Nuclear energy

Conflict in Ottawa

Thomas Land

The Canadian government has decided to sell atomic reactors to Argentina and South Korea, both of which are likely to follow India's path towards regional domination by building cheap plutonium bombs. At the same time, the government energetically insists on international safeguards against nuclear proliferation which the projected sales, now virtually completed, are about to promote.

The duality of this policy hides a split of conscience in the Ottawa cabinet which corporately attempts to avoid the choice between short-term financial gain and the long-term interests of mankind. Some aspects of the conflict confront all countries in this age of nuclear proliferation. Paradoxically, the contradictions in the Canadian policy are due to the reluctance of the 'moralist' ministers in the Ottawa cabinet to face the long-term implications of the decision they had to make.

Canada has consistently refrained from committing its advanced nuclear energy industry to military purposes; yet India's crude plutonium bomb, exploded last year, had been built with Canadian assistance. The Trudeau administration managed to postpone the whole issue by dispatching an inter-departmental team of officials to canvass opinions in friendly, capitals. They returned late last year with three rather obvious options, splitting the cabinet between the 'moralists' and the `commercialists'. The Prime Minister was inclined to support the 'moralist' camp; but there was so much money involved that he has evidently changed his mind.

The three alternatives, each equally unattractive, were (1) continuing the previous policy of selling reactors at competitive prices and against the promise of good behaviour, (2) restricting sales to customers likely to remain peaceful and stable during the lifetime of the reactor and willing to facilitate rigorous international checks, and (3) banning the export of nuclear reactors, materials and technology altogether.

In a carefully worded statement that can be read any way you like, the `moralist' Mr Allan MacEechen, the Minister of External Affairs, promised the United Nations that, "until more adeqate internationally agreed measures are instituted, Canada intends to satisfy itself that any country using Canadian supplied nuclear technology or materials will be subject to binding obligations that they will not be used in the fabrication of nuclear explosive devices for whatever purpose." The arms salesman's logic was expressed more simply by the 'commercialist' Mr Donald MacDonald, the Energy Minister, who asserted that the issue of nuclear safeguards is "an international problem, not a Canadian one. After developing a viable system, should we not sell it internationally?"

Civil service advisers, usually the source of ministerial inspirations, tend to favour the 'commercialist camp. Only the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board, charged with the task of defining those 'binding obligations', has a professional commitment to a sane nuclear export policy; while all the powers in the Department of Industry, Trade and Corn merce, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Export Development Corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and even the Department of External Affairs measure their personal success in terms of sales secured abroad.

"Unless there is a strong pressure from • Canadian public opinion," a senior spokesman for the Atomic Energy Control Board commented recently, "we are going to sell Argentina a reactor under conditions that are completely unsafe.' A cabinet decision has since confirmed his words.

Argentina has signed, but did not ratify, the Treaty of Tlateloco which provides for a nuclear-free zone in Latin. America; and it is publicly flirting with the bomb. Less than a fortnight after the Rajasthan explosion, it obtained an agreement with India for the exchange of nuclear secrets. Well endowed with uranium ores (which need not be enriched for the Canadian-supplied CANDU reactor), Argentina already has a nuclear research organisation and one power station; and it plans to buy at least two more. Nuclear proliferation in Latin America would be a quick affair with Brazil and Chile acting as eager rivals.

Unlike Argentina, South Korea signed the rather ineffective Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Geneva. But after •the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam and in the light of America's obvious and understandable reluctance to engage in yet another Asian war, the authoritarian South Korean regime has every incentive to acquire all the military power it can. Canadian diplomats consider that the inadequate inspection provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty offers scant guarantee against nuclear proliferation in the area.

A change of policy in Ottawa to the proposed alternative of weeding out 'unstable' customers would have disqualified several prospective buyers. This was the course favoured by the 'moralists', but its terms are just not possible. The life of a nuclear reactor is something like half a century, while diplomats are reluctant to make predictions on political behaviour beyond half a decade. Canada's original deal was made with India twenty years ago with the peace-loving Pandit Nehru at a time when no one anticipated his militant daughter Indira ever attaining power.

This took the Canadian nuclear dilemma to the proposed third alternative of banning sales altogether, giving up a foreseeable estimated 83,000 million in exports. Not even the 'moralists' in the Canadian cabinet imagine that they could survive such a political decision. Yerthey might be wrong.

For there is growing scepticism of the economic benefits derived from the CANDU programme since, as the influential, conservative Financial Post of Canada put it, the industry is capital rather than job intensive and sales tie up vast export credits often extended to customers who are poor financial, as well as poor political, risks.

These issues have been deliberately blurred by the government inside and out of Parliament. "It would be unconscionable under any circumstances to deny to the developing countries the most modern of technologies as assistance in their quest for higher living standards," Mr Trudeau declared. "But in a world increasingly concerned about depleting reserves of fossil fuels, about food shortages and about the need to reduce illness, it would be irresponsible as well to withhold the advantages of the nuclear age."

Incredibly, the debate has wholly by-passed the crucial issue of the storage of nuclear wastes produced by atomic reactors and the ability of the recipient countries to stockpile them indefinitely without risk. to environmental contamination. There is no problem here for the 'commercialists' in the Canadian cabinet since, in Mr MacDonald's words, they do not consider themselves hound by international responsibilities. However, unless the 'moralists' were prepared to assume responsibility for the plutonium wastes manufactured by Canada's clients in increasing quantities, to be consistent they would have to make accurate predictions of the political stability of buyers not just within the lifetime of the reactors but over the next 24,000 years during which the radioactive wastes must be kept secure from insane governments, terrorists, wars and other disasters.