Civilian Nuclear Power, or: "We Swear it's for Peaceful Purposes!"

I appreciate any and all comments on this blog, especially those that do not agree with me. I think it's important to leverage the right of free speech, available to any and every user of the Internet, to foment substantive discussion on such hot-button issues as nuclear disarmament. And I'd like to take a page out of my future alma mater: Today I was browsing the Fletcher website and came across the page for The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. On the Forum's main page is the following quote:

The editorial board of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs believes that the publication’s audience values and expects the inclusion of conflicting viewpoints; the board does not expect readers to concur with all of the views expressed by Forum authors. This inherent diversity supports the very definition of a “forum,” i.e., a public meeting place for open discussion.

So with this in mind, I'd like to respond to some very good points made by reader Matt:

While we absolutely must acknowledge -- and I think most national leaders do -- that we can never rid the world of what beloved Bush used to call "evildoers," what we must do is leverage our multilateral institutions to create choke points on the dissemination of nuclear power technology. The reality is that there cannot be a complete and total separation between peaceful nuclear technology and nuclear weapons technology; any country that engages in sharing such technology, expertise or material is contributing to the precise problem you describe, which is that "the technology exists, and will always exist." Once you start creating low-enriched uranium for use in nuclear power plants, you already have the capability and the material to create high-enriched uranium, which is critical to nuclear weapons development.

Admittedly, such international organizations as the UN and its nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, have not always been the best conduits for international cooperation on a slew of issues, ranging from proliferation to human rights & security to environmental development. And it's true that North Korea and Iran have proven that with enough determination, any country, no matter how poor its economy, political processes or infrastructure, can in fact produce a nuclear wepon. But keep in mind that countries like Brazil and Argentina have demonstrated that it is not only possible, but acceptable -- nay, encouraged -- to renounce your nuclear weapons programs, completely detach your country from even nuclear power generation, and become a completely and verifiably nuclear-free nation.

So perhaps the road going forward is two-fold: first, we must address and work towards reducing the number of nuclear weapons already in existence. The second and equally important step is to work on stemming the availability of fissile material and cutting off the means to share technology and expertise in nuclear development, whether it's purported to be for civilian power or for military might.

Having said all that, this is exactly why I'm going back to school. I think that what I've described above can be done, but I also know I don't have all the answers in terms of how we'll go about achieving these goals. Hopefully my training will prepare me to address these more difficult and sensitive questions.

In the meantime, if you ever hear a country that does not have a confirmed nuclear weapons program say it is developing civilian nuclear power capabilities for strictly peaceful purposes, you can say, "Yeah right."