Multinational nuclear fuel banks - a bad idea.

The AP has an article full of wishful thinking about creating multinational nuclear fuel banks as an alternative to letting individual countries develop their own enrichment facilities. The idea is that there will be some sort of depot of nuclear fuel at some central place, from which all other countries (who don't have enrichment capability on their own) will be able to buy their nuclear fuel. (Of course, the countries that already have enrichment technology will be able to keep their technology, and will be the suppliers.) Supposedly, this fuel will be sold in a non-discriminatory fashion to all buyers, at market rates.

Nice fairytale.

Now, in reality, what this means is that the world will be further divided into the haves and have-nots of nuclear fuel. And, it is inevitable that politics will intefere in the "non-discriminatory" distribution of this fuel. How do we know this? Because under the terms of the NPT, the 5 nuclear-armed countries are already under an obligation to share civilian nuclear technology with the rest of the NPT signatories -- but instead they totally ignored that (and many other) requirements of the NPT and formed a "Nuclear Suppliers Group" which is essentially a cartel of countries with nuclear know-how, intended to restrict the distribution of that technology (under the guise of fighting weapons proliferation, of course, but the economic benefits to the 5 of monopolizing the technology are obvious) 

And how exactly will "Market rates" be set for a commodity that is essentially subject to monopoly control? Is it any wonder that developing countries don't trust these sorts of arrangements? Note that exceptions are already being carved out for "friends". FOr example, under the US proposal, Canada will be able to develop enrichment technology. Brazil and Argentina get a pass, but Iran will have to give up its enrichment technology.

Comments

[mb]

ٍExcellent editorial. Completely concur. Then Iran has to beg the nuclear cartels for her fuel supply, which might not even be provided because Iran does not recognize Israel, is a terrorist country, and ..... the list goes on.