NBC Weapons: December 20, 2002

Archives

While the Chinese government can say that it will not assist other nations in developing nuclear weapons, and mean it, the government does not have a lot of control over what thousands of Chinese companies do. For a police state, controlling the news, and what people do on the Internet is more important than scrutinizing thousands of exports by Chinese firms (who are encouraged to do what ever they can to grow their businesses and provide jobs.) Case in point is North Korea receiving twenty tons of tributyl phosphate from a Chinese supplier earlier this month. Tributyl phosphate is used in the manufacture of plastics, as an anti-foaming agent and to manufacture fire retardant hydraulic fluid. It is also used to extract Plutonium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. At the moment, the only industry in North Korea that has any use for tributyl phosphate is the government program to make nuclear weapons. 

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close