Nuclear power was born of the weapons race – the two are intrinsically linked via:
i) expertise,
ii) infrastructure,
iii) covert research and
iv) the fuel itself, namely enriched uranium, its lethal byproduct plutonium (0.001 of a gram is deadly) and tritium (from heavy water used in many reactors).

General Electric and DuPont's Hanford weapons facility, overseen primarily by Westinghouse, produced the plutonium used in the Manhattan Project – instantly killing 130,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Despite:
'I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'....'
- General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War 2 and later US President.

GE also produced neutron triggers for Hydrogen Bombs and remains a major contractor for the US Department of Energy's nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities.
(http://www.newday.com/films/DeadlyDeception.html and
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=16)

The UK's Calder Hall at Sellafield, England, billed as the world's first civil nuclear power station in 1956, was producing not just electricity but also plutonium for nuclear weapons.
(www.corecumbria.co.uk)

India's first nuclear bomb was produced using fuel from a Candian made research reactor, 'capable of manufacturing enough plutonium for one to two bombs a year.'
(www.fas.org/nuke/guide/india/nuke)

Nobel Prize winning physicist Hannes Alven described the peaceful and military atom as 'Siamese twins.'
- 'An Illusion of Protection', Executive Summary, Medical Association for the Prevention of War.


NEW NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS RAISE WEAPONS CONCERNS
13 May 2008: ABC radio's 'AM' story on increased interest in nuclear power due to rising oil prices included an interview on the links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Transcript: here.

Indeed, over 20 countries which have built N-power or research reactors are known to have used their 'peaceful' nuclear facilities for covert weapons research and/or production.

In some cases the military research development was small-scale and short-lived, but in other cases nation states have succeeded in producing nuclear weapons under cover of a peaceful nuclear program: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and now North Korea.
(Institute for Science and International Security, 'Nuclear Weapons Programs Worldwide: An Historical Overview', and Dr. Jim Green, 'Research Reactors and Nuclear Weapons', paper prepared for the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, 2002).

Disarmament is hampered by – and weapons proliferation is also aided by – the heavily flawed safeguards system of the regulator, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which it has acknowledged is 'fairly limited' and runs on a 'shoestring budget'. To touch on this - some (very few) nuclear facilities being subject to Safeguards does not mean they will be inspected, nor do inspections apply to military facilities - only 'civil' ones.

The IAEA's Illicit Trafficking Database recorded over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since '93 (nearly 100 in '04 alone). These activities have the potential to provide fissile materials for nuclear weapons or a wider range of radioactive materials for use in 'dirty bombs'.

Australia-China uranium export deals will involve Australian yellowcake first arriving at a jointly military-run conversion plant, also exempt from IAEA Safeguards (disclosed in the Q&A of the signed Agreements). And China has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Additionally: 'Whether or not Aussie uranium goes directly into Chinese warheads .. or whether it is used in power stations in lieu of uranium that goes into Chinese warheads .. makes little difference. Canberra is about to do a deal with a regime with a record of flouting international conventions.'
- The Taipei Times Editorial, 21/1/06.

and: 'As China ramps up it's power capacity it is aiming to double the proportion sourced from nuclear energy to 4% by 2010. While it had enough uranium resources to support its nuclear weapons program, Madame Fu said China would need to import uranium to meet it's power demands.'
- An admission from China's Australian Ambassador Madame Fu Ying at a Melbourne mining club meeting that Australia supplying uranium to China would support their nuclear weapons program by freeing up their own uranium reserves for this purpose. ('The Australian', 2/12/05, 'China warning on uranium', paragraph 10).

A US/India nuclear deal signed in Dec 2006 allows India (which is not party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) to retain 8 reactors exclusively for military use, exempt from UN inspections. 'The deal could also put pressure on Australia – one of the world's largest suppliers of uranium – to also sell material to India's growing nuclear sector... US critics charged that the pact erodes efforts to contain the spread of nuclear know-how, noting that it leaves India's military nuclear plants outside the safeguards and inspections regime that will cover its civilian plants.' ('Bush signs controversial nuke deal with India', Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Dec 2006).

'Given India's uranium ore crunch and the need to build up our minimum credible nuclear deterrent arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India's advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refueled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade plutonium production.' - K. Subrahmanyam, former head of the India's National Security Advisory Board.

'Whatever reactors we put under safeguards will be decided at India's discretion. We are not firewalling between the civil and military programs in terms of manpower or personnel. That's not on.' - India had no intention to quarantine its military program from its civilian program because nuclear scientists would work across both programs. - India's chief scientific adviser, Rajagopala Chidambaram, in an interview with The Hindu newspaper (The Age, 16/8/07).

