Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Technical Note
.
:
(cont.)
economies
that are more suspicious of
their potential
suppliers.
This is not going to be easy. If the supplier of enrich-
ment services is another country, how could the
rst be
sure that the second would not cut it off from its needed
fuel for political reasons? Europe, for example, gets a large
fraction of its natural gas supply from Russia through a
pipeline that runs through Ukraine. In
and again in
, in a dispute with Ukraine, Russia turned off the gas.
It only lasted a short time, but Ukraine had to agree to
Russia
'
s terms and Europe
'
s con
dence in the reliability of
its supply was badly shaken.
In the energy area, being very heavily dependent on
a single source of supply is economically and politically
dangerous. We have been through this with oil supply
in the
s. The Arab members of OPEC cut off oil
supplies to the West because of its support for Israel. It
was disruptive, but we did get through. The US response
was to diversify suppliers and to build reserve storage
capacity.
Countries with a new or relatively small nuclear program
will strongly favor international systems if they come to
trust the suppliers of the fuel and other needed services.
Today the only places to purchase enrichment services are
the United States, Western Europe, and Russia. This group
is too narrow in its political interests to be a credible system
for supply. Others must be encouraged to enter the fuel
supply business. A well-managed system in China would
add considerably to political diversity in the supply chain.
A reserve fuel bank under the auspices of the IAEA would
also help.
Reducing the proliferation risk from the back end of the
fuel cycle will be at least as complex as from the front end,
but doing so is essential. North Korea has demonstrated
