http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/01-12/cost.html
Jeremy,Some questions are worth answering and some are not worth the effort. You have recently asked me a good question on the boundaries around EP's opposition to some nuclear technologies. Norm and I are working on an answer. Your following questions on proof of Canadian involvement in South Asain nuclear weapons don't merit any serious effort.
Your demand for proof flies in the face of massive albeit often incompletely documented evidence. India is widely suspected of using CIRUS (and Dhruva) for lithium 6-based tritium production. It has been building indigenous detritiation capability at least since 1989, and bragging about it. Pakistan tried to get Sulzer to do a deal on the same. Since 1988 we have known about Pakistan doing tritium and related equipment deals with Neue Technologien GmbH with clear signs pointing at Kanupp tritium. We know that India is working on boosted weapons and other fancy stuff. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Your demand for proof violates the scientific and moral principles of hypothesis testing. While the nuclear industry worries about the dangers of a false positive (India and Pakistan are falsely accused of using our technology for weapons), people with higher standards worry about the dangers of false negative (what if they are but we don't notice and by not knowing continue making it worse).
The nuclear industry created the double edged sword of whether to support safety at dual-use units by not grasping the logical and moral implications of its actions. Now the nuclear industry uses this frightening conundrum to justify continuing the status quo.
The world needs the expertise of you and your team mates in the nuclear industry, but we need to direct your work in ways that sustain life here. That is, we need your help cleaning up the ecological, economic, and security disasters the nuclear industry has played such an important role in creating. Before that can happen, the nuclear industry has to start grasping some basic facts of life about subjects ranging from economics, decision making in conditions of uncertainty, regulatory theory, and proliferation. For a bunch of smart guys, your industry is remarkably stupid on many of life's basics.
If you think I am talking craziness here, try this simple test on yourself and your colleagues. Do you think nuclear generated power is cheap? If you do, then you have a long way to go before you grasp the wider reality of nuclear technology beyond the refined scientific questions that you obviously understand well.
Tom
"Whitlock, Jeremy" wrote:
A couple of questions (and comments) on this latest news release Tom:
> We also
> heavily subsidized the creation of India's joint
> civilian/military power reactors now used to supply tritium
> to India's advanced hydrogen bomb program.May I see your proof of this allegation? (I assume by "joint civilian/military power reactors" you are referring -- using incorrect terminology -- to their CANDU clones.) The last I heard was that this was speculation.
> Even now the nuclear establishments
> of both Pakistan and India are tapping into Canadian nuclear
> expertise through the CANDU Owners Group - aid that is
> probably helping their weapons efforts.Now Tom, that's a stretch and I suspect you know it (from your prudent use of the word "probably"). COG is helping the Indians keep their reactors from falling apart, which is assistance I think the world would be please to know is being supplied. Chernobyl is a good example of what happens when we refrain from getting involved in reactor safety in other countries, simply because we don't like their politics.
Again, if you can supply proof that the Canadian technical assistance supplied to the two CANDU reactors in India has aided their weapons program, I'd be interested in seeing it. Otherwise, may I suggest that such provocative speculation be left in the coffee room in the future.
Jeremy.
> January 17/2002
> Maple Leaf on South Asian Nukes by Thomas Adams
>
> As India and Pakistan brandish their nuclear weapons at each
> other, Canadians should remember the role that our federal
> government has played facilitating nuclear proliferation there.
>
> Canadian General Electric supplied Pakistan with a
> Canadian-designed reactor in the 1960s. Canada donated a
> research reactor to India that was used to produce plutonium
> for India's first nuclear weapon test in 1974. We also
> heavily subsidized the creation of India's joint
> civilian/military power reactors now used to supply tritium
> to India's advanced hydrogen bomb program. Even without the
> use of nuclear weapons, all of these reactors are potentially
> devastating military targets.
>
> Nuclear scientists from both countries studied in Canadian
> nuclear facilities, particularly the Chalk River Nuclear Labs
> north of Ottawa, the Pickering station, and the Point Lepreau
> station in New Brunswick. Even now the nuclear establishments
> of both Pakistan and India are tapping into Canadian nuclear
> expertise through the CANDU Owners Group - aid that is
> probably helping their weapons efforts.
>