The IPCC (around 2,500 international scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) considered a scenario involving a ten-fold increase in nuclear power over this century and calculated that it could produce 50-100 thousand tonnes of plutonium. The IPCC concluded that the security threat "would be colossal". (IPCC, 1995, 'Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses').

'The development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course interchangeable and interdependent.'
- Dean Acheson & David Lilienthal, 'A report on the international control of atomic energy, 16 March 1946.

In 1968 a serious proposal was put forward for nuclear power at Jervis Bay, NSW by then Prime Minister John Gorton, who later admitted that the intention was not only for nuclear energy but also to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

'Almost every action, every piece of research, technological development or industrial activity carried out in the peaceful uses of atomic energy could also be looked upon as a step in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. There is such an overlap in the military and peaceful technologies in these areas that they are virtually one.'
- Sir Phillip Baxter, former head of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, published in Quadrant, 1968.

More recently, the development of the nuclear supply chain in Australia could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in our region (The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Aug 2006).

'Every known route to bombs involves either nuclear power or materials and technology which are available, which exist in commerce, as a direct and essential consequence of nuclear power.'
- Dr. Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado.

'Reprocessing (of uranium fuel) provides the strongest link between commercial nuclear power and proliferation.'
- US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards, June 1977.

'Any country has the right to master these (nuclear) operations for civilian uses. But in doing so, it also masters the most difficult steps in making a nuclear bomb.'
- Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

'The push to bring back nuclear power as an antidote to global warming is a big problem. If you build more nuclear power plants we have toxic waste at least, bomb making at worse.'
- Former US President Bill Clinton, Sep 2006.

'Nuclear energy is a bad fuel, a dirty fuel, a dangerous fuel. This is not a good industry to encourage, and anyone who has an electricity program ipso facto ends up with a nuclear weapons industry.'
- Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, Herald Sun Oct 16 2006.

'If the world as a whole chose nuclear power as the option of choice to replace coal-fired generating plants, we would face a dramatic increase in the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.'
- Former US Vice President Al Gore.

'You can't separate the two because if you can enrich uranium up to 5 per cent or so needed for nuclear power reactors then by putting it through the system time and again, you can get it up to the 93 per cent needed for nuclear weapons and therefore it's a dual purpose technology, usable for both purposes'.
- Dr Frank Barnaby, former British Atomic Weapons Establishment physicist describing the secretive Silex laser uranium enrichment program at Lucas Heights, Sydney.
Click here for the 7.30 Report Transcript.

'It's a nonsense to suggest that laser enrichment of uranium has only a civil application. If you can enrich Uranium-235 by 10% you can enrich it to higher percentages to make it weapons usable. The point is that it's disingenuous to say that Silex are producing or experimenting only for civil purposes.'
- Former Australian Diplomat and author of 'Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia's Nuclear Ambitions', Richard Broinowski.

Further to this:'From the point of view of someone concerned about arms control, is any enrichment facility suspect?'
'Oh, of course'.
- Physicist C. Paul Robinson, former director of Sandia National Laboratories, also led nuclear weapons programs at Los Alamos and served as a U.S. arms control negotiator in the late 1980s. (On Line News Hour,May 27, 2005.)

'If we look to the history of nuclear weapons development, we can see that those countries with nuclear weapons developed them before they developed nuclear power programs. They have produced the special nuclear materials required for nuclear weapons using facilities operated specifically for this purpose - enrichment plants producing (very) high enriched uranium, or reprocessing/plutonium extraction plants together with reactors designed and operated to produce low burn-up plutonium. Indeed, in some of the countries having nuclear weapons, nuclear power remains insignificant or non-existent.'
- John Carlson, head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office.

And then: 'John Carlson, Director of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, has admitted that Australians will not inspect Chinese nuclear facilities to ensure compliance with controls safeguarding non proliferation. He also confirmed that international inspectors would not visit enrichment or conversion facilities in China to ensure Australian uranium did not end up in nuclear weapons.'
- The Age, 5/9/06.

Note: Only 10 Chinese nuclear facilities (including reactors, enrichment plants and reprocessing plants) are currently subject to IAEA safeguards (this doesn't mean they will be inspected). Of these, only 3 Chinese nuclear facilities were inspected by the IAEA in 2005 (IAEA 2005 Annual Report) and, as mentioned, all military facilities are outside the safeguards system of the IAEA.

'It is clear that no international safeguards system can physically prevent diversion or the setting up of an undeclared or clandestine nuclear (weapons) program.'
- IAEA, 1993.

