Taiwan’s Bomb

According to INR analysts, the "shock" of the 1964 Chinese nuclear test convinced President Chiang kai-Shek to order the creation of the Chung Shang Institute of Science to "investigate the feasibility and advisability of research and development leading to the manufacture of nuclear weapons." The Taiwanese government recognized the difficulty of carrying out a weapons program but wanted to be ready to execute one in the event of "profound changes in the international scene." Therefore, "studies of the feasibility of manufacturing nuclear weapons appear to be long-range directed ten years or more into the future."

As the INR report suggested, the Taiwanese had been considering purchasing a nuclear reactor from West Germany. By early 1966, a deal was in the works with the Siemens Corporation for the installation of a heavy water nuclear reactor. Arguing that the ROC military had a nuclear weapons program in mind "under the guise of power generation," Ambassador Arthur Hummel recommended that the State Department "dissuade" the West Germans from going ahead with the deal.

According to a confidential source in Bonn, the West German government had been divided over the reactor sale, but the Science Ministry had supported it as the country's "first major nuclear export." The Science Ministry would support the deal only as long as Taiwan accepted IAEA safeguards, which it was willing to do, but if Washington had non-commercial objections than Bonn would not move the transaction forward. The U.S. must have endorsed the deal because, as the following message indicates, the IAEA approved it in September 1967. Nevertheless, internal opposition in Taiwan would later sink the deal.

Boston Globe staffer Min Yee provided the Department with background on a forthcoming story on nuclear research in Taiwan. Yee characterized the Chung Shan Institute as a "center of weapons research." The State Department would decline to comment and state that it "was not aware of any weapons research being conducted" at the Chung Shan Institute. The Taiwanese had plans to purchase a reactor from the Siemens Corporation in West Germany but the company would agree to the sale only if the GRC sought IAEA approval, which it did in September 1967. The Department had "no reason believe GRC has changed [its] position" in favor of nonproliferation.

Updating its earlier intelligence report, INR projected that "Over the next five years we can expect the GRC nuclear program to continue to stress those components that could be turned to nuclear weapons production, thereby keeping open a nuclear option." According to the report, the Chung Shan Science Institute had recently acquired a 40-megawatt heavy water reactor from Canada and was still considering the purchase of a nuclear reactor from Siemens as well as a chemical reprocessing plant. Whether Taipei was going to make the "political decision" to undertake a weapons program would depend on its assessment of financial costs and political risks. While there are elements in the government that supported a weapons project, "there are also elements who strongly oppose such a program because of its 'political and economic costs."

William Thomas, a political counselor at the embassy in Taiwan, sent the gist of physicist Bruce Billings' assessment of the nuclear program. Consistent with earlier intelligence estimates, Billings saw no active intent to construct a nuclear weapon but an intent "to attain the capability to manufacture such a device." Reviewing the work of the Chung Shan Research Institute, which sought the nuclear reactor from Siemens, Billings provided the backstory of the deal, which was scuttled by internal opposition led by Chiang's science adviser, Wu Ta-yu. It saw the reactor as "unnecessary and inefficient." A deal with Canada for an NRX reactor, however, was going forward and when it "goes critical in 1973--the earliest possible date--the GRC could, by dumping the core of the reactor, have adequate fissionable material for a nuclear weapon." According to Billings, Taiwan had the "the capability, staff and equipment for producing such a weapon."

This recently declassified report provides perspective on the U.S. government's objections to chemical reprocessing in Taiwan and the problems in assuring IAEA safeguards in Taiwan. For Van Doren, the best outcome would be that a reprocessing plant not be "built in ROC at this time." Not only did it make no "economic sense," it would help prevent a nuclear weapons capability and should China take over Taiwan "it would acquire a valuable, free chemical reprocessing plant." A thorny problem was the role of IAEA safeguards. The future of the trilateral U.S.-Taiwan-IAEA trilateral agreement was in doubt because Taiwan had been expelled from the IAEA, to be eventually replaced by the PRC as part of the process of normalizing Beijing's international relations. The agreement would permit continuing IAEA inspection of the Canadian-supplied Taiwan Research Reactor, then under construction, but the question was whether Beijing would compel the Agency to withdraw from the agreement with Taiwan.

