Nuclear Proliferation

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Signs of activity abound. Hundreds of companies are now prospecting for uranium where dozens did a few years ago. Argentina, Australia and South Africa are drawing up plans to begin enriching uranium, and other countries are considering doing the same. Egypt is reviving its program to develop nuclear power.
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Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said this year that “the international community seems almost to be sleepwalking” down a path where states, after long living without nuclear arms, now feel compelled to revisit their logic.

He warned of a new arms race — not one of superpowers, but of regional powers. “Perhaps most damaging of all,” he concluded, “there is also a perception that the possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction offers the best protection against being attacked.”
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Democrats and Republicans spent the past week arguing over who lost control of North Korea, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. But seeds of the problem were planted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, just months after the armistice ended the fighting on the Korean Peninsula in 1953.
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Dr. Khan sold plans and parts for Pakistan’s first-generation centrifuge, the P-1, as well as the next generation, the P-2, which can spin faster to enrich uranium more rapidly.

Investigators are still trying to learn where else Dr. Khan may have planted his nuclear seeds. They discovered outposts of his network in Dubai, Malaysia and South Africa and found that before his downfall in 2004 he visited at least 18 countries, including Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The worrisome enrichment trends involve not just stealthy military advances but also soaring demands for nuclear power, driven by rising populations, dwindling oil supplies and fears that the combustion of fossil fuels is warming the planet.

“The nuclear renaissance is gaining momentum,” said George B. Assie, vice president for business development at Cameco, the world’s largest publicly traded uranium company, based in Canada.

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