On uranium exports alone, Australia's uranium, once irradiated in nuclear power reactors, have produced over 86 tonnes of plutonium .. enough for about 8,600 nuclear weapons (Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, 2003-04, Annual Report, Annex C, www.asno.dfat.gov.au).

If even the smallest amount of this uranium ends up in nuclear weapons then mining companies like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are responsible for a major WMD problem.

Yet a resounding 92% of Australians polled agree that 'Australia should help negotiate a global treaty to ban and destroy all nuclear weapons' (Roy Morgan research 1998).

USA: A survey carried out in 1997 by Lake, Sosin and Snell said in the US found that 87% of those polled felt, 'the US should negotiate an agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons.'

UK: A poll carried out by MORI in 2005, on behalf of Greenpeace, showed a majority (54%) of the British public oppose the development of a new nuclear weapons system. Only one in three (33%) support their development.

Russia: In 1998 61% of Russians polled by Vox Populi commissioned by TASS said, 'All nuclear weapons states should eliminate such weapons.'

India: 62% of Indians polled by The Hindu in 1998 said, 'India should not produce nuclear bombs.'

Japan: In a Japanese poll by Asahi Shimbun in 1998 78% agreed that, 'all nuclear weapons states should eliminate such weapons.'

Norway: Similarly 92% of Norwegians polled in 1998 by 4 fakta A/S agreed 'Norway should work actively for a ban on nuclear weapons'.

Belgium: 72% of Belgian polled in 1998 by Market Response said they were for 'an initiative on behalf of Belgium with an aim of initiating talks concerning a treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons''.

Canada: 93% of Canadians polled in 1998 by the Angus Reid Group agreed that, 'Canada should take a leadership role in global negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons.'

Turkey: In 2004, an Infakto poll, commissioned by Greenpeace, found that 72% of Turkish people supported the idea of making Turkey a nuclear-free zone and 75% would support Turkey leading an international campaign for international nuclear disarmament.'

Now, ignoring the risks of radioactive 'dirty bombs', the ticking time bombs of high level radioactive wastes and the direct, recognised threats posed by nuclear power plants, 9 countries (the USA, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) hold the world's population to ransom with some 26,000 nuclear weapons. These weapons are fueled by uranium and its byproducts. Just 50 of today's nuclear weapons (Hydrogen bombs) could kill 200 million people, according to the statement of the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists when on 17/1/2007 they moved the hands of the 'Doomsday Clock' two minutes closer to midnight, to rest at 11.55.

'It is important to remember just how indiscriminately destructive these weapons are; to remain passionate about them being outlawed; and to be unyieldingly intolerant about arguments for their retention or use. We are right to be enraged about them, and to maintain that passion and commitment as long as we live.' - Gareth Evans, 17/8/07, Chief Executive of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, former Australian Senator, Foreign Minister and deputy Labor leader.



What about Climate Change?
Nuclear energy is a moot point. Time scale, immense costs, wastes, water and weapons issues aside, it would attempt to address only electricity greenhouse emissions - just one source of the problem, ignoring the 64% (International Energy Agency) of non-electricity global greenhouse emissions: industry, transport, agriculture and deforestation.

'Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top.'
- Alan McDonald, senior IAEA energy analyst, 2004.

'Expansion of nuclear fuel cycle activities need not be part of a response to climate change.'
'The draft report appears to the Review Panel to underestimate the challenge that will confront Australia if it should choose to expand the scope of its nuclear activities.'
'In our view it is unrealistic to believe that a reactor could be operating in as little as ten years. Similarly, the view that only 20 people a year would need to undergo relevant training and education is an underestimate.'
- From the Australian Government's official peer review of the Ziggy Switkowski draft report, chaired by (pro-nuclear) Australian Chief Scientist Dr Jim Peacock, 9/12/2006.

Describing Prime Minister John Howard's endorsement of nuclear fuel as 'the biggest crock of baloney I've heard,' 'How can you talk about a serious alternative form (of energy) if you can't even answer questions about cost, reliability, protection from terrorism and nuclear waste? I mean it's crazy. Especially when there are so many other opportunities.'
- Dr David Suzuki, The Canberra Times, 18/10/2006.


Even the number of the 'advanced' reactor concepts being studied involve a 'closed' fuel cycle that involves reprocessing and thus the actual or potential separation of weapons-useable plutonium (or weapons-useable Uranium-233) from irradiated fuel or targets.
- www.energyscience.org.au.

In relation to nuclear weapons and 'Fourth Generation' reactors:
www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/power-weapons/g4nw