Nuclear proliferation looms, I

As oil prices rise, and as worries about climate change mount, interest in nuclear power generation grows. Libya has recently signed an agreement with France to built nuclear powered desalination plant, and Egypt is negotiating for a similar reactor. The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick writes that forty developing countries from the Persian Gulf to Latin America have recently approached UN officials, expressing interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations. At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium. Much of the new interest is driven by economic considerations, but for some Middle Eastern states with ready access to huge reserves of oil or natural gas, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, the investment in nuclear power appears to be linked at least in part to concerns about a future regional arms race stoked by Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians,” a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology told Warrick. “The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?”

UAE has a proven oil reserve of 100 billion barrels, the world’s sixth-largest, but in January it signed a deal with a French company to build two nuclear reactors. Wealthy neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain are also planning nuclear plants, as are Libya, Algeria, and Morocco in North Africa and the kingdom of Jordan. Even Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, last year announced plans to purchase a nuclear reactor, which it says is needed to produce electricity; it is one of eleven Middle Eastern states now engaged in starting or expanding nuclear power programs. Meanwhile, two of Iran’s biggest rivals in the region, Turkey and Egypt, are moving forward with ambitious nuclear projects. Both countries abandoned any pursuit of nuclear power decades ago but are now on course to develop seven nuclear power plants — four in Egypt and three in Turkey — over the next decade. Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, warned a recent gathering of Middle Eastern and nonproliferation experts a nuclear arms race may be inevitable unless the region’s leaders agree to ban such weapons. “We continue to take the high road, but there isn’t much oxygen there, and it is very lonely,” Fahmy said. “Without a comprehensive nuclear accord, you will have a proliferation problem in the Middle East, and it will be even worse in 10 years than it is today.”

Some arms-control experts say the sudden interest cannot be fully explained by rising oil prices. “This is not primarily about nuclear energy. It’s a hedge against Iran,” said Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear policy and author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.” “They’re starting their engines. It takes decades to build a nuclear infrastructure, and they’re beginning to do it now. They’re saying, ‘If there’s going to be an arms race, we’re going to be in it.’”

Tomorrow: What can be done about nuclear weapons proliferation