The Great Debate UK

from Reuters Investigates:

Is a 10 percent chance of disaster too high for a nuclear power station?

Kevin Krolicki has another alarming special report from Japan today challenging the assertion that the disaster facing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was beyond expections.

The report quotes Tokyo Electric's own researchers who did a study in 2007 on the risk of tsunamis: 

The research paper concluded that there was a roughly 10 percent chance that a tsunami could test or overrun the defenses of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant within a 50-year span based on the most conservative assumptions.

But Tokyo Electric did nothing to change its safety planning based on that study, which was presented at a nuclear engineering conference in Miami in July 2007.

Read the full special report in PDF format here.

from Global News Journal:

What’s really behind Merkel’s nuclear U-turn?

(German Chancellor Angela Merkel promises a more rapid shift to renewable energy sources during a speech in the Bundestag lower house of parliament on March 17)

The consensus view in Germany is that Angela Merkel's abrupt reversal on nuclear energy after Fukushima was a transparent ploy to shore up support in an important state election in Baden-Wuerttemberg. If indeed that was her intention (she denies any political motive) then she miscalculated horribly. Her party was ousted from government in B-W on Sunday after running the prosperous southern region for 58 straight years. But what if Merkel was really thinking longer-term -- ie beyond the state vote to the next federal election in 2013? After the Japan catastrophe she may well have realised that her chances of getting elected to a third term were next-to-nil if she didn't pivot quickly on nuclear. There are two good reasons why that is probably a safe assumption. First is the extent of anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany. A recent poll for Stern magazine showed nearly two in three Germans would like to see the country's 17 nuclear power plants shut down within 5 years.  The nuclear issue was the decisive factor in the B-W election. And you can bet it will play an important role in the next national vote -- even if it is 2-1/2 years away. The second reason why the reversal looks like a good strategic decision from a political point of view is the dire state of Merkel's junior partner in government -- the Free Democrats. It was the strength of the FDP which vaulted her to a second term in September 2009. But now it looks like their weakness could be her undoing in 2013.  Merkel probably needs the FDP to score at least 10 percent in the next vote to give her a chance of renewing her "black-yellow" coalition. Right now the FDP is hovering at a meagre 5 percent and it is difficult to see how they double that anytime soon. The nuclear shift widens Merkel's options in one fell swoop. Suddenly the issue that made a coalition between Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Greens unthinkable at the federal level has vanished. Her party set a precedent by hooking up with the Greens in the city-state of Hamburg in 2008. Now she has more than two years to lay the foundations for a similar partnership in Berlin. By then voters may see Merkel's nuclear U-turn in a different light. And only then will it be truly clear if it was a huge political mistake, as the Baden-Wuerttemberg vote suggests, or a prescient strategic coup.

from Afghan Journal:

Denuclearising Pakistan

At about the time WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including one related to a secret attempt to remove enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor, a top Pakistani military official held a briefing for journalists that focused on U.S.-Pakistan ties.

Dawn's Cyril Almeida has written a piece based on the officer's comments made on the condition of anonymity, and they offer the closest glimpse you can possibly get of the troubled ties between the allies.

First off, as the officer says, Pakistan has gone from being the "most sanctioned ally" to the "most bullied ally" of the United States. Presumably the sanctions that the officer is referring to relate to those imposed  on Pakistan following its nuclear tests in 1998. And as for the most bullied ally the other comments offer a clue: 

These include and I quote from Almeida's piece:

"The U.S. still has a transactional relationship with Pakistan; the U.S. is interested in perpetuating a state of controlled chaos; and perhaps most explosively given the WikiLeaks revelations, the "real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearise Pakistan."

U.S. and Pakistani security interests aren't the same including over Afghanistan and India, the military officer says. And while Islamabad understood America's growing focus on North Waziristan, it had to first settle South Waziristan and also factor in the blowback any operation in the area would stoke. The officer intriguingly also talks about indications that parties in the conflict in Afghanistan can renounce al Qaeda and even ask it to leave Afghanistan. In other words he is suggesting  that the Taliban are  ready to break ties with al Qaeda  and if so that removes a big obstacle to peace talks.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Wikileaks on Pakistan

In the State Department cables released by Wikileaks and so far reported, the most eye-catching as far as Pakistan is concerned is a row with Washington over nuclear fuel.

