by Cheryl Rofer
And it's the United Kingdom that's selling them. To the United States. Nuke plants, that is.
British Nuclear Fuels has sold its one-third share in AWE Management Limited to the California-based firm Jacobs Engineering. AWE stands for Atomic Weapons Establishment, which manufactures the UK's nuclear weapons. One-third is held by Lockheed Martin, also American, and a business services group, Serco, from some small island nation. (BBC, Independent)
Jeffrey uses this occasion to observe that the UK's nuclear establishment has always been, er, close to the US's. That's true, but I think there's another point to be made.
Lockheed Martin runs part of the American nuclear complex, most notably Sandia National Laboratory, the non-nuclear laboratory of the weapons triad. It also contracts for a plethora of other weapons.
Jacobs is a more diversified company, listing its markets as aerospace and defense, buildings, consumer and forest products, environmental programs, oil and gas, refining, automotive and industrial, chemical and polymers, energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and, just in case they left something out, technology.
The US Air Force, a while back, mixed up some parts numbers and sent classified nuclear weapon components to Taiwan. What happens if someone at Jacobs gets confused and sends some AWE nuclear weapons plans to their automotive division? Or if Jacobs's equivalent of A. Q. Khan sees a way to make some really big bucks?
The further the nuclear weapons plants are removed from government control, the more likely it is that such things will eventually happen. And putting people from one country, even if it's a friendly and (mostly) competent one, in charge of another's nuclear weapons program seems to be asking for trouble.