Nuclear Power Goes Rogue: Here’s what’s at stake.

[bananas]

"So what’s driving the world’s nuclear suppliers to service such nuclear pariahs?
First and foremost: cash."

"avoiding another Fukushima-like accident will be an ever greater challenge. But this challenge will be minor compared with the test of preventing a nuclear-arms race in the Middle and Far East."

Excellent article should be read in full.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/27/post-fukushima-nuclear-power-changes-latitudes.html

Nuclear Power Goes Rogue
Nov 28, 2011 12:00 AM EST
Post-Fukushima, the market for nuclear power is changing latitudes. Here’s what’s at stake.

<snip>

None of these nuclear customers, it should be noted, has a nuclear-safety regulatory system worthy of the name. Nor, outside of Pakistan, do any of them have enough trained technicians to build or operate large nuclear-power programs. More than a few—Turkey, Syria, Iran, Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—have either toyed with or actually developed nuclear-weapons options. (And, of course, Pakistan actually has nuclear weapons.) And Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia have refused repeated American requests that they forgo making nuclear fuel—a process that can bring states within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons. Besides Iran, Egypt, Algeria, and Syria have been caught violating International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

So what’s driving the world’s nuclear suppliers to service such nuclear pariahs?

First and foremost: cash.

<snip>

The second driver is geopolitics.

<snip>

The Obama administration, which heralded these conditions as a new gold standard when the U.A.E. deal was finalized, now has a different take: it wants nothing to do with this legislation. The Saudis, meanwhile, have hired the Pillsbury law firm, one of Washington’s top lobbying guns, to secure a U.S. nuclear cooperative agreement free of these conditions.

<snip>

Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, and is editor of Nuclear Power’s Global Expansion: Weighing Its Costs and Risks (2010) and The Next Arms Race (forthcoming).

[ensho]

1. kick

nt

[enough]

2. I thought Obama was supposed to be the great non-proliferator arms-control guy.

His position here is incomprehensible.

snip from the article>

And the ones the Saudis like most are American-designed. This makes securing a U.S. cooperative agreement desirable. Senior Obama officials justify striking a deal not primarily for industrial but for nonproliferation reasons. Their line of thinking is reminiscent of 18th-century British arguments for staying in the slave trade to control it, and it might be credible but for one detail: their boss, President Obama, is currently opposing proposed legislation that would tighten nonproliferation requirements for U.S. nuclear cooperation.

snip>

[Nihil]

5. That was Candidate Obama, not President Obama.

Yet again, the problem isn't with the principle, it is with the
implementation by morally corrupt individuals.

:-(

[kristopher]

3. this is a very good read. Thanks. nt

[enough]

4. k&r (nt)