Reports and rumors that Taiwan was trying to purchase a reprocessing plant were widespread in European nuclear energy circles during 1972. This message mentions Taiwanese discussions with potential British, Belgian, French, and West German suppliers. Bonn had a leg up in the negotiations because it could provide a "guarantee of delivery" while the other governments were wary of objections from Beijing. The U.S. position was that Taiwan "must be content" with a non-reprocessing "status quo" unless it built a capability with "indigenous technical expertise and industrial capability." The problem was that if Taiwan was determined to have a reprocessing capability was it better for suppliers to work out a safeguarded arrangement than to "run [the] risk" of Taiwan "finding other ways of realizing [its] objective with uncertainty about controls." Within weeks, the State Department authorized the embassy in Taiwan to convey its objections to Taiwanese interest in building a reprocessing plant

During a meeting with Victor Cheng, the Secretary-General for Taiwan's Atomic Energy Council, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Sneider expressed the U.S. government's "appreciation" for Taiwan's "decision not to proceed with purchase and construction of nuclear fuel reprocessing plant." Cheng said he had only heard about the proposed plant in December and that the ROC "does not have [sic] any nuclear secrets from its friends." The next day, when meeting with Atomic Energy Commission officials, Cheng mentioned a project in the works at the Nuclear Science Institute, presumably the Institute for Nuclear Energy (INER), for a "laboratory-scale fuel reprocessing facility" whose capacity would be "miniscule": "two fuel elements per year (from the Tsing-Hua reactor)" that would yield "only 300 grams PU [plutonium] per year." This lab-scale project would become controversial in the future.

The title of this telegram tells the story. During a meeting with embassy officials, Victor Cheng explained why Taiwan needed "in-country reprocessing capability" as the "most reasonable and economic method for TAIPOWER to ensure its continued supply of fuel" for power reactors. According to the embassy, "this appears ... to be a well-orchestrated ROC attempt to acquire a ... capability of the type needed in nuclear weapons programs." In light of the earlier "abortive" attempt to acquire a plant from Western Europe, Taiwan "is now attempting to conceal the same objective behind the face of a plan ostensibly designed to serve TAIPOWER's mid-eighties fuel requirements."

Responding to the embassy's message about Taiwan's renewed interest in a reprocessing plant, the State Department agreed that a "prompt, firm and negative reaction is in order."

This cable reports on the first of a series of U.S. "study" team visits to Taiwan. One of the group's takeaways was that "despite [Taiwanese] affirmations to the contrary we had impression that some individuals and segments of government might view full fuel cycle and chemical reprocessing plant as way to keep open military option." While members of the U.S. team made clear their concerns about the "direction" of the Taiwanese nuclear research program to officials in charge of R&D and nuclear energy policy generally, a "striking exception was General Tang [Chun-po], director of the Chung Shan Science Institute (CSSI) and key officials, who failed to attend dinner at the [Ambassador's] residence and was absent when team visited CSSI."

Three years later U.S. diplomats remained concerned about Taiwan's interest in reprocessing and a full fuel cycle. This detailed embassy report acknowledged the difficulty in evaluating the "evidence to date of GROC interest in developing a nuclear device capability." Nevertheless, the Embassy believed that "a decision has been made at the highest executive level to keep this option open." Taiwan's determination to acquire a reprocessing capability, U.S. objections notwithstanding, leads to the conclusion that the "rationale is based on more than the economic-need argument." Noting that the U.S. has already objected to Taiwanese attempts to acquire a reprocessing plant from a Dutch firm, COMPRIMO, "we feel that ROC activities in this area should be monitored as closely as possible." If Taiwan made another attempt to acquire a reprocessing plant, the embassy recommended a "demarche in the strongest possible terms."

