Nuclear Proliferation

Report Outline
U.S. Nuclear Export Policy
Changes in Control Strategy
Search for Safer Technologies
Special Focus

U.S. Nuclear Export Policy

Carter's Campaign to Restrict Technology

After a rocky beginning, President Carter's campaign to limit the further proliferation of nuclear weapons appears to be gaining support at home and abroad. Since taking office Carter has been trying to persuade other nations to follow America's lead by stopping — or at least reducing — the export of nuclear power technology that can be used for military purposes. What concerns the President is not the sale of nuclear reactors themselves. The danger lies in the ability of more countries to enrich uranium and reprocess used reactor fuel. It is in these stages of the nuclear fuel cycle that weapons-grade nuclear material — plutonium or highly enriched uranium — is produced.

“The benefits of nuclear power are … very real and practical,” Carter said in a policy statement issued on April 7, 1977. “But a serious risk accompanies worldwide use of nuclear power — the risk that components of the nuclear power process will be turned to providing atomic weapons.” Carter said that the United States would “defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium” and would instead accelerate research “into alternative fuel cycles which do not involve direct access to materials usable in nuclear weapons.”

Deferral of plutonium reprocessing and recycling also was recommended last year by the Nuclear Energy Policy Study Group — a 21-member committee set up by the Ford Foundation and the Mitre Corporation of McLean, Va. In its final report, the committee said that a decision by the United States to proceed with these technologies “would probably ensure worldwide movement to incorporate plutonium in the fuel cycle.” In the committee's view, the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability “is the most serious risk associated with nuclear power.”