Institutional aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle

Abstract

Since the mid 1970s, the international discussion of nuclear proliferation has come into a state of flux. Intensive efforts were made in the 1960s, especially on the part of the super-powers, to prevent further horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons via a maintenance of the status quo in the area of strategic nuclear capability. The appropriate means to this end were seen at that time in the renunciation of nuclear weapons construction by non-nuclear weapons states, accompanied by a general freedom in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy, even with active support and assistance by the nuclear powers. This carefully weighed compromisewas cristallized in 1968 in the form of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). The USA have commented on this treaty: "In the history of international diplomacy it is hard to recall a treaty more painstakingly negotiated, in due recognition of the interests of so many governments and of its worldwide impact and importance. " /1/ In the following years the Treaty was ratified by more than one hundred countries. A satisfactory consolidation became thus apparent in a situation generally recognized within the international community as being very threatening. Five years after the coming into force of the NPT, however, this development was to obtain a new direction which would basically call into question the consensus that had been achieved with such great difficulty. The initiation for this turn of events was, above all, the nuclear explosive test by India in 1974. Although India had not ratified the NPT, Canada, Australia and above all, the United States took this explosion as grounds for a reappraisal of the consensus expressed in the NPT. As a result of this re-thinking in the interest of strengthened proliferation resistance, the dividinq line for non-nuclear weapons stateswas no langer to be drawn between peaceful and military use of nuclear energy but rather within the field of peaceful application itself, at that Point where a potential military misuse becomes ...