Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Safeguarding the Bomb (1985)

Auteur	Jos Callacher
Datum	1985
Classificatie	6.03.1.30/01 (PROLIFERATIE - NPV - CONTROLE/SAFEGUARDS)
Voorkant

FOREWARD	

1985 is a crucial year for non proliferation. After 1980, with President Carter
removed from the White House and BNFL proceeding slowly with its expansion
of Windscale, nuclear proliferation disappeared as a public issue. Recent
developments have put it back onto the political agenda.
The proposal to build a plant at Dounreay to separate plutonium from fast reactor
fuel has revived fears of a growing 'plutonium economy'. Argentina's recently
agreed sale of a nuclear reactor to Algeria has demonstrated that nuclear trade is
reviving and is slipping beyond the control of the established nuclear exporters.
The third of the five yearly review conferences of the NPT is held in 1985.
Anticipating the Review Conference, the SCRAM Journal commissioned a series
of articles to examine the importance of the Treaty and the issues likely to surface
at the Review Conference. Our decision to publish a revised version of these
articles in this pamphlet reflects the increasing importance of these issues.
Jos Gallacher's account of the NPT and its problems differs from other anti-nuclear
writers in that it emphasises the political rather than the technological aspects of
the problem. This approach allows him to avoid the simplistic notion that the Treaty
is simply a 'bargain' in which countries renouncing the nuclear weapons option are
promised peaceful nuclear goodies. Rather, he argues, the Treaty embodies a
contradiction which exists within the body politic as it attempts to contain nuclear
weapons but promote nuclear trade.
More emphasis is placed on the failure to deliver on the Treaty's promise of further
disarmament. While superpower negotiations have continued the nuclear stockpiles
have expanded. Britain too is found to undermine the NPT by justifying its own
weapons in language that would justify them elsewhere.
He concludes by chiding British Government for its complacency and arguing for
a fresh disarmament intitiative - the Cut-Off. The cut-off is a demand which would
link non proliferation and nuclear disarmament with the growing opposition to
Windscale and the Dounreay expansion.

Steve Martin

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