The U.S. embassy received a copy of the IAEA's July 1976 inspection report of Taiwan's nuclear facilities, a report that became a matter of controversy in early 1977 because of an apparent oversight during the visit. Nevertheless, the inspectors did visit the TRR, assess the surveillance cameras (which were found wanting), the fuel element fabrication plant, and two reprocessing facilities. One consisted of a one-cell reprocessing laboratory of the same design used in a Norwegian installation: according to the report, "the very small size of the equipment inside ... preclude[s] the possibility that it could be used for serious production scale reprocessing." According to Albright and Stricker, that underestimated the risk. The other reprocessing facility was a "Plutonium Fuel Chemistry Laboratory" located at the Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (INER). The report found that the "characteristic coloring of plutonium was evident in the visible filters," which indicated that the facility had been used for reprocessing.

This recently declassified telegram was originally released to the National Security Archive in excised form, with the names of an IAEA official and an inspector withheld. Mentioned in the document were Leslie Thorne, chief of the Far East division of the Agency's Safeguards Department, and inspector Herbert Frittum. Meeting in Tokyo with ACDA official Joerg Menzel, a member of the U.S. team that had visited Taiwan a few weeks earlier, Thorne told Menzel about his visit to the Taiwan Research Reactor (TRR) and inspector Frittum's discovery of an unsafeguarded exit port at the fuel pond. The discovery brought up questions about the effectiveness of IAEA safeguards, but Agency inspectors believed that the problem reflected "lack of ROC cooperation" more than any problems with the safeguards themselves.

An issue that was unexplained in the telegram was the presence of "special fuel rods," which according to the Albright-Strickner account, the U.S. team also noticed. They were segmented so that they could be cut more easily in the cooling pond for eventual chemical reprocessing.

The discovery of the exit port raised questions about the possible diversion of spent fuel for secret reprocessing because the "irradiation and discharge of nine fuel rods had not been declared to the IAEA." The discoveries and discrepancies quickly led the U.S. to press Taiwan to shut down the TRR temporarily and to agree to restrictions on fuel cycle research and development work that could facilitate a weapons option.

Galen Stone, the chief of the U.S. mission to the IAEA, reported on his discussion of the TRR problem with IAEA Director General Sigvard Eklund. Stone mainly wanted Eklund's assurance that if the Agency took any action against Taiwan "he would inform me in advance." Stone mentioned that the IAEA inspector and the U.S. team visiting Taiwan in early January had more or less simultaneously discovered the problem of the unsafeguarded exit port. So that a full analysis could be prepared "of what had transpired," the U.S. sent a representative to Vienna to work with IAEA safeguards officials.

After Galen Stone's private meeting with Eklund (see previous document), Deputy Director General for Safeguards Rudolph Rometsch met privately with Joerg Menzel to discuss the Agency's safeguards at the TRR. Rometsch confirmed that Taiwan had not included the exit port in the design information that it had submitted to the Agency but "gave no explanation as to why the IAEA had not known about the port" (implying that it should have been noticed during the 1976 inspection). Rometsch "did not comment on previous IAEA safeguards effectiveness at all during 90-minute conversation." He did, however, observe that the special fuel rods "put safeguards at TRR and the significance of [the] now defunct reprocessing laboratory in new perspective." The implication was that the fuel rods could have been cut up into small enough pieces to be processed at the one-cell reprocessing laboratory which had apparently been closed under U.S. pressure.

Stone reported that Rometsch did not seem to be aware of the discrepancies in the fuel rod count that the IAEA's Leslie Thorne had noticed. Moreover, Rometsch did not confirm Thorne's statement that the Agency had approved the transfer of spent fuel to dry storage, but in fact that would happen in the coming months.

According to a State Department INR report, during mid-1978 when a U.S. team was conducting a follow-up trip to nuclear sites a secret source told the U.S. government that Taiwan had concealed heavy water production equipment. According to the source, the "team had been occupied with 'useless' briefings and tours of various facilities in northern Taiwan while the equipment they were looking for" was hidden in southern Taiwan. According to the NSC's Global Issues staff, which prepared this report to national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the INR report "fails to mention that such heavy water production is explicitly prohibited under the recent US-ROC nuclear agreement." Although the actual agreement remains classified, the substance of it can be found in various records, including the prohibitions discussed in this telegram from December 1977.

