The next nuclear wave: renaissance or proliferation risk?

Abstract

This article examines the extent of the so-called ‘civil nuclear renaissance’ and the danger it poses to the integrity of the international non-proliferation regime. It also explores the drivers behind the resurgent interest in nuclear energy, as well as the arguments against increased reliance on nuclear power. The article argues that growing interest in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy – even when tempered by strong safety, environmental, economic and security concerns – poses a real challenge to global non-proliferation objectives, a challenge exacerbated by the contradiction at the heart of the non-proliferation treaty architecture. However, the article does not accept the view that civil nuclear capability will inexorably lead to proliferation. Rather, it finds that motive is as central as capability in determining the likelihood of proliferation, and highlights the difficulties of safeguarding against future intentions. Following a brief discussion of the Southeast Asian and North Asian contexts, the paper concludes with a short discussion of how proliferation risks stemming from an increase in nuclear energy might be mitigated.

Keywords:

• nuclear energy
• non-proliferation
• Southeast Asia
• North Asia

Notes

1 International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2008 (Paris: IEA, 2008).

2 Ibid., 37.

3 Michael J. Bradshaw, ‘The Geopolitics of Global Energy Security’, Geography Compass 3, no. 5 (2009): 1920–37; Stuart Harris, ‘Global and Regional Orders and the Changing Geopolitics of Energy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 64, no. 2 (2010): 166–85.

4 Peter Cornelius and Jonathan Story, ‘China and Global Energy Markets’, Orbis 51, no. 1 (2007): 5–20; Nader Elhefnawy, ‘The Impending Oil Shock’, Survival 50, no. 2 (2008): 37–66; Leonard Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, The Nonproliferation Review 16, no. 2 (2009): 269–84.

5 Elhefnawy, ‘The Impending Oil Shock’; Geoff Gunn, ‘Southeast Asia's Looming Nuclear Power Industry’, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/–Geoffrey–Gunn/2659 (accessed September 21, 2010).

6 Harris, ‘Global and Regional Orders and the Changing Geopolitics of Energy’, 169.

7 Ann Florini and Benjamin K. Sovacool, ‘Who Governs Energy? The Challenges Facing Global Energy Governance’, Energy Policy 37, no. 12 (2009): 5239–48.

8 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’.

9 Ibid., 269–82.

10 Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA at a Crossroads, Statement to the Fifty-Second Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference 2008, September 29, 2008, http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2008/ebsp2008n008a.html (accessed May 17, 2011).

11 Ibid.

12 Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements’, International Security 34, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 7–41.

13 Michael Dittmar, ‘Taking Stock of Nuclear Renaissance that Never was’, Sydney Morning Herald, August 18, 2010 (accessed September 26, 2011). Nuclear electricity generation worldwide as at September 13, 2011 was 13.8% (World Nuclear Association, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html (accessed September 26, 2011).

14 Benjamin Sovacool, ‘A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and Renewable Electricity in Asia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 40, no. 3 (August 2010): 393–400.

15 Ibid.

16 According to James Acton, Associate of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ‘Fukushima is not the worst nuclear accident ever but it is the most complicated and the most dramatic’. See ‘Analysis: A month on, Japan Nuclear Crisis Still Scarring’, Reuters, April 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/us-nuclear-japan-month-idUSTRE7377I120110408 (accessed April 12, 2011).

17 Greg Ansley, ‘Spotlight on Nuclear Power's Dark Side’, NZ Herald, March 29, 2011, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10713491 (accessed May 20, 2011).

18 Gerd Rosenkranz, Nuclear Power – Myth and Reality: The Risks and Prospects of Nuclear Power (Berlin: Heinrich Boll Foundation, 2006), 3.

19 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, 269.

20 Ibid., 280–81.

21 Ibid., 280–81.

22 Trevor Findlay, The Future of Nuclear Energy to 2030 and its Implications for Safety, Security and Nonproliferation (Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2010); Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’.

23 Andrew Symon, Nuclear Power in Southeast Asia: Implications for Australia and Non-Proliferation (Sydney: Lowy Institute, 2008), 9.

24 Rosencranz, Nuclear Power – Myth and Reality, 3.

25 See for example, S. Thomas et al., The Economics of Nuclear Power (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, 2007).

26 Extrapolations of growth in the global supply of uranium is heavily dependent on a doubling of mining output in Kazakhstan by 2018, which is by no means a certainty (Dittmar, ‘Taking Stock of Nuclear Renaissance that Never Was’).

