re the excellent question of how, check out the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and their detailed proposals, including a model nuclear weapons convention.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our darndest to try. Instead of doing the opposite and fuelling nuclear tensions (and thereby fuelling proliferation) across south asia and the middle east…

Langewiesche was saying that terrorists would find it hard to collect the requisite uranium in one go but if they tried to get it in smaller quantities they multiplied their chances of getting caught. (Again from memory)

I’d have to say that I was surprised that there was any consideration at all of selling to Russia. So why did anyone bother talking about it? Possibly because a journo asked a question.

BTW you need 50 kg of highly-enriched uranium. That’s roughly the equivalent of six and a half tonnes of yellowcake, and the tech to enrich it. Enriching is the hard part of the process, as noted repeatedly.

As for nuclear disarmament, Tim, I come back to a point I made some time ago - how?

That should provide ample time for the Ruddster to do something different providing we give him the chance.

Brian, by the time the deal was cancelled it would be too late, wouldn’t it? Fine time to take the moral high ground once the bad stuff’s happened. And, as, since you’ve said, Downer is already telling porkies about India’s record, what’s to say he wouldn’t keep assuring us they’re clean long after he had advice that they weren’t?

For a start, ask every federal candidate what their attitude to the NPT is, and their policy for its future, including:

* U exports from Australia
* inspection rules
* role of the IAEA
* role of non-nuclear states
* disarmament by the biggest losers (sorry, nuclear weapons states)
* reduction of tensions in India/Pakistan, Middle East
* role of the UN
* South Pacific nuckear-free treaty
etc
I think this has the potential to be an important issue.

But we blog-folk, would we rather snipe at each other and thrill to the sound of the tills at Scores (gentlemen’s) Club; or can we see a way to influencing one little part of the coming campaign?

Over to youse all….

cheerio

Looks like every pissant country with two colonels and a torture chamber wants one these days.

That’s roughly what William Langewiesche was saying on LNL the other night. He’s written a book The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor. He reckons you need 50kg of yellowcake and the technology to build a big bomb (car-size) is not all that hard, but to make it smaller and deliver it is another thing. He thinks quite a few states are likely to acquire the capacity, but are unlikely to use it. Non-state actors by contrast will find it harder to acquire but having intent and no homeland to look after are very likely to use it.

It seems Rudd will cancel any agreement to sell to India. I’m kinda glad he decided to stand up on that one.

Meanwhile it seems the Govt is lining up Russia next and Labor would too if they promised to be good. Why anyone would trust them, I don’t know.

“First we got the bomb, and that was good,
cause we love peace and motherhood.

Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s OK,
cause the balance of power’s maintained that way.

Who’s next?

France got the bomb, but don’t you grieve,
cause they’re on our side (I believe).

Then China got the bomb, but have no fears,
they can’t wipe us out for at least 5 years.

Who’s next?………”

Looks like every pissant country with two colonels and a torture chamber wants one these days. And we’re prepared to flog them the necessary uranium to do it.

Another giant step forward for nuclear non-proliferation.

Thank you very much Mr Howard.

Ah yes the atom bomb tests of my childhood.
I remember them well.
If you follow the prevailing winds from South Australia’s Maralinga eastwards you hit the place where I spent my childhood years.
At the same time as many of the “tests”.
Could have been worse of course, I could have been a human guinea pig on site or one of the indigenous people local to the area.

India has done both. They breached the ‘peaceful-use only’ agreements with the US and Canada, passing that material to their military program in order to develop Smilling Buddha in 1974. Then, in recent years, Indian scientists and companies have leaked materials and technologies to Iran and others. Not deliberate government proliefation, but then neither was AQ Khan. The Government didn’t do enough to stop it.

In addition, the testing of Smiling Buddha led to a major arms race in the region. That in itself makes them responsible for proliferation.

I’m no more demonizing India by pointing to the fact that their government has a terrible record on nuclear proliferation than I am anti-American for criticising the Bush regime or a self-hating Jew for criticising the Israeli Government’s actions.

Even though Robert doesn’t believe it, there are plenty of alternatives to coal and nuclear which could go up as fast (given how long it takes to commission nuclear reactors), cheaper, and without causing greenhouse emissions or increasing proliferation risks. The two biggest would have to be geothermal or solar thermal.

Every single shipment of uranium, of reprocessed uranium, of nuclear waste, increases the risk that one day somebody will detonate a nuclear bomb again. Nothing in the world is worth taking that risk, when it can feasibly be avoided.

“Lateline” last night.
Now where was Tom when they had Downer answering [sic] questions?

On morality, I think the greater urgency is to help India decarbonise. There is a fair bit of pragmatism in that. The sods are hell-bent on industrialising and have made it clear that they did not cause the global warming problem and they are going to insist on doing their share of CO2 emitting as determined by them.

Eventually you need an agreed regime of emitting and the WTO with the will and power to sanction states that don’t play the game. But that’s akin to hopeless dreaming in the near to mid-term.

We do need to revisit the nonproliferation treaty but can’t even begin until Bush is out of the way.

Nope.
Not assuming that at all at all.
I’m assuming they need uranium for their nuclear programme, whatever the aims of such are.
That’s why they want to buy the stuff.
If they didn’t want it they wouldn’t buy it.
That includes uranium for weapons production.
And so if we sell them uranium it releases some of the uranium they are getting from elsewhere [whatever amount that is] to be directed at weapons production.
If I have enough money to buy food and a gun, just enough or maybe even not enough for both, and you give me money for food then some of the money I was going to spend on food can now be directed at buying a gun.
Thanks, you just helped me buy a gun, even if none of your specific dollar notes went to the purchase of the gun.
Simple.
But Mr. Downer doesn’t understand that [or at least doesn’t seem to] and Tony Jones let it pass by in a whoosh over his head.
And Robert I thought you would know this stuff, I’d have bet you even know the fancy economics jargon phrase that describes it.
There has gotta be one.
Anybody?

…the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative, officially announced on July 27, 2007, can be considered the final nail in the coffin of a hopeless idea.

Then:

As for the latest treaty between the United States and India, it offers considerable assistance by the United States to India in the sphere of peaceful development, without however constraining India in any way from further development of nuclear weapons. In this way, it clearly is rewarding, as opposed to punishing, India. And the correct interpretation everyone is giving this treaty is that, when it suits its political objectives, the United States will not oppose proliferation. So why should anyone else restrain themselves?

Phillip Adams conversation with William Langewiesche is worth a listen.

My own position is that I’d be prepared to sell uranium to India for power generation as a technically competent stable democracy, for reasons set out by Robert, but I’d have to be convinced they were going to deal appropriately with the waste.

But I also think the international community should be working on the Pakistan-India conflict in general, which is the place those bombs could go off. What happens if we trade active support for a civilian nuclear program for inspection?

I know the Indians became involved in bombmaking because they were afraid of the Chinese, but that must be less of an issue now. Besides the fact that delivery to Pakistan is presumably easier than a major Chinese city.

Is it possible to create bilateral disarmament between India and Pakistan. One benefit - that is going to calm the Iranians down, with their own commitment to a nuclear arsenal. Although the Iranians have a much longer list of bomb making countries loitering just beyond their borders.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6946210.stm

The title is “Chernobyl, not a wildlife haven”.