The esteemed nuclear guru, the late Dr Alvin Weinberg, wrote in Science magazine four decades ago:
“We nuclear people have made
a Faustian bargain with society. On the one hand, we offer -- in the catalytic
nuclear burner (breeder reactor) -- an inexhaustable source of energy. Even in
the short range, when we use ordinary reactors, we offer energy that is cheaper
than energy from fossil fuel. Moreover, this source of energy, when properly
handled, is almost nonpolluting. . . .
But the price that we demand
of society for this magical energy source is both a vigilance and a longevity
of our social institutions that we are quite unaccustomed to. In a way, all of
this was anticipated during the old debates over nuclear weapons. . . . . In a
sense, we have established a military priesthood which guards against
inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, which maintains what a priori seems to be a
precarious balance between readiness to go to war and vigilance against human
errors that would precipitate war . . .
It seems to me (and in this
I repeat some views expressed very well by Atomic Energy Commissioner Wilfred
Johnson) that peaceful nuclear energy probably will make demands of the same
sort on our society, and possibly of even longer duration.”
[Weinberg, Alvin;
"Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, 7 July 1972, p33]
Yesterday in Parliament, MPs discussed the latest mad action by the North Korean leadership, the execution by machine gun of Jang Sung-taek, the second most senior politician in North Korea, who was also the uncle of the President, Kim Jong-un.
(Hansard, 16 December 2013 : Column 477-84; http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131216/debtext/131216-0001.htm#1312161000017)
But Britain's role in providing the basis for the North Korean nuclear programme got no airing It should have
Britain’s early unintended export of nuclear
proliferation
In the
same year the IAEA was founded, the UK made one of its first forays into
international nuclear trade, with Iraq, and [with] the opening Baghdad Pact
Nuclear Centre on 31 March 1957. It was part of the UK’s own Atoms for Peace efforts.
According
to a Parliamentary reply by Michel Heseltine in December 1992, “Iraq
ceased to participate in the activities of the training centre when it was
transferred to Tehran following the revolution in Iraq in 1959.”
In light
of subsequent geo-political history in the region, that was out of the atomic
frying pan, into the nuclear fire!
Around
this time Britain also sold a single Magnox nuclear plant each to Japan and to
Italy respectively.
It is
also arguable that the British Magnox nuclear plant design – which after all
was primarily built as a military plutonium production factory – provided the
blueprint for the North Korean military plutonium production programme too!
Here is
what a Conservative minister, Douglas Hogg – later infamous for his moat – told
former Labour MP, Llew Smith, in a written parliamentary reply on 25 May
1994:
“We do
not know whether North Korea has drawn on plans of British reactors in the
production of its own reactors. North Korea possesses a graphite moderated
reactor which, while much smaller, has generic similarities to the reactors
operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc. However, design information of these
British reactors is not classified and has appeared in technical journals.”
North Korea’s other method of producing its
enriched uranium nuclear explosives, via its uranium enrichment plant, also
originated from the UK. The blueprints were stolen by Pakistani scientist, Dr
A.Q.Khan, from the URENCO enrichment plant (one third owned by the
UK) in Holland in the early 1970s. Pakistan subsequently sold the technology to
Iran, who later exchanged for North Korean Nodong missiles.
A technical delegation from the A Q Khan Research Labs
visited Pyongyang in the summer of 1996. The secret enrichment plant
was said to be based in caves near Kumch’ang-ni, 100 miles north of
Pyonyang, some thirty miles north west of the plutonium production reactor at
Yongbon. Defectors have located the plant at Yongjo-ri, Taechon, Mount Chonma
or Ha’gap 20 miles northeast of Yongbon-kun, where US satellite photos showed
tunnel entrances being built
Hwang Jang-yop, a former aid to President Kim Il-sung, the grandfather
of the current North Korean President, who became the highest ranking North
Korean official to defect when he fled in 1997, revealed details to
Western intelligence investigators. ( source p.281 of “Deception: Pakistan, The United States,
and the Global Weapons Conspiracy, Atlantic Books, 2007, by Adrian Levy and
Catherine Scott-Clark).
So the
UK’s proud nuclear export record involves provision of support to both Iraq and
Iran, and indirectly to North Korea.
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