27 Bradshaw, ‘The Geopolitics of Global Energy Security’; IAE, World Energy Outlook 2008.

28 Elhefnawy ‘The Impending Oil Shock’, 52.

29 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, 282.

30 Rosencranz, Nuclear Power – Myth and Reality, 3.

31 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, 272.

32 Wade Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’, The Nonproliferation Review 17, no. 1 (2010): 139–59.

33 Ibid., 153.

34 IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc140.pdf (accessed November 1, 2010).

35 Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’, 150.

36 Ibid. Until the adoption of the Additional Protocol to the treaty in 1997, the IAEA did not have the authority to inspect undeclared facilities. On this basis, Jack Garvey finds it unsurprising that for many years the IAEA failed to detect noncompliance in Iraq, Iran and Libya: ‘although the Additional Protocol expands the authority of the IAEA to inspect undeclared facilities, as of 2007 only 78 (as of 2007) states have ratified and enacted the Protocol’ (Jack Garvey, ‘A New Architecture for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, Journal of Conflict and Security Law 12, no. 3 (2007): 339–57).

37 Jan Ruzicka and Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘The Puzzle of Trusting Relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, International Affairs 86, no. 1 (2010): 69–85.

38 Christoph Bluth, Matthew Kroenig, Rensselaer Lee and William Sailor, ‘Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, International Security 35, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 184–200; Garvey, ‘A New Architecture for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’; Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’.

39 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, 272 –3.

40 Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’, 153.

41 N.J. Wheeler and K. Booth, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2008).

42 Garvey, ‘A New Architecture for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’.

43 Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements’; Rosencranz, Nuclear Power – Myth and Reality; Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’.

44 Bluth et al., ‘Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’; Kurt Campbell, ‘Reconsidering a Nuclear Future: Why Countries Might Cross Over to the Other Side’, in The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices, Kurt Campbell et al. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute Press, 2004); Matthew Kroenig, ‘Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance’, American Political Science Review 103, no. 1 (February 2009): 113–33.

45 Fuhrmann, ‘Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements’, 8.

46 Ibid., 39.

47 Ibid.

48 Bluth et al., ‘Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’.

49 Ibid., 188.

50 Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Non-Proliferation (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995); Scott D. Sagan, ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb’, International Security 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996/97): 54–86. Mazarr denies the validity of the ‘technical school’ of proliferation analysis, ‘which holds that the availability of nuclear weapons in itself constitute sufficient motive for pursuing them’, in favour of the ‘motivational school’, which maintains that ‘a state requires very specific and powerful motives to seek a nuclear arsenal, motives intimately connected with that state's view of its own security’ (Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, 16).

51 Campbell, ‘Reconsidering a Nuclear Future’, 18.

52 Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, 16.

53 Campbell, ‘Reconsidering a Nuclear Future’, 19.

54 Shen Dingli, Toward a Nuclear Weapons Free World: A Chinese Perspective (Sydney: Lowy Institute, 2009).

55 Ibid., 8.

56 Wheeler and Booth, The Security Dilemma.

57 Rosencranz notes that ‘the fission cycles for peaceful and non-peaceful applications run largely parallel and technologies and expertise are often suited for dual use’ (Rosencranz, Nuclear Power – Myth and Reality, 17).

58 Ibid.

59 Gregory L. Schulte, ‘Stopping Proliferation Before it Starts: How to Prevent the Next Nuclear Wave’, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2010), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66452/gregory-l-schulte/stopping-proliferation-before-it-starts (accessed September 30, 2010).

60 Bluth et al., ‘Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’.

61 See, for example, Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb.

62 Gunn, ‘Southeast Asia's Looming Nuclear Power Industry’; Bernice Han, ‘SE Asia Eyes Nuclear Energy to Meet Power Demand’, ABS-CBN News, http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/06/09/10/se-asia-eyes-nuclear-energy-meet-power-demand (accessed September 21, 2010); Symon, Nuclear Power in Southeast Asia.

63 Symon, Nuclear Power in Southeast Asia, 4.

64 Ibid., 3.

65 Han, ‘SE Asia Eyes Nuclear Energy to Meet Power Demand’. The Philippines built a nuclear plant in the 1970s but it was never operated commercially because of safety concerns and alleged corruption in the contract process.

66 Andrew Selth, Burma and North Korea: Smoke or Fire? (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute Limited, 2009).

67 Ibid.

68 Gunn, ‘Southeast Asia's Looming Nuclear Power Industry’.

69 In addition, all Southeast Asian countries are parties to the NPT and have put in place a regional Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ). Countries in the region ‘have generally established sound international standing in regards to their policies and actions on non-proliferation’ (Symon, Nuclear Power in Southeast Asia, 3).

