Why Nuclear Energy Programs Rarely Lead to Proliferation
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Nuclear Energy Programs and Proliferation Why Nuclear Energy Nicholas L. Miller Programs Rarely Lead to Proliferation As long as there have been nuclear weapons, policymakers and analysts have worried that the spread of nuclear reactors for energy production would lead to the diffusion of nuclear arms.1 According to one analyst, “It was obvious from the beginning of the nuclear age that nuclear energy for power and nuclear energy for bombs overlapped.”2 Indeed, the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal report, which examined the possibility of international control of nuclear technology, determined that “the industry required and the technology developed for the realization of atomic weapons are the same industry and same technology which play so es- sential a part in man’s almost universal striving to improve his standard of liv- ing and his control of nature.”3 Writing in the 1970s, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Victor Gilinsky warned that nuclear energy programs offer “the quickest, cheapest, and least risky route to nuclear weapons.”4 More recently, José Goldemberg argued that there is a “fundamental contradiction between efforts to avoid the proliferation of nuclear weapons and enthusiasm for the spread, for commercial reasons, of nuclear reactors to many developing coun- tries.”5 Today, some analysts worry that the upsurge in interest in nuclear energy in the Middle East is a prelude to a nuclear arms race.6 Nicholas L. Miller is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. For helpful comments and suggestions, the author thanks Mark Bell, Stephen Biddle, Matthew Bunn, Christopher Clary, Erik Gartzke, Francis Gavin, Eliza Gheorghe, Charles Glaser, Christo- pher Lawrence, Martin Malin, Vipin Narang, Joshua Rovner, Scott Sagan, Gary Samore, Elizabeth Saunders, Alec Worsnop, the anonymous reviewers, and seminar participants at Cornell, Harvard, George Washington, and Yale Universities, as well as participants at the 2015 Nuclear Studies Re- search Initiative Conference. He is grateful to the Stanton Foundation for supporting this research. 1. I use the term “nuclear energy program” to refer to the production of electricity using nuclear reactors, or the construction of reactors for that purpose. I use this term rather than “nu- clear power” because the latter term is often used to refer to countries with nuclear weapons. I deªne proliferation to include both the pursuit and acquisition of nuclear weapons. 2. Victor Gilinsky, “Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons—Clarifying the Links,” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Moving beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation (Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War Col- lege Press, 2014), p. 119. 3. Chester I. Barnard et al., “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy” (Washing- ton, D.C.: U.S. Secretary of State’s Committee on Atomic Energy, March 16, 1946), p. 9, http:// ªssilematerials.org/library/ach46.pdf. 4. Victor Gilinsky, “Nuclear Energy and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” in Albert Wohlstetter et al., eds., Nuclear Policies: Fuel without the Bomb (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1978), p. 89. 5. José Goldemberg, “Nuclear Energy in Developing Countries,” Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 4 (Fall 2009), p. 75, doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.71. 6. For a recent example, see Karl Vick, “The Middle East Nuclear Race Is Already Under Way,” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Fall 2017), pp. 40–77, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00293 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 40 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00293 by guest on 26 September 2021 Nuclear Energy Programs and Proliferation 41 In contrast to the conventional wisdom, this article argues that the link be- tween nuclear energy programs and proliferation is overstated. Although such programs increase the technical capacity of a state to build nuclear weapons, they also have important countervailing political effects that limit the odds of proliferation. Speciªcally, nuclear energy programs (1) increase the likelihood that a parallel nuclear weapons program is detected and attracts outside non- proliferation pressures, and (2) increase the costliness of nonproliferation sanc- tions. These countervailing mechanisms are largely the product of policy interventions by actors who have worried since the beginning of the nuclear age that nuclear energy programs would lead to proliferation. In this sense, the long-standing belief that the expansion of such programs would result in an expansion in the number of nuclear weapons states might be at least partially viewed as a self-defeating prophecy, much like policymakers’ beliefs in nu- clear domino effects or tipping points.7 Understanding the