Helen Caldicott on the dangers of uranium exportation and the contradictions of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty:
Article IV of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty states that all countries have the inalienable right to obtain technology to generate nuclear power and electricity, even as Article VI specifies that nuclear armed nations will disarm as soon as possible. Clearly these two articles contradict each other. Only two elements, uranium and plutonium, can provide the fissionable fuel for nuclear weapons.
It logically follows that any country with a uranium enrichment facility for nuclear power generation allowed under Article IV can also produce weapons-grade uranium, while any country with a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant can manufacture up to 250 kilograms of plutonium each year — theoretically enough to produce 50 bombs.
Because the radioactive life of plutonium is more than 250,000 years and the life of uranium is measured in billions of years, any country powered by nuclear electricity will have the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons over aeons of time.
It is unfathomable that intelligent leaders and the scientists who are employed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which simultaneously actively promotes nuclear power while policing and preventing the attainment of nuclear weapons, do not understand the outstanding fallacies and contradictions inherent in the treaty. The IAEA admits that it is understaffed, underfunded and its inspection of reactors leaves much to be desired.
H/t to Lynette Dumble for bringing this to my attention.
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