Nuclear Export Policies and the Non-proliferation Regime

Few technologies have promised the extremes of danger and benefit, or generated the fear and the enthusiasm, presented by and associated with nuclear power. Domestically, the hope for cheap, abundant energy has been set against environmental and safety concerns. Internationally, nuclear power as an instrument of economic growth and of energy independence has been set against the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fear of nuclear weapons proliferation. In the last decade, the unfavourable aspects of this duality have been strengthened. Domestic opposition to nuclear power development, reinforced by the potent symbol of Three Mile Island, has had devastating results in some countries, while the economic virtues of nuclear power have been rendered ambiguous at best by inflation and stricter regulation. And India’s test of a nuclear explosive device in May 1974 signalled — though it did not of itself cause entirely — the start of a period of increasing doubt about the effectiveness of the nonproliferation regime. Nuclear exporters, individually and collectively, began to reconsider their policies — a process which created tension not only among suppliers but also between nuclear haves and have-nots. The prospects of increasing use of nuclear power, of growing stockpiles of plutonium, and of the development of national enrichment capabilities raised fears that weapons-usable material would be more readily available and less easily controlled than formerly.