Though this agreement might not have any economic benefit to the United States, there is no reason it should cause panic about any technologies being passed on to hostile nations, like Iran. The technology behind a nuclear plant and a nuclear bomb are completely different. Reactors are critical, meaning that they have a standard, closely regulated output of power. If anything goes wrong, the worst it can do is harm the host nation with a nuclear meltdown. A nuclear bomb needs to go supercritical, meaning that the reaction increases exponentially and releases all of its energy in a very short period of time. Also, the United States does not use breeder reactors, meaning that any technology we offered would decrease the among of weapons-grade material in the world, rather than providing excess weapons grade. Whereas French and German reactors will produce plutonium as a by-product, American reactors are specifically designed not to, as a step towards limiting nuclear proliferation. Besides, the technology behind any nuclear process is a scientific, rather than national, claim. If they really want to learn to build a bomb, they should take a quantum physics class, not an economics one.

What Would Reagan Do?

CP on May 6, 2008 at 9:19 AM

Trust, but verify. :)

- The Cat

Congress is too busy with its ongoing 300+ investigations of the Bush administration as part of its Final Solution to The Bush Question to look into this at all.

The next generation of Energy Moguls will be selling nuke plants and fuel, not oil, and we have severely limited our abilities.

Nothing.