A Nuclear Renaissance in the Middle East?
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It is difficult to see how the security threats raised by the spread of nuclear power to the Middle East can be controlled except by the strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the world's main barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons.
The increased use of nuclear power to generate electricity brings with it threats to regional and global security - specifically, increased risks of nuclear-weapon proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Nuclear-power reactors inevitably produce plutonium as a by-product, plutonium that could be used by countries or terrorist groups to fabricate nuclear weapons.
Civil and military nuclear technologies are essentially the same. There are, therefore, powerful reasons to be concerned at the prospect of the nuclear renaissance spreading to the Middle East, perhaps the world's most volatile region.
New or revived plans to generate electricity or desalinate water by nuclear power are being explored in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, the Gulf States, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen (1). This nuclear upsurge is remarkable given the plentiful sources of non-nuclear energy in the region and the current lack of nuclear energy there.
Each of the countries considering nuclear power says that its interest is related to the need to diversify its energy sources and to the economic benefits of nuclear power (2). Also mentioned is the need to use nuclear energy to desalinate sea-water to alleviate growing shortages of water. But many, if not most, of them are probably also attracted by the option of developing nuclear weapons that a civil nuclear programme would give them.
This is certainly what is generally assumed about the nuclear programme of Iran.
. Iran's nuclear programme activities are one reason for the upsurge of interest in nuclear energy in the Middle East
. Iran is currently the only country in the Middle East
with a completed nuclear-power reactor, built by the Russians at Bushehr and soon to be made operational (3). Iran
continues to expand its uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, built to produce low-enriched uranium for nuclear-reactor fuel but which could also be used to produce highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. And the heavy-water research reactor being built at Arak could produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
The Arak reactor will be very similar to the reactor operated by Israel to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons. Israel is particularly concerned about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, regarding it as a potential threat to its very survival.
Iran believes that the establishment of a significant nuclear-power programme, thereby making it at least a latent nuclear-weapon state, will, together with its ballistic-missile force, consolidate its position as a regional power. Not very surprisingly, some of Iran's neighbours want to match Iran's presumed nuclear aspirations.
The fact that Israel is a nuclear-weapon power is another stimulant for some countries in the region (including Iran) to acquire the capability to fabricate nuclear weapons. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel
has about 80 nuclear weapons, about 50 carried on ballistic missiles and the rest on bombs for delivery by aircraft (4). (However, Israel maintains a policy of "ambiguity" on its nuclear weapons, insisting that it will not be the first state to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East, whatever that means.)
Middle Eastern countries are being encouraged to develop civil nuclear programmes by France. France is undoubtedly the world leader in nuclear power, currently generating about 80 per cent of its electricity by nuclear power. It wants to export nuclear power reactors and associated services to a number of countries around the world. In particular, it hopes to do nuclear deals with countries in the Middle East and North Africa
A number of Arab countries have accumulated significant experience with nuclear technology, mainly by operating research reactors, normally used to train people in nuclear physics and engineering and to produce radioactive isotopes for medical, industrial and agricultural uses. Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Libya and Morocco each have one or more research reactors (5). Some of them have been operating for a long time, allowing the countries to acquire their own scientific base and skilled cadres that could be diverted to a nuclear-weapon programme.
Egypt's nuclear activities, for example, began in 1954. In 1961, it acquired its first research reactor with an output of two megawatts (thermal) from the then Soviet Union
The Argentinean firm INVAP supplied Egypt with its second research reactor, a 22 megawatts (thermal) reactor, which began operating in 1998. Both reactors are operating at the Nuclear Research Center, established by Egypt's Atomic Energy Authority, at Inshas, 60 km north-east of Cairo.
Egypt's nuclear ambitions were given a new lease of life in September 2006 when Egypt's energy minister Hassan Younes told the al-Ahram newspaper of plans to build a nuclear-power station at El-Dabaa, on the Mediterranean coast, within the next 10 years. President Hosni Mubarak announced that Egypt needed to consider investigate new sources of energy, including nuclear power.
Egypt's nuclear activity has raised some concern in Israel which regards Egypt as the most likely candidate to follow Iran in acquiring a latent nuclear-weapons capability. Israel's fear is that Egypt will use its INVAP reactor to produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Egypt has mastered the technology for separating plutonium, albeit on a small scale.
It is difficult to see how the security threats raised by the spread of nuclear power to the Middle East
can be controlled except by the strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the world's main barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons. Only three countries have not joined the NPT - India, Israel and Pakistan
Nevertheless, it is a fragile instrument mainly because the nuclear-weapon Parties to the Treaty have not fulfilled their obligation under Article VI to pursue "negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" (6). Unless these countries soon move towards nuclear disarmament the NPT will be fatally weakened. The growing number of latent nuclear-weapon powers, like those in the Middle East, will then move the world into a state of nuclear anarchy, an unregulated nuclear world.