In response to a letter from Secretary of State Vance on nuclear research (still classified), Premier Chiang Ching-kuo responded that "my government is not engaged in any research work in the sensitive fields of nuclear enrichment, reprocessing, or heavy water production." One of the suspect Taiwanese nuclear research activities that U.S. officials detected was a laser isotope program to separate uranium isotopes. Chiang specifically denied that Taiwan's interest in laser research extended into isotope separation and more broadly denied any "intention whatsoever to develop nuclear weapons or a nuclear device." Chiang might not have known that the U.S. had already discovered the technology to produce heavy water (see Document 18 above).

Following up Chiang's suggestion that the U.S. assign American scientists to participate in Taiwan's nuclear R&D, Ambassador Unger observed that an important point was to "allay U.S. concerns" about the direction of the research activity. It could not be known for sure if Chiang had made a "fundamental decision" to develop a weapons capability, notwithstanding his assurances not to do so, but "if the ROC were to move in this direction they would have to conceal their effort from us at all costs." While the presence of U.S. scientists would not "absolutely preclude a clandestine ROC effort to achieve a nuclear weapons capability," if a few of them had access to key nuclear institutions, that "would make such work more difficult, by forcing still greater clandestinity."

Receptive to Ambassador Unger's thinking, the State Department prepared a "non-paper' on the subject of visits by U.S. scientists for presentation to the ROC leadership. State did not envision any permanent stationing of scientists, but believed that their presence would help clarify "any misunderstandings" about the Taiwanese nuclear R&D, and "afford us some advantage [in making] more difficult any ROC efforts to engage in weapons-related nuclear activities and would also contribute to our overall efforts to keep closely informed of ROC activities in the nuclear field." On 5 October, an Embassy officer presented the non-paper, but any follow-up action by Taiwanese authorities remains unknown. They may have concluded that the disadvantages outweighed any benefits.

After TRR operations resumed in 1981, the U.S. and Taiwan held protracted negotiations over its reopening, using low-enriched uranium fuel, and the return of spent fuel rods (SFR). Included in the discussions was a representative of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), possibly the late Richard Lewis, who proposed using reactor fuel enriched to 20 percent.

Unspecified arrangements had been made for the disposition of TRR spent fuel but with reactor operations continuing "unabated," spent fuel was accumulating at the rate of 180 rods per year, and some 2,000 rods in storage. While arrangements to cover costs were being discussed, they were not completed, for example, provisions to cover follow-on costs, such as cask rental, remained to be settled.

This telegram enclosed the text of a "non-paper" to be given to senior Taiwanese officials on the need to expedite spent fuel shipments partly because of "safety concerns and public sensitivity to all things nuclear in the aftermath of the Soviet Chernobyl reactor disaster." With the downgrading of U.S. official ties with Taiwan in 1978, as part of the deal to recognize Beijing, the U.S. and Taiwan no longer had embassies but non-official "institutes" to maintain relations

With shipments of spent fuel rods underway, the State Department reported that by mid-1989, when about 1,600 fuel rods "should" have been removed, an "equilibrium state" would be reached "where the numbers of spent fuel rods remaining on Taiwan will have been minimized at one and a half-year's discharge" (circa 270 fuel roads). Moreover, the reactor core of the TRR "would be 'converted' to a different fuel mixture from a core of only natural uranium metal fuel to a mixture of uranium metal and low enriched uranium oxide." The excised portion of this document may refer to the implications of those developments; for example, low enriched uranium fuel had a lower proliferation risk because substantially less plutonium could be separated from it.

For discussions of the TRR conversion and spent fuel transfer, officers from the AIT met with Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (INER) officials, including Deputy Director Chang Sen-I [Hsien-yi], who was then a CIA asset in Taiwan. For Chang, safety "outweighed all other considerations," and he worried about a possible conflict between safety and the profit motive of the firm, Nuclear Assurance Corporation (NAC), that transported spent fuel. It is improbable that the U.S. officials present at this discussion had any idea of Chang's connections with the CIA.

Deputy Director Chang and other INER officials met at Brookhaven National Laboratory with David Diamond, who was the U.S. project director, to review their plans for the TRR conversion. Within two months, the CIA would exfiltrate Chang from the ROC.

Only weeks before Chang's exfiltration from Taiwan by the CIA, U.S. project director David Diamond wrote him about the plans for the TRR conversion.

