tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25995363.post8808360012513485060..comments2023-06-20T01:49:29.525-07:00Comments on Blogging About the Unthinkable: That Doesn't Even Make Any SenseSovietologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099598091505738702noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25995363.post-62077492718909488302009-08-21T14:44:05.756-07:002009-08-21T14:44:05.756-07:00The unfortunate thing is this myth of nuclear fuel...The unfortunate thing is this myth of nuclear fuel processing being the handmaiden of nuclear weapons as a generally accepted truth has become so entrenched that it is now assumed to be a given even by most on the pronuclear side. However any critical examination of the available evidence shows that this is certainly not the case among the Secondary Nuclear States, and that the situation is a good deal more complex than many on both sides want to believe.<br /><br />We have got to get rid of this simplistic idea that if this technology isn't controlled nations will be 'tempted' to make nuclear weapons and that unchecked will this will lead to a domino effect is pure fantasy based on the overactive imaginations of Cold War strategists who were working with no real precedents to guide them. It presumes that the nation in question is going to treat the acquisition of this capability as lightly as they would any other item of military hardware.<br /><br />If you recall, it was assumed by those theories there would be more than a dozen new nuclear weapons States by the turn of the century - is is obviously just not so. Even if the question of suppling weapon-grade fissile material is removed, it still requires a sizable technological infrastructure and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars to make a weapon. The costs of a more ambitious program aimed at producing a militarily significant number of weapons can easily run into the billions of dollars, and the idea that such a project would be carried out simply because a nation has enrichment and/or reprocessing facilities does not belong in any rational discussion of the issue.<br /><br />A State arming itself with nuclear weapons is not a trivial matter for the country in question. A nuclear weapons program is a unbelievably expensive undertaking ("we were eating grass" as they said in Pakistan) and no nation decides to engage in such a project lightly.<br /><br />Events, real events on the ground have proven these theories simply wrong, and they should not be applied to evaluate the issue. It is time to rethink the whole foundation of proliferation risk based on historical fact rather than inductive reasoning. Proliferation myths, like most of the nuclear mythos that grew as a consequence of a mix of ignorance, inexperience and Cold War propaganda, have been shown to be false. Continuing to expect policy to follow those falsehoods is ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst.DV8 2XLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14595060432772287143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25995363.post-32533794427322488012009-08-21T14:16:23.343-07:002009-08-21T14:16:23.343-07:00I agree that the Canadian-HWR example is spurious,...I agree that the Canadian-HWR example is spurious, not merely because it was much more complicated than Acton makes it out to be, but because it clearly doesn't matter all that much. Experience suggests that if Canada had done what Acton suggests, and refused to sell India any kind of HWR technology, that the Indians would simply have found a different route to the bomb. They could have built simple water-graphite or gas-graphite plutonium production reactors which were well within the technical capability even of India in the 1970s. After all, North Korea managed it despite being extremely isolated, impoverished, and technically backward. The technically easy path to nuclear weapons has been in the public domain for decades, and no amount of hand-wringing over export controls will change this fact, nor will crippling our domestic nuclear industry because there's a distant possibility that would-be nuclear states will somehow be able to duplicate difficult-to-master next generation technologies.Sovietologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099598091505738702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25995363.post-5620916681124877692009-08-21T13:00:59.925-07:002009-08-21T13:00:59.925-07:00"Indeed, the Indian nuclear-weapons programme...<i>"Indeed, the Indian nuclear-weapons programme was based on a Canadian-supplied HWR. South Korea tried to acquire an almost identical reactor in the early 1970s, when it was pursuing a nuclear-weapons option.</i><br /><br />I can never let this one go by without correcting it.<br /><br />Canada developed an indigenous heavy-water reactor for several reasons, not the least of which was to promote a nuclear cycle that could not be easily turned to nuclear weapons. <br /><br />The common accusation that India used Canadian reactors to produce plutonium for weapons is patently false. India had two licensed CANDU reactors and began nuclear weapons tests shortly after they became operational in 1972. However, international observers have concluded that no plutonium was diverted from the safeguarded CANDU reactors. The plutonium for the initial bombs came from the older CIRUS (Canada India Research U.S.)reactor and open pool design which was indeed built by Canada, AND supplied with heavy water by the U.S., but was fueled with HEU that came from elsewhere when it was used to produce weapons grade Pu.<br /><br />South Korea does own and operate CANDU's and does have a Canadian designed pool type research reactor, but doesn't openly have a weapons program.<br /><br />There is no real advantage using a CANDU as a Pu breeder over a LWR just because of on-power refueling and it is best to keep in mind that North Korea used a LWR not a HWR to make weapons-grade material for their devices.DV8 2XLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14595060432772287143noreply@blogger.com