Nuclear Expansion to Challenge IAEA, Experts Say

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The world’s thirst for energy over the next 25 years is likely to increase by 50 percent, creating a corresponding need for more nuclear reactors to supply that power, a scientific forum of experts convened at the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded (see GSN, Sept. 18).

This expected expansion of nuclear technology must be matched by the minimizing of the proliferation risk associated with the spread of sensitive nuclear know-how, including enrichment and reprocessing technologies, the forum chairman wrote in a summary of the two-day meeting this week.

“The agency needs to continue its work in trying to build consensus on the establishment of an international fuel bank or the development of other acceptable international arrangements” guaranteeing fuel supplies and avoiding the need for indigenous fuel cycle capabilities, wrote Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group.

Evans’ forum report addresses the crux of the dilemma faced by the U.N. nuclear watchdog as it appears nuclear energy is poised to see a vast expansion:  How can the agency balance its role as promoter of peaceful nuclear energy with the need to constrain the spread of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons?

The same technology that nations can use to create nuclear reactor fuel or reprocess the spent material for continued use could be harnessed to make fuel for a nuclear weapon.  It is this dual-use nature that is at the heart of the Iranian nuclear crisis.  Tehran contends its centrifuge enrichment research is purely for peaceful energy production purposes, but the United States and other nations believe it is part of a weapons program (see GSN, Sept. 19).

To continue to verify that nations are not turning nuclear technology to military ends those countries that have nuclear weapons must be committed to disarmament, the forum found.  “Disarmament and nonproliferation are two sides of the same coin,” Evans wrote.  “Therefore, the sustainable strengthening of nuclear verification must be accompanied by sustained cuts in nuclear arsenals and the implementation of further steps towards a nuclear weapons-free world.”

Public confidence in effective verification measures is “likely to be a precondition for the significantly expanded use of nuclear energy,” the forum found.

“The pressure for nuclear weapons proliferation is not going to go away,” Evans wrote.  “It remains something of a miracle that the prediction widely made in the 1960s that there would now be at least 20-30 nuclear weapons states has not been realized, and it cannot be assumed that this miracle can be sustained — particularly when the nuclear weapons states remain so conspicuously indifferent to their own obligation under Article 6 of the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] to take serious continuing steps toward nuclear disarmament.”

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