By Henry Sokolski
Six years ago, my organization, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), ran a mock exercise of a law Congress passed in 1978 but that the administration refused to implement —Title V of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978. Title V called on the State and Energy Departments to conduct country-specific analyses of how developing states might best meet their energy needs without nuclear power. It also called for the creation of an energy Peace Corps and an assessment of what our government was spending on energy development aid-related projects.
When NPEC started its efforts, the staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked to see what the exercise produced, hoping to use it to pressure the Executive Branch finally to implement the law. NPEC commissioned studies on how Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and Taiwan might best meet their energy requirements without nuclear power.
The center also contracted studies on the history and intent of Title V and on what government programs were already in play that aligned with Title V‘s stated objectives. As soon as NPEC’s project was completed, the committee staff prepared a letter to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the secretary finally to implement Title V and file the reports required by law.
Then something unexpected occurred. The committee’s legal counsel discovered that the secretary was under no obligation to comply: Congress had eliminated Title V’s reporting requirements along with several hundred other Congressionally mandated reports back in 1995. Flummoxed, I quietly set the book manuscript aside.
Why, then, am I releasing it today? Because it is again timely. In October, the Biden administration announced it is still considering extending civilian nuclear cooperation with Riyadh that would allow the Kingdom to enrich uranium — a process that can bring states within weeks of acquiring the bomb. Administration officials no longer question if Saudi Arabia really needs nuclear energy to meet its energy requirements. Shouldn’t they?
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s presidential election tomorrow (Jan. 13) will, among other things, decide if Taiwan will build more nuclear reactors or not. Again, is new nuclear Taiwan’s best energy bet? As for China, the Pentagon has become increasingly concerned that the two “peaceful” fast breeder reactors and plutonium reprocessing plants Beijing is building will be used to make hundreds of bombs-worth of weapons plutonium. One of the two fast breeder reactors is already operating. The question these dangerous nuclear activities raise is just how necessary they are to meet China’s energy requirements.
Then, there’s Iran, which is intent on building reactors of Iranian design. It plans on expanding its nuclear power program from roughly one gigawatt electrical capacity to 11. Given Iran’s renewables potential and oil and gas reserves, how much sense does this make? Finally, in its efforts to achieve net zero, the Biden Administration has joined 20 other nations in pledging to triple global nuclear generation by 2050. Again, how practical is this?
This volume’s aim is to help provide answers. Of course, in light of how long our government has ignored Title V, demanding it be implemented now would be odd. Creating a clean energy Peace Corps, comparing the costs of different types of energy, and trying to determine what investments would reduce emissions quickest and cheapest, however, all should be discussed. It’s my hope that the release of Net-Zero and Nonproliferation: Assessing Nuclear Power and Its Alternatives today might prompt such discussion.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future.
–Kennedy Maize
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