Nuclear proliferation looms, II

at a recent international conference of
security officials in Munich. “It’s enough to buy
yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it.
Let’s not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence.”

Warrick
writes that the Middle East’s renewed interest in nuclear power is part of a global
trend that began around 2004, as prices for fossil fuels began to rise. Before
that, commercial nuclear development had remained relatively flat since 1986,
when a massive fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine widely spread radioactive
contamination in history’s worst commercial nuclear power accident. Now, however,
with oil supplies tightening and prices soaring, nuclear power is being viewed in
a different light, said Alan McDonald, an IAEA official who coordinates the
agency’s programs on nuclear energy. McDonald said he thinks there is a logical
economic argument for developing a domestic nuclear industry, even if a
nation’s oil reserves are measured by the tanker-load. “Why would these Gulf states want to go nuclear? Because they
know their oil will only become more valuable as global demand increases,”
McDonald said. “It may be more cost-effective to sell oil to Americans
driving Suva than to burn it domestically.” The IAEA officially
encourages commercial nuclear development under policies backed by successive U.S. administrations since the 1950s.
It also provides technical and legal assistance to any country that wants a
nuclear power plant. IAEA officials say, however, they have never previously
seen such widespread interest in starting a domestic nuclear power industry.
While officials declined to detail their correspondence with specific
countries, the list of the newly interested includes several African countries,
such as Nigeria and Namibia, and at least half a dozen former
Soviet republics that are embracing new Western designs to replace
less-reliable Soviet nuclear plants.

Nuclear
weapons experts say commercial nuclear power plants, by themselves, pose
relatively little proliferation risk, although they are frequently mentioned as
possible targets for terrorist attacks. Nuclear power can give a country the
technological expertise and infrastructure that could become the foundation for
a clandestine weapons program. Such covert programs can be successfully hidden
for years, as was demonstrated by the secret Syrian plutonium production
reactor which Syria was building with the assistance of North Koreas near the
desert town of Al Keiba - and which Israel destroyed in a brilliant military
operation on 6 September 2007 (well, we note that, in the 1960s, Israel itself
perfected the art of disguising a nuclear weapons program, and successive
visits by U.S. inspector teams to the nuclear reactor in Dimona failed to spot
the weapons-related activities taking place there). Both India and Pakistan built nuclear devices using an
industrial infrastructure built ostensibly for nuclear power. Taiwan and South Korea conducted weapons research under
cover of civil power programs but halted the work after being confronted by the
United States. A particular concern is rising
interest in nuclear enrichment and reprocessing, the commercial enterprise that
creates nuclear fuel and then, after its use, separates plutonium from the
spent fuel. The business has long been dominated by the United States, Russia, and a consortium of European
nations. Since 2004, however, uranium-producing countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil, as well as close U.S. allies such as Canada and Australia, have sought to develop their own
enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. All of these nations are seeking to
cash in on the future growth in nuclear power generation. Canada’s push for expanded enrichment capacity
has already prompted private but intense clashes with the Bush administration,
officials said. “They’re all rethinking enrichment, even countries that
did it in the past and gave it up,” said a senior IAEA official who
monitors fuel-cycle development, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition
that he not be identified by name. “They already mine uranium and sell it,
and now they realize they could make a lot more money if they enrich it.”

No one
forecasts a nuclear-armed Canada or Australia, but the change could lead to
more nuclear materials being transported around the world, among countries in
nearly every region with heightened nuclear expertise. “People stand up
and pay attention when you talk about enrichment and the fuel cycle,” said
the senior U.S. government official who tracks
nuclear proliferation. “That’s the long pole in the tent” in the
acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. He added that, while the extensive system of
IAEA inspections and monitoring for such programs is meant to prevent misuse,
“that only holds up to the point where the country decides to kick the
IAEA out.”