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| US Quietly Promulgates New Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Pact | |
| 2007-09-17 | |
| A U.S.-initiated project that aims to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation and control radioactive waste gained support Sunday, as 11 more nations signed on with original members Russia, China, France and Japan. Under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a limited number of countries including the U.S. and Russia would provide uranium fuel to other nations for powering reactors to generate electricity, and then retrieve the fuel for reprocessing. This would deprive those nations of their own nuclear fuel enrichment programs, which can be used to make atomic arms. Iran, North Korea and other proliferation dangers past and present have played a role in the U.S. concept -- and GNEP will also be discussed at a 144-nation International Atomic Energy Agency conference opening Monday. One suggested solution to the controversy over Iran's program is for it to abandon its efforts to enrich uranium and just buy the necessary fuel from Russia. In Tehran Sunday, state television quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Mouchehr Mottaki as saying enriched uranium fuel is ready to be shipped from Russia to Iran's first nuclear power plant. But Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency quoted an unidentified Russian diplomat as saying that was not so. It is fears that indigenous enrichment programs like Iran's could be misused for weapons that have led to attempts to create global fuel banks, guaranteeing supplies of energy-capable enriched uranium. Such plans could indirectly hasten the nuclear arms race, however, by encouraging countries to start or revive past programs before any global plan is in place.
Additionally, critics of the initiative say resuming reprocessing -- or recycling spent fuel to gain new fuel, a process the U.S. abandoned in the 1970s over proliferation concerns -- can make it easier for terrorists or enemy states to obtain weapons-usable plutonium. And although the program envisions reprocessing through a technique where pure plutonium is not separated, that technology is commonly said to be decades away. But senior U.S. officials played down concerns Sunday as they hosted a signing ceremony for the GNEP "Statement of Principles" -- a nonbinding document that basically expresses support for "the common vision of the necessity of the expansion of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes worldwide in a safe and secure manner." Iran is "not something we have really thought about" at Sunday's Vienna meeting, said U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman. He denied suggestions that the project was meant in part to "identify some countries that are out to develop nuclear weapons" by casting the spotlight on nations that refused to join the plan and opted instead to develop their own enrichment program. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei praised the GNEP concept Sunday, saying it could "help the international community with some of the greatest international challenges we are facing -- which are development and security." The 11 countries that signed for the first time Sunday were: Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine. | |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 Lest we fergit, FREEREPUBLIC Poster from long ago > WOT > True FINAL VICTOR = LAST -ISM STANDING in this GWOT may well be MARXISM,GOVERMENTISM, and ANTI-DEMOCRACY, regardless of whether the USA-West wins or loses. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-17 04:32 |
| #1 While no one suggests they want a weapons program, their examples could embolden other nations in less stable regions I could think of one example we could make right now that would debolden other nations in less stable regions. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-09-17 01:27 |