According to the New York Times, the cables show:

"A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

The Pakistan Army is deeply sensitive about any questions on the safety of its nuclear weapons.  The country is also often awash with conspiracy theories accusing the Americans of harbouring secret plans to dismantle the nuclear weapons.

That said, the row reported by the NYT appeared to have been about HEU at a nuclear research reactor rather than the weapons themselves, so it may turn out to be less dramatic than it appears.  Pakistan's nuclear weapons are considered to be well-guarded although analysts have cited a risk of militants trying to seize nuclear material which they might use to make a dirty bomb. (For a factbox on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, see here).

Of potentially huge significance for Pakistan are cables, reported in The Guardian, saying that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.

"The Saudi king was recorded as having 'frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme', one cable stated. 'He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,' the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008." The Guardian reported.

from Global News Journal:

Volcano chaos: A pointer to potential Iran/Gulf smoke disruption?

As if they didn’t have enough to think about, planners trying to pin down the unintended consequences of a strike on Iran may be required to reorder their lengthy worry list.

The concern? Iceland’s volcano, or rather, the vivid reminder the exploding mountain provided to governments of the importance of civil emergency planning.

The ash clouds and the flight chaos it produced may be a foretaste, writ large, of the disruption to daily life in the Gulf that could temporarily result from military conflict and its aftermath in the area, some analysts say.

The Kuwait oil fires of the 1990-91 Gulf conflict provide an example of the confusion and damage that can result from smoke and pollution, quite apart from the popular anxiety caused by war itself, write Riad Kahwaji and Theodore Karasik of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. In January, 1991, Iraqi forces torched hundreds of Kuwaiti oil fields, creating clouds of heavy smoke across the northern Gulf in the last moments of the conflict. Saddam Hussein’s action was mainly political, not military: in what Kuwaitis perceived as a monumental act of spite, he was laying waste to an asset he was forced to relinquish.

But the impact was dramatic. Then the world’s worst oilfield disaster, the problem was worsened by winter weather, with oil-laden rain infesting engines in the air and on the ground, they recall.

The clouds did not significantly affect military operations, which by then were virtually finished. But they caused considerable costs, complications and anxieties in the aftermath, temporarily denting confidence among some in the resilience of Kuwait’s post-war recovery efforts.

The fires burned for nine months, blotting out the sun in places around the northern Gulf and causing record low temperatures.  Hundreds of tonnes of chemical compounds known as polyaromatic hydrocarbons and metal particles were propelled into the atmosphere in oilfire smoke or onto the desert floor in spilled crude oil that formed lakes.

Breaking the disarmament deadlock: challenges for 2010

– John Duncan is the UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament. He comments regularly via Twitter and on his own Blog. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Those involved in multilateral arms control and disarmament face a challenging year.

The international community will come together in May at the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York to agree the way forward, twelve months on from President Barack Obama’s landmark speech in Prague about his ambition of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.

But a successful outcome at the NPT RevCon as it is known, is only part of the task ahead in achieving a breakout from the decade of deadlock that has frustrated progress in both the nuclear and conventional weapons multilateral agenda:

In Geneva the Conference on Disarmament must renew its effort to begin negotiation of a Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty -  a new treaty to ban the production of the basic material that goes into nuclear weapons and which, together with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty still awaiting ratification in the U.S. senate, is one of the two key practical steps needed to a draw line under the nuclear arms race. No new production and no testing will give confidence that we really are on the path towards a nuclear weapon free world.

Also in Geneva, the U.S.-Russian talks on reduction of existing nuclear arsenals, of which they hold over 90 percent of stocks are expected to come to a conclusion early in the year.

