Mohamed Elbaradei
Director General Emeritus of
International Atomic Energy Agency |
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
A global nuclear expert called for a multinational approach toward the nuclear fuel cycle instead of a monopolistic one, mostly involving a handful of global powerhouses.
Mohamed Elbaradei, director general emeritus of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), proposed Thursday the establishment of a fuel bank of low-enriched uranium for nuclear power generation.
"This would be a physical stockpile of low-enriched uranium, serving as a last-resort reserve for countries with nuclear power programs, which face a supply disruption for non-commercial reasons," Elbaradei said during a keynote speech at the Summit of Honor on Atoms for Peace and Environment (SHAPE) 2010 in Seoul.
Kazakhstan has already offered to host the fuel bank under the auspice of the IAEA, which has $150 million at its disposal to launch the project.
The Egypt-born expert said that multilateralism should be applied to other areas associated with nuclear issues, including the enrichment or reprocessing of uranium.
He said this idea is by no means new as it stretches back to the dawn of the nuclear age.
"All new enrichment and reprocessing activities, anywhere in the world, in future should be put exclusively under multilateral control," Elbaradei said. "A final step would be to convert all existing enrichment and reprocessing facilities from national to multinational operations."
To achieve this goal, he said there is a prerequisite of a global, verifiable treaty on the prohibition of fissile material production for nuclear weapons as part of efforts aimed at moving toward a world free from nuclear weapons.
"This is, clearly, a tall order. However, if we lack the vision and the will to move in that direction, we risk witnessing the emergence of more and more nuclear-weapon-capable states, in addition to those which already have nuclear arsenals," Elbaradei said.
"Instead of moving toward a global security system that does not depend on nuclear weapons, we could quickly find ourselves living in a world that is much more dangerous and volatile than the one we have today."
Currently, a total of nine countries have nuclear warheads whose number totals up to 23,000 across the world.
On top of the nine, including the United States and France, Elbaradei said that several dozen others could easily have the knowledge and the capacity to master uranium enrichment and plutonium separation, the must to develop nuclear weapons.
This is bad news at a time when nuclear power is widely regarded as an alternative way for generating electricity en masse as the Earth increasingly runs out of fossil fuels such as crude oil and coal.
Elbaradei warned against the mindset of many political leaders, which deem nuclear weapons as a sign of prestige. Worse, terrorists also attempt to acquire the deadly weapons.
"The belief that nuclear weapons confer prestige on a country or provide an insurance policy against attack is depressingly persistent and several countries have tried to develop clandestine weapon programs," he said.
"Most worryingly of all, terrorist groups appear determined to acquire nuclear explosive devices."
Elbaradei led the IAEA for more than 10 years, from 1997 to 2009 while serving three terms as its director general. The IAEA is an intergovernmental organization, which is part of the United Nations system.
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