Growing nuclear club

With its billion-plus population and booming economy, India’s plan for the next 20 years reflects much of the developing world’s appetite for secure energy. To meet its galloping demand for power India expects to buy 25 more reactors from Russia, the US and France, as well as build several itself.

That alone is about five per cent of the more than 400 power-generating reactors in the world today and evidence of boom years ahead, not only for India, but also for the whole global nuclear industry.
The climate-change debate coupled with unpredictable access to fossil fuels has prompted the nuclear industry to brush off the Chernobyl stigma and declare itself safe, inexpensive and carbon-free. America’s GE, for example, is gearing up to supply the Tarapur complex again, as well as bidding for involvement in India’s new reactors.

Of course, it is not just India. A walk through General Electric’s massive warehouse at its fuel plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, shows the momentum sweeping the nuclear industry along. Reinforced metal boxes containing uranium fuel rods are stacked as if in a supermarket waiting to be shipped out to clients.

“This one’s going to Japan, this to Mexico, this to within the US,” says Andrew White, president and CEO of GE’s nuclear business, “Over the next 20 years we hope to be involved in 60 or 70 new plants depending on the technology.”

China’s nuclear plans mirror those of India, and nuclear energy is due to dramatically increase in Europe, where it makes up 30 per cent of power, and America, where it comprises 20 per cent. Developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America are all looking to create their own nuclear programs to provide energy – and there lies the problem.

Egypt, for example, currently a champion of non-proliferation, has two research reactors aimed at creating an independent nuclear-fuel cycle. It could prove to be a matter of Western concern. Like Iran before, the Egyptian regime risks falling to extreme Islamic anti-American forces.

Both Brazil and Argentina once pursued covert-weapons programs. Some years from now, the increasingly left-leaning Latin America might produce a hostile leader, who would expel IAEA inspectors and send us once again into frighteningly familiar territory.

It is doubtful that global diplomacy can survive scenarios whereby every time a government is accused of stepping out of line, the UN Security Council is called upon to implement sanctions and US carrier groups steam toward hostile coastlines.

Khaleej Times