relationship between nuclear energy and the spread of nuclear weapons may be particularly pressing now for three reasons. First, nu- clear energy has the potential to reduce carbon emissions and thereby help combat climate change, potentially making it an attractive option.8 Second, many observers have argued that the world is in the midst of a nuclear energy “renaissance,” or at least it was prior to the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, which caused nuclear meltdowns at Japanese nuclear power plants in Fukushima and dampened global enthusiasm for nuclear energy.9 Third, many countries currently developing nuclear energy programs are located in unstable security environments (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates), which may provide them with incentives to seek nuclear weapons. Even though the relative costs of nuclear energy production have grown over time, particularly as natural gas has become cheaper,10 there are still dozens of Time, March 23, 2015, http://time.com/3751676/iran-talks-nuclear-race-middle-east/; and Harold A. Feiveson, “A Skeptic’s View of Nuclear Energy,” Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 4 (Fall 2009), pp. 65–66, doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.60. 7. See Nicholas L. Miller, “Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?” Security Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2014), pp. 33–73, doi:10.1080/09636412.2014.874189. 8. See, for example, Joshua William Busby, “Vaunted Hopes: Climate Change and the Unlikely Nuclear Renaissance,” in Adam N. Stulberg and Matthew Fuhrmann, eds., The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 124–153; and Rob- ert H. Socolow and Alexander Glaser, “Balancing Risks: Nuclear Energy and Climate Change,” Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 4 (Fall 2009), pp. 31–44, doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.31. 9. See Stulberg and Fuhrmann, The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security; Steven E. Miller and Scott D. Sagan, “Nuclear Power without Nuclear Proliferation?” Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 4 (Fall 2009), pp. 7–18, doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.7; and World Nuclear Association, “The Nuclear Re- naissance” (London: World Nuclear Association, September 2015), http://www.world-nuclear .org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/The-Nuclear-Renaissance/. 10. See, for example, Alan Neuhauser, “Nuclear Power, Once Cheap, Squeezed by Mounting Costs,” US News and World Report, March 30, 2016, https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/ 2016-03-30/nuclear-power-once-cheap-squeezed-by-mounting-costs; Joe Romm, “The Nuclear In- Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00293 by guest on 26 September 2021 International Security 42:2 42 countries that are at different stages of considering or developing nuclear en- ergy programs.11 As a result, although such programs are unlikely to spread as quickly as many analysts anticipated prior to the Fukushima disaster, addi- tional countries are still likely to pursue them over time. This article begins by outlining the conventional wisdom about how nuclear energy programs contribute to proliferation. It then offers an alternative argu- ment, which emphasizes that nuclear energy programs generate important po- litical obstacles to proliferation. Next, the article empirically assesses the relationship between nuclear energy programs and proliferation historically. It ªnds that states with such programs have not been signiªcantly more likely to pursue nuclear weapons. Moreover, conditional on having a nuclear weapons program, states with nuclear energy programs have not been signiªcantly more likely to acquire nuclear weapons. The article also ªnds preliminary support for the political restraints that I hypothesize weaken the link be- tween energy and weapons. After addressing several counterarguments, the article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the ªndings for theory and policy. The Conventional Wisdom on Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons The conventional wisdom identiªes three main pathways through which a nu- clear energy program might facilitate proliferation. In short, an energy pro- gram could provide (1) the means, (2) the motivation, or (3) the political cover for developing a nuclear weapons program.12 First, a nuclear energy program involves training scientists in nuclear phys- ics and engineering, providing them with basic skills and know-how that could be used in a nuclear weapons program and potentially reducing the expected costs of such a program.13 Moreover, nuclear energy programs re- dustry Prices Itself Out of Market for New Power Plants,” ThinkProgress, March 8, 2016, https:// thinkprogress.org/the-nuclear-industry-prices-itself-out-of-market-for-new-power-plants- 1421750327c3; and Jessica R. Lovering, Arthur Yip, and Ted Nordhaus, “Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power