[FROM NUCLEAR FUELS MAGAZINE, FEB. 6, 1989]
German Firms Exported Tritium Purification Plant to Pakistan
(BY MARK HIBBS)
Two West German firms exported to Pakistan between 1985 and 1987 a plant for storage and purification of large amounts of tritium gas, according to German federal prosecuting attorneys. The firms, Ncue Technologien GmbH (NTG) and Physikalisch Technische Beratung (PTB), have been under investigation since late last year on suspicions they violated German law (NF, 26 Dec.'88, 1).
Tritium gas can be used in nuclear fission weapons as an igniter or as a booster--the latter typically using about four grams of tritium gas. In microgram amounts, tritium also has civilian uses, such as in the watch industry and in medical research.
Industry experts queried by NuclearFuel, concurring with German prosecutors, said a civilian use for such a plant in Pakistan is difficult to imagine.
Moreover, 0.8 gram of tritium was exported illegally from Germany to Pakistan via Hong Kong to be used to leak-test the tritium plant. Part of that tritium was of Soviet origin, while the rest was produced from U.S.-origin heavy water in a German reactor.
Reliable sources said that prior to startup of the purification plant, Pakistani agents had tried unsuccessfully to import from a German firm at least 300 liters of tritium gas corresponding to about 65 grams of pure tritium at standard temperature and pressure.
Alfred Farwick, senior federal prosecuting attorney in Hanau, revealed details of the plant export January 26 in a closed session of the Bundestag (parliamentary) committee investigating the activities of German nuclear firms.
Hanau prosecutors have been investigating nuclear exports since they received information last fall that top officials from at least two companies, NTG and PTB, were believed to have violated the German Foreign Trade Act by exporting sensitive nuclear equipment and nuclear-related material to several non-NPT countries.
The plant installed in Pakistan can purify tritium gas contaminated with helium-3, oxygen, and deuterium, sources said. Experts explained that `dirty' tritium gas, stored on large absorber beds, is heated and passed through a uranium filter that captures the impurities by forming metal hydrides, yielding 98% pure tritium on the other side of the filter.
According to information obtained by German prosecutors, the total holdup capacity of the purification plant sent to Pakistan is 100,000-240,000 curies of tritium gas. Industry sources suggested that the daily throughput of the plant would be approximately 5,000-10,000 curies, the equivalent to production of 0.5-1.0 gram/day of pure tritium gas. One source said this would be an `enormous amount for a country like Paskistan.'
The plant would be able easily to purify all the tritium gas--estimated to range anywhere from 200,000 to 2-million curies--present in the heavy water moderator system of the 137-MW Kanupp reactor--Pakistan's sole official potential source of tritium.
The large size of the plant is fanning speculation that Pakistan may have sources of unsafeguarded heavy water, since purification of tritium gas distilled from all Kanupp's heavy water would take only 200 days at the plant's nominal throughput of 10,000 curies/day. Experts said it would be extremely unusual to detritiate an entire heavy water inventory in a single step. The plant, one industry official alleged, would be `big enough to accommodate' the western world's total annual civilian requirement for pure tritium gas. `I can't believe that a plant that size can have a peaceful use in Pakistan,' he said.
Western experts are puzzled, however, about the absence of direct evidence that Pakistan has acquired the technology necessary for detriatiating heavy water--a key link in the process chain which starts with tritium-contaminated heavy water and ends with `clean' heavy water and purified tritium gas as a byproduct.
When heavy water is used as a moderator for natural uranium reactors, it becomes contaminated with tritium over time and must be decontaminated using cryogenic distillation technology--a `sophisticated affair,' one western engineer said. `Pakistan would have little use for a tritium gas purification plant if it didn't have the upstream technology to detritiate heavy water,' he said.
So far there is only indirect documentary evidence that Pakistan has acquired heavy water detritiating technology. In 1984, NTG informed the Bonn government it planned to export a `heavy water purificiation plant' to Pakistan (Nucleonics Week, 5 Jan., 3). Sources said the matter led to a dispute between the Economics Ministry, which controls nuclear exports, and Foreign Office officials who had been asked by the U.S. government to intercede, after U.S. intelligence got wind of the planned export. Washington believed two firms--Linde AG and Sulzer--may have been involved in the planned export to Pakistan.
Despite the U.S. appeal, in September 1985, the Federal Economics Office (BAW) ruled officially that a license was not required for export of a `heavy water purification plant' to Pakistan.
While prosecutors said the tritium plant in Pakistan cost about DM 2.5-billion ($1.4-million), a Bonn legislator said the total value of the planned tritium technology export was about DM 13-million ($7.2-million). The difference might be accounted for by the more expensive upstream detritiating equipment, an industry source said.
According to prosecutors, although PTB director Peter Finke went to Pakistan to test-operate the completed facility, Finke said he was never told, and could not ascertain, the facility's precise location. Finke said he concluded, however, that it was not in the vicinity of the Kanupp reactor.
Prosecutors are now investigating the German source of Pakistan's tritium technology. The staff of one German nuclear research center may have been involved, as well as a former employee of Nukem GmbH who had access to tritium process technology because of a previous tritium joint venture. A scientist at the Maz Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching is also said to have contributed to Pakistan's tritium expertise.
The 8,000 curies of pure tritium gas used to test-operate the plant in Pakistan were obtained for PTB from a German heavy water reactor and from the USSR by two other firms: Gutekunst, a manufacturer of liminous paints in Schwennigen, Germany, and chemical isotopes company Radium-Chemie AG of Teufen, Switzerland.
Sources said it is unclear where Pakistan might obtain impure tritium gas to feed into the purification plant. Large amounts of deuterium in the `dirty' gas would point to an unsafeguarded heavy water supply in Pakistan, one expert said. Large amounts of oxygen in the feed gas, however, would indicate that Pakistan is producing tritium gas by bombarding lithium-6 targets in a reactor with alpha particles--a technology used by nuclear weapons states. This could mean, according to one source, that Pakistan has constructed a secret unsafeguarded reactor.
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