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taken for granted in this country that the Chinese just didn’t have the scientific know-how to separate-out U-235 from natural uranium.
Ergo
, they must have pinched it from somewhere. They wouldn’t have stolen itfrom Russia because Chinese, to say the least, are not welcome there. But they’re welcome here, especially in California. In San Francisco you have the biggest Chinese community outside China. Their students are received with open arms in Californian universities. It’s no secret that that’s how the Chinese came to have the secrets of making an atom bomb. Their students came across here, took a post-graduate course in physics, including nuclear physics, then high-tailed it back to the mother country with the necessary information.’
    ‘You’re digressing.’
    ‘That’s what bitterness does for you. Shortly after they exploded their bomb it came to light. perhaps accidentally, that sixty kilos of U-235 had disappeared from a nuclear fuel fabricating plant in Appolo, Pennsylvania. Coincidence? Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything. The stuff’s going missing right and left. A security chief in the east once told me that a hundred-and-ten kilos of U-235 somehow got lost from his plant.’ He broke off and shook his head dejectedly. ‘The whole thing is so damned stupid anyway.’
    ‘What’s stupid?’
    ‘Pilfering a few grams at a time from a plant or breaking into one to steal it on a grand scale. That’s being stupid. It’s stupid because it’s unnecessary. If you’d wanted a king-size haul of U-235 or plutonium today what would you have done?’
    ‘That’s obvious. I’d have let the regular crew of that truck load up and hi-jack it on the way back.’
    ‘Exactly. One or two plants send out their enriched nuclear fuel in such massive steel and concrete drums–transported in big fifteen-to-twenty-ton trucks–that the necessity for a crane effectively rules out hi-jacking. Most don’t. We don’t. A strong man on his own would have no difficulty in handling our drums. More than one nuclear scientist has publicly suggested that we approach the Kremlin and contract the Red Army for the job. That’s the way the Russians do it–a heavily armored truck with an escort armored vehicle in front and behind.’
    ‘Why don’t we do that?’
    ‘Not to be thought of. Same reason again–mustn’t scare the pants off the public. Bad for the nuclear image. Atoms for peace, not war. In the whole fuel cycle transportation is by so far the weakest link in security that it doesn’t deserve to be called a link at all. The major road shippers–like Pacific Intermountain Express or Tri-State or MacCormack–are painfully aware of this, and are worried sick about it. But there’s nothing their drivers can do. In the trucking business–many would prefer the word “racket”–theft and shortages are the name of the game. It’s the most corrupt and criminal-ridden business in the State but no one, especially the drivers, is going to say so out loud for all the world to hear. The Teamsters are the most powerful and widely feared union in the States. In Britain or Germany or France they would just be outlawed, and thatwould be that; in Russia they’d end up in Siberia. But not here. You don’t buck or bad-mouth the Teamsters–not if you place any value on your wife or kids or pension, or, most of all, your own personal health.
    ‘Every day an estimated two per cent of goods being transported by road in this country just go missing: the real figure is probably higher. The wise don’t complain: in the minority of cases where people do complain the insurers pay up quietly, since their premiums are loaded against what they regard as an occupational hazard. “Occupational” is the keyword. Eighty-five per cent of thefts are by people inside the trucking industry. Eighty-five per cent of hi-jackings involve collusion–which has to involve the truck-drivers, all, of course, paid-up members of the