Nuclear Watch
Weekly alerts for reporting
on nuclear proliferation and energy.

Past Editions of Nuclear Watch

 

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February 9, 1998
By Mark Hibbs

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France: Government decision to pull the plug on its fast breeder reactor will lead to major changes in French nuclear waste policy, which will have a global impact. Last week French premier Lionel Jospin announced that the Superphoenix plutonium-producing reactor will never be restarted. Industry officials say this means that France will now shift from a plutonium-based nuclear energy strategy to one centered on long-term dry storage of spent fuel, an approach increasingly favored by most nuclear nations, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Germany. The decision to close the reactor will also increase pressure against a restart of Japan's Monju reactor, now down for two years after a severe sodium fire and awaiting political clearance for a restart. The French move will also tighten the noose around Russia's breeder program, which already has run out of funds to build the next series of BN-800 reactors.

 

Iraq: Russian efforts at the UN to end IAEA inspections in Iraq go nowhere. Senior officials close to the UN Security Council say that until the UN Special Commission responsible for eliminating Iraq's mass destruction weapons programs gain long-term access to hundreds of warehouses and other buildings on presidential compounds in Iraq, a Russian draft resolution to end International Atomic Energy Agency inspections will make no headway. Resolving the nuclear issue may take many months, according to UN officials.

 

Asia: Asian efforts to set up a regional nuclear energy safeguards system rivalling that of the IAEA may have suffered another setback following a recent report by the Washington-based Atlantic Council which encourages Pacific states instead to take small, initial steps toward regional nuclear cooperation. The report suggests that the Pacific Nuclear Council, an association of nuclear energy-generating states in the region, may gradually become the centerpiece of efforts to create an "Asiatom" or "Pacatom" organization, which may eventually call for creation of an international nuclear waste storage center or repository in Asia. Japanese experts launched ambitious plans in this direction in the early 1990s, but have run around on opposition from China and the U.S.

 

Pakistan: Pakistan raises the nuclear stakes. Following announcement by leaders of India's Hindu BJP party that it would declare India a nuclear weapons state if it wins national elections this spring, Pakistan's ruling party responded by saying it would likely do the same. In 1996, the last time the BJP took power, moderates within the party thwarte a bid by defense hawks to declare India nuclear. Declaration by both states of nuclear weapons status would likely assure that neither would ever accept comprehensive international inspections of their nuclear activities, and set back efforts to coax both into a global comprehensive nuclear weapons test ban regime.

 

 

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Nuclear Watch is written exclusively for Global Beat by Mark Hibbs, the European Editor of Nucleonics Week and Nuclear Fuel, leading specialist newsletters on international nuclear affairs, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. Hibbs, based in Bonn, Germany, covers nuclear energy and proliferation problems in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia.

 

Mark Hibbs' coordinates:
Tel: x49-228-215051
Fax: x49-228-218849
E-mail: mhibb@mh.com

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