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In one of their few areas of agreement during the election campaign, both George W. Bush and John Kerry identified nuclear proliferation as the greatest foreign policy threat currently facing the United States. Indeed, the rise in nuclear capability of nations such as North Korea and Iran, as well as attempts at nuclear weapons development by Libya and 1980s Iraq, poses a severe threat to global stability—not to mention the lives of millions of people.
But neither candidate then seemed to have grasped that there is a common technological denominator among the “rogue” nuclear programs worldwide and that unless that technology is reined in, further nuclear weapons proliferation is inevitable. That technology is the gas centrifuge process for producing enriched uranium. It is a dual-purpose process: it can be used to produce low-enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors and/or highly-enriched uranium used in atomic weapons.
In 1983, the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) issued a prescient call for a worldwide ban on centrifuge enrichment technology because of its tremendous potential for nuclear proliferation. In its book “Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation,” SIPRI said that existing centrifuge facilities “should be shut down and dismantled.” If that were impossible, then SIPRI recommended that the facilities be “internationalized” and “managed in such a way as to prevent the further dissemination of this process….the objective should be to phase out the gas centrifuge technique for uranium enrichment.”
Since the election, the executive director of the International Atomic Energy Agency has weighed in, and called for a global five-year moratorium on construction of new uranium enrichment facilities—which would include the proposed LES plant in New Mexico and the proposed USEC plant in Ohio. The tide is turning. With a world already awash in enriched uranium, new enrichment plants are a luxury for the nuclear power industry, but a nuclear proliferation threat for the rest of us
SIPRI noted that the centrifuge process uses less electricity than other enrichment processes, can be built in a modular fashion taking up relatively little space, and can be built with only a moderate degree of technical sophistication compared to other enrichment methods. These features make it attractive to nations, and potentially even well-financed and technically-capable terrorist groups, that want to become nuclear weapons powers, especially those that want to do so clandestinely.
Unfortunately, at the time SIPRI’s recommendation was ignored by the international atomic energy establishment. Back then, only three commercial-scale centrifuge enrichments plants existed, all owned by the European consortium Urenco. Now the technology has spread to at least ten countries, most of which obtained the technology either directly or indirectly from Urenco.
The enrichment programs of greatest concern are those where the technology was obtained from Urenco indirectly—via theft or other illicit means. The first nation to do so was Pakistan, whose Abdul Qadeer Khan stole centrifuge blueprints from Urenco and used them as the basis for Pakistan’s successful program to develop and produce nuclear weapons. Khan then set up, possibly with the knowledge of Pakistan’s government, an international trade in uranium enrichment technology.
At the same time, other successful efforts were made to obtain Urenco technology and blueprints.
The result is that several countries now either have, or are very close to having, nuclear weapons capability, including Iran, North Korea, pre-Gulf War Iraq, Pakistan and Libya (which reportedly has given up this capability). All of these nuclear programs were based on Urenco centrifuge enrichment technology illicitly obtained. Clearly, the world would have been better off if SIPRI’s recommendation had been heeded.
Urenco itself is not without blame. As late as 1988, Iraqi citizens were being trained in centrifuge welding techniques at Urenco’s Gronau plant in Germany, for example. According to an April 2004 report prepared for Greenpeace International, “From the mid seventies there were also direct transactions from Urenco to military regimes, which had not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. In 1978 the German branch of Urenco provided the junta in Brazil and the South African apartheid regime data on uranium enrichment. In 1981 the British branch of Urenco, BNFL, delivered enriched uranium to the regime in Brazil. The report concluded: “The role played by Urenco in the proliferation of nuclear technology as described in this paper illustrates clearly that the use of this technology for peaceful or military purposes cannot be separated.”
Urenco is, of course, the lead partner in Louisiana Energy Services (LES), which is seeking a license to build a centrifuge uranium enrichment plant in Eunice, New Mexico. Meanwhile, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) is seeking a license to build a similar plant in Ohio.
It is both hypocritical and ineffective for the U.S. to attempt to prevent the construction of or to attempt to shut down centrifuge enrichment facilities in nations like Iran and North Korea when we are pursuing construction of the exact same facilities here in the U.S. The “we can do this, but you can’t” approach to foreign policy may have some limited political appeal here at home, but it never has worked and isn’t going to start now.
My organization, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, attempted to raise these issues in the licensing hearings on the proposed LES plant. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing board hearing the case refused to even allow testimony on this critical and fundamental issue. Fortunately, the licensing board has agreed to hear our contentions on the issues of most immediate concern to our New Mexican members: water use, radioactive and hazardous waste disposal, decommissioning costs, and so forth.
But if President Bush is serious about confronting rogue nuclear regimes and controlling nuclear weapons proliferation, he should start by issuing an executive order implementing in the U.S. SIPRI’s 21-year old recommendation of outlawing centrifuge enrichment plants. The NRC should refuse to consider—on national security grounds—the license applications for both the LES and USEC proposals. Those steps will give the U.S. the moral and persuasive authority to achieve similar results in other nations. This would be the single most meaningful action the President could take to reduce nuclear proliferation and make the world a safer place.
Michael Mariotte, February 18. 2005
Michael Mariotte is executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (www.nirs.org).
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