Reconversion within Government Laboratories

The reconversion I want to talk about is a kind of internal conversion that is taking place, at least to a small extent, within the military or defense-oriented research itself. Let me give a very specific example: the work being done at a government laboratory at Los Alamos on nuclear safeguards. Let us suppose that the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is ratified and some form of disarmament or arms limitation is agreed upon by the big powers. There still are, however, serious problems that can lead to dangerous instabilities in the world. Some of these problems are the following: (1) a small country, having a nuclear reactor being used for nonmilitary purposes, manages to collect and hide sufficient quantities of plutonium to enable them to construct an atomic bomb, which they do in a clandestine manner; (2) foreign agents from some small trouble-making country smuggling in a nuclear device by air into our country; (3) a black market in fissionable materials is formed, which enables some countries to obtain illegally quantities of plutonium.