As we said yesterday, as he was leaving his post as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year, Mohamed ElBaradei warned the world about ‘virtual nuclear weapons states’, countries that will develop weapons technology but stop just short of producing an actual bomb [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/14/elbaradei-nuclear-weapons-states-un]. This would, ElBaradei said, allow countries to ‘remain technically compliant with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while being within a couple of months of deploying and using a nuclear weapon’

It was clear from ElBaradei’s successor Yukiya Amano, in his opening speech to the nuclear Non_proliferation Treaty review at the United Nations, that ElBaradei’s warning is not being heeded…

"Nuclear power is enjoying growing acceptance as a stable and clean source of energy that can help to mitigate the impact of climate change," Amano told the meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York. "Nuclear power must be accessible not only for developed countries but also for developing countries."

We’ll leave for the moment Amano’s deceitful propaganda about nuclear power being ‘stable’ and ‘clean’ and able to ‘mitigate the impact of climate change’. He says more than 60 countries are considering adopting nuclear power. Could the IAEA monitor them all? Some of the countries on the Amano’s list are barely stable let alone functional, accountable democracies.

Couple that with the news about the global shortage of Helium-3 – a crucial ingredient in devices and technology used to detect and help stop nuclear smuggling – and its easy to see there could be some serious trouble ahead. You don’t have to worry about wind turbine smuggling or fear that the country next door is working on an energy efficiency programme.

Posted by Justin at 3:27 PM | Permalink

What’s undeniable about nuclear power is that that it walks hand in hand with nuclear weapons. The first nuclear reactors were built in the early days of the atomic arms race to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons. This led to the nuclear deceit that we still see to this day. As Stephanie Cooke puts it in her excellent book ‘In Mortal Hands: A cautionary history of the nuclear age’…

Governments saw that there could be a positive side to nuclear and began to promote it as a way of producing electricity. In the United States this “peaceful uses” aspect not only provided a welcome antidote to the government’s determination to rapidly escalate nuclear weapons production but was part of a program designed to win public approval of the expensive new arsenal. In other countries, like Britain and France, the primary purpose of so-called duel-use reactors was to produce plutonium for bombs. Yet the public was sold on the idea that the reactors were meant for electricity.

Fast forward 60 years and we have a new twist on this deception via a loophole in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which is having it’s five-yearly review this month at the United Nations.

What likely will not happen is a revision of the treaty’s Article IV, which states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. . .” In effect, Article IV offers a nuclear reward to non-nuclear weapons countries who sign the treaty; promise never to make the bomb and you can build and operate nuclear reactors. Since the materials, and to a certain degree, the processing involved in arriving at fuel for a civilian reactor or to create an atomic bomb are basically the same, a civilian program can lead to – and has led to – the covert development of nuclear weapons.

Not only that but you also get what Mohamed ElBaradei, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), calls…

…"virtual nuclear weapons states", who can produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium and possess the knowhow to make warheads, but who stop just short of assembling a weapon. They would therefore remain technically compliant with the NPT while being within a couple of months of deploying and using a nuclear weapon.

Former US vice president Al Gore said in 2006…

For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal -- which is the real issue: coal -- then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale. And we'd run short of uranium, unless they went to a breeder cycle or something like it, which would increase the risk of weapons-grade material being available.

So why aren’t the likes of Gore and ElBaradei, men who’ve seen the dangers of nuclear proliferation first hand, being listened to?

Posted by Justin at 6:57 PM | Permalink

©Jiri Rezac/Greenpeace

So, let’s talk about the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. Can you aim it Osama bin Laden? Can you use it against suicide bombers? Is it an effective deterrent against the builders of Improvised Explosive Devices? Can you fight the effects of climate change with nuclear weapons? So what use are they in these times of post-Cold War threats?

For the British government to renew its nuclear weapons arsenal, it’s going to cost £97 billion. Just think what else you could do with all that money. Think of the world class renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes you could build with it. It’s not as if the UK’s defence industry – one of the government’s pets – is going to starve.

The missile in last night’s Greenpeace projection onto Big Ben is heading in the right direction. It’s time to bury Trident. It’s time for Alistair Darling, the UK’s finance minister, to cut the crap and cut Trident.

(Click here to see how the projection was done. More information is available on the Greenpeace UK website.)

Posted by Justin at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)