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Quoted in Han, ‘SE Asia Eyes Nuclear Energy to Meet Power Demand’.

73 Rory Medcalf, Wicked Weapons: North Asia's Nuclear Tangle (Sydney: Lowy Institute, 2009).

74 Ibid.

75 The DPRK has conducted two nuclear tests to date (in 2006 and 2009), and is continuing efforts to design and construct a reliable, deployable warhead: Rod Lyon, North Korea: The Reverberations of 25 May (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute Limited, 2009).

76 See, for example, Campbell et al., The Nuclear Tipping Point.

77 Gunn, ‘Southeast Asia's Looming Nuclear Power Industry’.

78 Saurav Jha, ‘Japan's New Civil Nuclear Turn’, World Politics Review, August 3, 2010, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/6187/japans-new-civil-nuclear-turn (accessed September 15, 2010).

79 Ibid.

80 Frank N. Von Hippel, ‘South Korean Reprocessing: An Unnecessary Threat to the Nonproliferation Regime’, Arms Control Today, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_03/VonHippel (accessed September 15, 2010).

81 Ibid.

82 Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’; Medcalf, Wicked Weapons.

83 World Nuclear Association (WNA), ‘Nuclear Power in South Korea’, WNA, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf81.html (accessed September 21, 2010).

84 Von Hippel, ‘South Korean Reprocessing’.

85 For example, from 1984 to 2007 the amount of nuclear material under safeguards increased more than tenfold, resulting in much greater monitoring responsibilities for the IAEA (IAEA Commission of Eminent Persons, Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity: The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond, May 2008).

86 Kenneth N. Luongo, ‘Loose Nukes in New Neighbourhoods: The Next Generation of Proliferation Prevention’, Arms Control Today 39, no. 4 (2009): 6–14.

87 ElBaradei, IAEA At a Crossroads.

88 IAEA Commission of Eminent Persons, Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity.

89 Schulte, ‘Stopping Proliferation Before It Starts’. While more than 120 countries have signed the Additional Protocol, some countries that have or are planning significant nuclear programmes, such as Brazil and Egypt, have refused to do so, while others that have signed the protocol are yet to ratify it.

90 In his speech to the IAEA's 2008 General Conference, Mohamed ElBaradei highlighted that no fewer than 90% of the agency's nuclear security program, 30% of its nuclear security programme and 15% of its verification programme, was dependent on voluntary funding (Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA At a Crossroads, http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2008/ebsp2008n008.html, accessed September 30, 2010).

91 IAEA Commission of Eminent Persons, Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity.

92 Luongo, ‘Loose Nukes in New Neighbourhoods’.

93 Huntley, ‘The Abolition Aspiration’; Yuri Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: The Need to Build Trust (New York and Geneva: UNIDIR, 2010).

94 Weiss, ‘Reliable Energy Supply and Nonproliferation’, 272.

95 Mohamed ElBaradei, ‘Towards a Safer World’, The Economist, October 16, 2003.

96 Garvey, ‘A New Architecture for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’.

97 Barack Obama, ‘Remarks of President Barack Obama (Excerpts)’, Arms Control Today 39, no. 4 (2009): 28.

98 Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

99 Ruzicka and Wheeler, ‘The Puzzle of Trusting Relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’; Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle; George Perkovich and James Acton, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Adelphi Paper 396 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2008), 76–8.

100 Ruzicka and Wheeler, ‘The Puzzle of Trusting Relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, 79.

101 Symon, Nuclear Power in Southeast Asia, 11.

102 Ruzicka and Wheeler, ‘The Puzzle of Trusting Relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’; Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

103 Frank N. Von Hippel, ‘National Fuel Stockpiles: An Alternative to a Proliferation of National Enrichment Plants?’ Arms Control Today, September 2008, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_09/vonhippel (accessed April 12, 2010).

104 Garvey, ‘A New Architecture for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’.

105 Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

106 World Nuclear Energy Agency (WNA), http://www.world-nuclear.org/briefings/policy_responses_fukushima_accident.html (accessed September 22, 2011).

107 As at 13 September 2011. According to the WNA, operational reactors are those connected to the grid; reactors under construction are those where the first concrete for a reactor has been poured, or a major refurbishment is under way; planned reactors are those where approvals, funding or major commitments are in place, expected to be in operation within approximately 8–10 years; and proposed reactors are those where specific program or site proposals exist, expected to be in operation within approximately 15 years, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html (accessed September 22, 2011).