Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Eleven: Nuclear Power 159of war the criteria for safety of nuclear power stations would change.” 128 Perhapsthe French government would make a similar judgement. (Ironically, a falloutfrom a damaged Finnish or French reactor could easily reach Sweden anyway.)The issue is likely to be taken more seriously following the Iranian (orIranian-marked Israeli?) bombing of Iraq’s Tuwaitha nuclear research centeron the outskirts of Baghdad on 30 September 1980, 129 and the destruction ofthe Osirak “research” reactor at the same site by a major Israeli air raid on 7June 1981. 130 The deliberate targeting of the sizeable Osirak reactor–fortunatelyjust before it was first loaded with fuel—highlighted the possibility ofradioactive releases. Precision bombing with one-ton bombs—just the kindwhose effect on a reactor Israeli officials had earlier asked the NuclearRegulatory Commission about 131 —completely destroyed the reactor.The bombing was a resounding vote of no confidence in the internationalsafeguards regime. It also showed that ambiguous nuclear facilities are an attractivenuisance inviting preemptive attack: indeed, Colonel Qadafi promptly calledfor retaliatory bombing of the Israeli “research” reactor at Dimona. 132 And thebombing also suggested that “a belligerent power could use the threat of radioactivecontamination resulting from an attack as a means of coercion,” 133 greatlyincreasingly the military vulnerability of any country having a nuclear facility.The second raid also gave Iraq an excuse to deny (until mid-November 1981)access to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, 134 who wished to satisfythemselves that the twenty-eight pounds of highly enriched uranium(enough for one or two bombs) which France had already delivered, 135 out of aplanned consignment of one hundred fifty-four pounds, was not being made intobombs. Senator Alan Cranston stated that he had “been informed by more thanone authoritative Executive Branch official [that]...the Iraqis are embarked on ‘aManhattan Project approach’ 136 to use the French uranium for bombs. (If this wasnot the case before the Israeli raid, it is very likely the case after it.) The IAEAinspector responsible for that part of the world apparently agreed. 137 Israel alsosuspected that Iraq planned to use Osirak’s neutrons to breed natural uranium(of which Iraq had bought suspiciously large amounts) into plutonium. Thiscould be slowly extracted in the Italian “hot cells” (shielded laboratory-scaledevices for handling radioactive materials) at the Osirak site. The status of the“hot cells” after the raid is not publicly known. World consciousness of the linkbetween reactors, bombs, ambiguous threats, and the military vulnerability ofnuclear facilities has, however, been considerably advanced.Attacking reactors with terrorist bombsThe possible use of terrorist nuclear bombs against nuclear facilities must also