Nuclear non-proliferation and the present state of the international nuclear industry

During much of the post-war period, those concerned with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons had to cope with an expanding nuclear industrial system. Investment in civil nuclear technology was continually increasing, as was the number of countries with nuclear programmes. For a time in the 1970s the whole enterprise seemed in danger of running out of control. Forecasts of dramatic growth in nuclear electricity production evoked fears that the world would soon be awash with bomb-making materials. Today the outlook is very different. Orders for nuclear power stations have slumped. The plutonium economy seems little more than a bad dream. Nuclear industries are everywhere being forced into retreat. Recession has lessened - although by no means eliminated - proliferation risks by slowing the diffusion of technologies and materials. But it has also brought a new and troublesome problem. There is considerable danger that suppliers' growing desperation to secure export contracts will degrade trade standards and tear apart the fragile and limited consensus between them. The industrial environment has been changing in another important respect. Ten years ago the US industry reigned supreme. It is now fighting to maintain its presence in international markets. Unless the unexpected happens and the US market for power reactors revives, leadership will move elsewhere in the 1980s, and probably to France, West Germany and Japan. Some consider that it has already done so