A front-page New York Times article by Tim Weiner reported that the U.S. had pressed Taiwan to "stop work on a secret installation that "could have been used to obtain plutonium." The State Department provided guidance that indicated its satisfaction that Taiwan "is not engaged in activities" that were inconsistent with its nuclear nonproliferation commitment. The guidance confirmed that the TRR had been "shut down for economic reasons."

Developments at the TRR, including the removal of heavy water from the facility, and INER Deputy Director Chang's disappearance had already been the subject of media coverage in Taiwan and the New York Times story renewed interest in the story.

David G. Brown, the State Department's desk officer for Taiwan affairs, prepared for the AIT a set of talking points that Institute staffers could use to argue that it was in Taiwan's own interest to abide by its commitments to the NPT and nonproliferation arrangements generally. For example, with respect to Taiwan-PRC relations, "Taiwan's pursuit of a nuclear weapons option could expose Taiwan to risks it does not now face." Nuclear weapons could provoke a "conventional build-up across the straits, thus increasing the conventional threat, and create a nuclear threat, by raising the prospect of massive nuclear retaliation against Taiwan."

Confirming the earlier Taiwanese media reports, U.S. government agencies and Taiwan made arrangements to transfer the TRR's heavy water supply, all 20 metric tonnes of it, to the United States. This was an important initial step in the U.S. effort to compel Taiwan to climb down from its program for a weapons capability. The illegibility of some of the text in this telegram makes it difficult to determine whether the amount was 20,390 or 20,490 kilograms.

To move Taiwan away from weapons R&D, the United States wanted INER to be freed from the Chung Shan Institute. At a meeting of the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (later renamed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States), AEC Secretary-General Liu Guang-ji, and the former director of INER, reviewed options for restructuring INER, ranging from disbandment to privatization to organizational autonomy as a "parastatal." In passing, Liu noted that some of INER's engineers or nuclear scientists could work at the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST) because the latter "does some computational work in the nuclear area," a statement that the drafter found "intriguing" but lacked time to pursue. As Albright and Stricker demonstrate, U.S. intelligence had been interested in weapons-related computer work at CSIST for years.

The State Department requested the AIT to assist with plans for a State/DOE/ACDA team to Taipei, including the unfaltering Joerg Menzel, to visit CSIST's nuclear research sites. One of the purposes was to permit the U.S. to "continue exporting the many commodities ordered by CSIST that are subject to control because of their potential significance to nuclear weapons activities." The U.S. experts also wanted to discuss with Taiwanese officials their plans for the relationship between INER and CSIST and the AEC, respectively. The detailed itinerary included a visit to the Lungtan area, the suspected site for explosives research related to nuclear weapons.

AIT director David Dean sent back an itinerary that he had developed with senior CSIST officials. The schedule is excised including the destination for a helicopter trip which may have had something to do with the explosive research site at Lungtan.

To take the military out of Taiwan's nuclear affairs, the government made major organizational changes. The AEC severed all connections with the military, including its budget which was to become part of the Ministry of Education instead of the Defense Ministry. Moreover, as of 1 October, INER became part of the AEC and was "instructed to open its doors to the universities and the public."

During the first day of the visit to CSIST, the U.S. team was briefed about the new arrangements for INER, with State Department representative James Shipley telling Admiral Hsia, Vice Chief of the General Staff, that the "team is encouraged by .... the actions and plans toward INER/CSIST separation." Shipley took note of President Lee Teng-hui's "commitment against acquiring nuclear weapons," while observing that "those who control exports and worry about nonproliferation matters must be convinced that this continues to be the case." Hsia assured the team that "there is currently and in the future no nuclear or nuclear related research at CSIST" or "classified military research" at INER. To expedite nuclear-related exports, ACDA's Joerg Menzel suggested better end-use statements and more communication with U.S. contacts on export requests.

Whatever the U.S. team saw or heard during the second day of their tour of CSIST facilities, they found a "general tenor of openness and candor." CSIST director Vice Admiral Liu Shi-hi said that he "he believed our concerns about CSIST had been alleviated." State Department representative James Shipley agreed that it was a "positive step" but follow-up would be needed