Offsetting nuclear proliferation

March 26, 12:14 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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Following World War ii, nuclear power was touted as a panacea:  It would be the world's commercial power source of the future.  The U.S. had, of course, utilized the science to build atomic weaponry, but strongly promoted the use of nuclear for commercial power generation throughout the rest of the world.  

A wee bit naive perhaps.  Next thing you know, the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb.  Then Britain.  Then France.  Then China.  There are now nine nations are are believed to have nuclear weapon capability, including Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan.  United States intelligence agencies believe Iran was building uranium enrichment capabilities to support a nuclear weapon development program until early in this decade. 

The cow was out of the barn.  The genie out of the bottle.  It was a slippery slope.  Pick a metaphor, but as sure as death and taxes is a nations resolve to protect itself from outside threats.  What better way to do that than with the biggest, baddest bomb of all?

The United Nation's nuclear guardian, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has proposed a plan to guarantee sufficiently enriched uranium to nations that chose to implement commercialized nuclear power.  The logic is that with a guaranteed supply of uranium, nations won't have to develop uranium refining capabilities that, if further developed, would lead to a capability to refine weapons grade uranium.

Earlier this month Kuwait became the 31st (and clinching, cash-wise) government to support a project launched by the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative to help the IAEA set up and control an international fuel bank of last resort. Any country meeting agreed criteria, yet finding its fuel supply cut off for political reasons (not commercial bickering or proliferation concerns), could get speedy IAEA help. An outline proposal will go to the agency’s 35-country board in June.

Russia has opened an enrichment plant at Angarsk to outside investors, who can share in profits and product but not technology. It has also offered to set aside 120 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (it takes a higher-enriched sort for a bomb) that the IAEA could call on if needed. America is already blending down some of its highly enriched uranium to make it available for civilian use. Britain is proposing a fuel-assurance scheme involving Urenco, a Dutch-British-German enrichment consortium.

Germany has also proposed setting up a multilateral enrichment centre, to be built, preferably, in a country that does not already enrich uranium. It would broaden the assurance of supply. But it would require far tougher anti-proliferation safeguards than apply to the nuclear industry today.  (Link)

Those are good intentions, but it's hard to imagine how that approach won't fall victim to the same kind of political squabbling that's allowed Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Zimbabwe, et al. to occur.  Each has a grotesque humanitarian crisis associated with it.   And in all cases the U.N. has been paralyzed by political and world order considerations.  If the U.N. finds itself paralyzed by political considerations in the face of genocidal slaughter, it surely will be paralyzed by political considerations when it comes to the supply of commercial power.

Now, for the folks that support gun rights, this must be an easy problem.  After all, nuclear weapons don't kill people.  People kill people.  I presume those folks would argue that the solution is not in preventing countries from possessing the capability to build and stockpile nuclear weapons, but to dissuade them from using them.

It sure isn't that clear to me.