Abdul Qadeer Khan obituary
by Gareth Price from on (#5R8M2)
Physicist hailed as the father of Pakistan's atomic weapons industry who confessed to smuggling nuclear secrets
The father of Pakistan's atomic weapons industry and the greatest proliferator of nuclear weapons in history, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has died aged 85 after testing positive for Covid-19, was heralded as a hero in his native country, but he left a troubling legacy for the west. Along with Pakistan, the states of Libya, North Korea and Iran all benefited from the nuclear physicist's dealings. His story is also deeply connected with the travails of neighbouring Afghanistan.
There are two basic paths to make the material that provides the explosive power of a nuclear weapons. The first is to process plutonium. The second is to use high-speed centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material, called highly enriched uranium (HEU).
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