT network, which broadcast a special report on the “suitcase” bomb controversy on 27 September. The broadcast said that information it had uncovered suggested that small nuclear weapons had been manufactured by the USSR, but that although “the Defense Ministry knows this, it prefers to be insincere.” The program reported that some small nuclear devices were built by the Soviet Union for use in geological prospecting and oil exploration. Consistent with the statement by Valynkin, the program said these systems had a “service life” of only a few months, after which they would cease to function.32 Some support for the existence of small peaceful nuclear explosives (PNEs) is contained in a recently-published official history of Russian the nuclear testing program. The history reports that several low-yield PNEs were detonated at a site in Kazakstan during the mid-1970s for "industrial" purposes. The yields in these tests ranged from .01 kT (10 tons) to .35 kT (350 tons).33 While the report does not indicate if these low-yield devices were small in size, it does provide some indirect support for the ORT report and hints at the existence of similar low-yield military systems.
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Conclusion
What conclusions can we draw from this controversy? First, given the secrecy surrounding Soviet nuclear weapons, it is impossible to reach any definitive conclusion about the veracity of Lebed’s claims. There is no convincing evidence that any former Soviet nuclear warheads have been lost, stolen, or misplaced. But since both the Russian and US governments would have powerful incentives to keep any such evidence confidential, and we have very little information about the number of nuclear weapons in the Russian stockpile and the location of the depots where they are stored, we also have no way to disprove Lebed’s claim that some weapons are unaccounted for.

Although there is no conclusive evidence to support Lebed’s charges about the diversion of ADMs, there is a good deal of evidence that small nuclear devices, analogous to known US systems, were produced in the Soviet Union. Internally contradictory official Russian denials that such systems were ever made raise the question of how candid the Russian government is being in response to Lebed’s charges. If small ADMs were made by the USSR, why does the Russian government deny it? Are the denials designed to allow the government to avoid having to answer questions about the disposition of the current stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons? Although it is impossible to answer these questions on the basis of currently available information, they do point out the need for greater transparency of nuclear stockpiles in both the United States and the USSR. Although Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton agreed at their March 1997 summit in Helsinki that the planned START III treaty would address such issues, the controversy over Lebed’s comments underlines how far the two countries still have to go in this respect.
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WorldNetDaily: Does al-Qaida have 20 suitcase nukes?
... Does al-Qaida have. 20 suitcase nukes? Author claims bin Laden purchased them in '98 from ex-KGB agents for $30 million ...
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=291