However, while the old Cold War nuclear powers reaffirmed their commitment to a process of nuclear disarmament at the recent U.N. Security Council Summit, others seem set on a different path. Pakistan alone blocks progress at the CD, while concern over North Korea and Iran has been much in the headlines and achieving progress in 2010 will be no small task.

from UK News:

Can Britain still afford nuclear weapons ?

As the public spending axe starts swinging, attention inevitably turns northwards to the chilly waters of the Clyde where Britain's nuclear deterrent is based.

The four Vanguard class submarines which make up what is left of the UK deterrent come to the end of their lives around 2019 and their Trident missiles will need updating in the 2020s.

The go-ahead for replacement, which will cost some 20 billion pounds, was given by Tony Blair in 2006.

Cheaper alternatives, like having a ballistic missile system or a plane-delivered bomb or cutting the number of subs to three have been mulled over the last few years.

Some people would like to scrap the deterrent altogether, arguing it was never necessary in the first place and that the nature of threats to Britain has changed radically since the Cold War.

Others believe a minimum level of deterrence is vital given the proliferation of nuclear weapons into the Middle East and Asian regions.

What do you think? Is the need to balance our books so great as to end the 52-year British independent deterrent?

from The Great Debate:

Nuclear power: pros and cons

As part of the Reuters Summit on global climate and alternative energy, Reuters.com asked Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club and Ian Hore-Lacy, director of public communication for the World Nuclear Association to discuss the role of nuclear energy. Here are their responses.

(Carl Pope's rebuttal was posted at 8:30 a.m. ET on September 10.)

from The Great Debate:

The Obama-Medvedev security summit

-- Robert Gard (right), a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former president of both National Defense University and the Monterey Institute of International Studies, is chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, where Kingston Reif (left) is deputy director of nuclear non-proliferation. The views expressed are their own. --

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev are meeting this week in Moscow for their first full summit. High on their agenda is the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which will expire on December 5. The expiration of START will mean the loss of the ability to legally limit and verify the two countries’ still enormous numbers of deployed nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

START greatly reduced the dangers posed by U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Under the Treaty, the United States and Russia drastically reduced their deployed nuclear weapons. The agreement also contained a comprehensive set of verification and monitoring provisions that ensured that each side complied with its obligations.

Faced with the impending expiration of START, the Bush administration claimed that the United States and Russia no longer needed formal arms control agreements to manage their strategic relationship. Fortunately, Obama and Medvedev share a different view.

On April 1, Obama and Medvedev issued a joint statement in London in which they agreed to pursue “new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process.” During their summit this week, the two presidents could begin to solidify the actual framework of a START follow-on agreement.

The renewal of the U.S.-Russian arms control process is important for two reasons. First, deeper nuclear reductions can help to strengthen the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the first line of defense against the spread of nuclear weapons. Responsible U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions – a legal obligation under the NPT – is essential to non-nuclear weapons states’ willingness to continue to uphold their own NPT commitments not to pursue nuclear arsenals in the first place.

from The Great Debate:

Iran election opens door to U.S. talks

-- Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --

A wind of change is blowing through Iran, where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces an increasingly tough battle for re-election on Friday.

Whether or not Ahmadinejad fends off reformist Mirhossein Moussavi and two other candidates after a turbulent campaign, Iran is likely to be more open to talks with the United States on a possible "grand bargain" to end 30 years of hostility. Tehran will not give up its nuclear program, whoever wins. But it may be persuaded to stop short of testing or making a bomb.

There is a sense of deja vu about this election.

In 1997, a soft-spoken reformist, Mohammad Khatami, swept to a surprise landslide victory over the establishment candidate, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, on a tide of young people and women clamoring for greater freedom. But after his supporters won control of parliament, the conservative clerical establishment used unelected institutions in Iran's complex power system to neutralize Khatami and block his liberal agenda.

There is, however, a crucial difference this time.

The United States, which had a policy of "dual containment" of Iran and Iraq at the time, never seized the opportunity of Khatami's victory to open a dialogue. Now, U.S. President Barack Obama is waiting with an outstretched hand and has made crucial gestures by accepting the Islamic Republic by its name, offering talks without pre-conditions and admitting Washington's role in ousting nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953.