We're risking nuclear war in NK for a mere 2000 megawatts of power?

[Frangible]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040624/D83DK2M00.html

That's right folks... we're risking nuclear war in North Korea over a scant 2000 megawatts of power, which is what a single nuclear power plant can output.

Isn't oh... I don't know... giving them one power plant worth it to avoid war?

And yes, a power plant isn't cheap, but consider all the money already spent on this "crisis" and I doubt it's really all that much.

[TexasSissy]

1. I don't know much about this issue, but should we be building

nuclear plants for countries when they blackmail us? "We're going to develop a nuclear program, unless you build us a power plant."

Besides, we can't build them a nuke plant, can't we? 'Cause then they'll have the nuclear power....free of charge, from us. Which they could use for nuclear weapons, couldn't they?

We would have to provide a different kind of power plant, wouldn't we?

Well....we don't have the $$$, anyway. We spent it in Iraq.

[IronLionZion]

2. we can build them a dam or some windmills or something

that can't used to attack us in the future. Or just lift some sanctions to allow their starving people to eat.

[rinsd]

3. So we'll provide them with a plant to make nuclear material?

That just doesn't make sense.....and is one of the issues we are dealing with after the 94 accords. How do you think NK was able to make nuke fuel in the first place?

[Frangible]

4. We could build the plant in South Korea near the border

And manage it from there.

We could also use coal, but I'm not sure how we'd be able to get the thousands of tons of coal there that would be needed. Coal is also extremely dirty.

We could also work with the Chinese to build a plant in China. China already has nuclear technology.