Nuclear exports: the perilous enterprise
A representative of the Sierra Club proposes that the United States can at least provide an opportunity for a break in the trend toward nuclear proliferation and may be able to offer the moral and economic persuasion for a worldwide moratorium. The combination of plutonium toxicity and its use in making nuclear explosives, together with the number of countries who have recently entered the nuclear community, indicate an increasing problem in limiting nuclear power to peaceful purposes. The ease with which plutonium can be diverted from power-generating plants into the hands of terrorists and unstable rulers limits the security options. The non-proliferation agreements are felt to have created additional problems by making it possible for non-signers of the treaty to have less-stringent safeguards than the signers. The International Atomic Energy Agency is considered to be effective only in a bookkeeping and monitoring capacity, while competition between nuclear suppliers may lead them to relax standards. The author feels that efforts to negotiate voluntary restraints on exporters could offer guarantees of fuel services and other nuclear assistance to those countries agreeing to forego nuclear explosives and reprocessing facilities and accepting safeguards restraints and export restrictions. (DCK)
- OSTI ID:
- 5408146
- Journal Information:
- Sierra Club Bull.; (United States), Vol. 62:3
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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