Premier Debate 2016 September/October ld brief

AFF—Nuclear War

Nuclear power leads to nuclear weapons and theft.

PSR 16 ["Dirty, Dangerous And Expensive: The Truth About Nuclear Power". 2016.Psr.Org. Accessed August 8 2016. http://www.psr.org/chapters/washington/resources/nuclear-power-factsheet.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/][Premier]

The inextricable link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons is arguably the greatest danger of nuclear power.  The same process used to manufacture low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel also can be employed for the production of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.  As it has in the past, expansion of nuclear power could lead to an increase in the number of both nuclear weapons states and ‘threshold’ nuclear states that could quickly produce weapons by utilizing facilities and materials from their ‘civil’ nuclear programs a scenario many fear may be playing out in Iran.  Expanded use of nuclear power would increase the risk that commercial nuclear technology will be used to construct clandestine weapons facilities, as was done by Pakistan.

In addition to uranium, plutonium can also be used to make a nuclear bomb.  Plutonium, which is found only in extremely small quantities in nature, is produced in nuclear reactors.  Reprocessing spent fuel to separate plutonium from the highly radioactive barrier in spent fuel rods, as is being proposed as a ‘waste solution’ under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program, increases the risk that the plutonium can be diverted or stolen for the production of nuclear weapons or radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs.  Reprocessing is also the most polluting part of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The reprocessing facility in France, La Hague, is the world’s largest anthropogenic source of radioactivity and its releases have been found in the Arctic Circle.

Most countries do not have the requisite corruption levels security needs to defend a successful nuclear power program.

Miller & Sagan 9 [Steven, Scott; Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security, Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; Fall 2009; “Nuclear power without nuclear proliferation?”; http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.7; [Premier]

First, for nuclear energy programs to be developed and managed safely and securely, it is important that states have domestic “good governance” characteristics that will encourage proper nuclear operations and management. These characteristics include low degrees of corruption (to avoid of½cials selling materials and technology for their own personal gain as occurred with the A.Q. Khan smuggling network in Pakistan), high degrees of political stability (defined by the World Bank as “likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including politically-motivated violence and terrorism”), high governmental effectiveness scores (a World Bank aggregate measure of “the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures [and] the quality of policy formulation and implementation”), and a strong degree of regulatory competence. Fortunately, we have a great deal of information measuring these domestic good governance factors across the globe. Unfortunately, the data highlight the grave security challenges that would be created if there were rampant proliferation of nuclear energy production facilities to each and every state that has expressed interest to the iaea in acquiring nuclear power. The World Bank publishes annual aggregate data, derived from multiple sources, on each of these good governance characteristics, and, as shown in Figure 2, the average scores of the potential new nuclear-energy states on each of these dimensions is significantly lower than the scores of states already possessing nuclear energy.

Most potentially nuclear countries are non-democratic—Increases the likelihood of NPT violations to get nukes.

Miller & Sagan 9 [Steven, Scott; Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security, Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; Fall 2009; “Nuclear power without nuclear proliferation?”; http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.7; [Premier]

Second, all NNWS under the NPT must accept iaea safeguards inspections on their nuclear power facilities in order to reduce the danger that governments might cheat on their commitments not to use the technology to acquire nuclear weapons; therefore, it is illuminating to examine the historical record of nnws violating their npt commitments. Here there is one very important finding about how domestic political characteristics influence the behavior of npt members: each known or strongly suspected case of a government starting a secret nuclear weapons program, while it was a member of the npt and thus violating its Article II npt commitment, was undertaken by a non-democratic government.2 (The con½rmed or suspected historical cases of npt member states starting nuclear weapons programs in violation of their Treaty commitments include North and South Korea, Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Taiwan, Iran, and Syria, all of which were non-democratic at the time in question.) It is therefore worrisome that, as Figure 2 shows, the group of potential new states seeking nuclear power capabilities is on average significantly less democratic than the list of existing states with nuclear energy capabilities.

Nuclear Power means Nuclear Weapons

Higgin 6 [Davida; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Chair; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; April 2006; The links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons; [Premier]

Uranium ore contains only about 0.7% of the fissile isotope U235. In order to be suitable for use as a nuclear fuel for generating electricity it must be processed (by separation) to contain about 3% of U235 (this form is called Low Enriched Uranium - LEU). Weapons grade uranium has to be enriched to 90% of U235 (Highly Enriched Uranium or HEU), which can be done using the same enrichment equipment. There are about 38 working enrichment facilities in 16 countries. (1) The Hiroshima bomb was made using about 60kg. of (HEU). Today’s more sophisticated nuclear weapons can be made with 20 - 25 kg. because the numbers of warheads and their accuracy have been increased. Plutonium is a product of the chain reaction in nuclear reactors; it is separated by reprocessing the “spent” fuel (which is highly radioactive but no longer usable in the reactors in fuel rods). In 2000 Britain had an estimated stockpile of some 78 tonnes of civil plutonium out of a world store of about 210 tonnes. (2). The military stockpile was about 7.6 tonnes in 1999 (3). Only 2 -10 kg. are necessary to make a nuclear bomb.

Nuclear power production is easily translated into nuclear weapons, 3 different methods

Ackland 09 [Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism, “Weapons proliferation a big risk with nuclear power,” CE Journal, February 10, 2009, http://www.cejournal.net/?p=903] [Premier]

The first power-weapons crossover comes during uranium “enrichment,” after uranium ore is milled to extract uranium in the form called “yellow cake” that is then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas. Enrichment of the gas means increasing the amount of the fissile uranium-235 isotope, which comprises 0.7 percent of natural uranium, to the 3-6 percent needed to make fuel rods for commercial nuclear reactors. The same centrifuges (the modern technology of choice) that separate the U-235 from the U-238 can be kept running until the percentage of U-235 reaches about 90 percent and can be used for the kind of nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Enrichment — low for nuclear power plants and high for bombs — is at the heart of the current controversy over Iran’s plans and capabilities. The second power-weapons crossover comes when low-enriched uranium fuel is burned in nuclear reactors, whether military, civilian, or dual use. Neutrons produced in the chain reaction are captured by the U-238 to form U-239 then neptunium-239 which decays into plutonium-239, the key fissile isotope for nuclear weapons. Other plutonium isotopes, such as Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242 are also produced. The extent to which the uranium fuel elements are irradiated is called “fuel burnup.” Basically, military reactors designed specifically to produce Pu-239 burn the fuel for shorter periods, a few weeks, before the fuel rods are removed from the reactors in order to minimize the buildup of Pu-240 and other elements. Commercial reactors, aimed at maximizing the energy output in order to produce electricity, burn the fuel for a year or so before the fuel rod assemblies are changed out. The used or “spent” fuel contains higher percentages of the undesirable (for bomb builders) plutonium isotopes. Dual-use reactors, such as the one that caused the Chernobyl accident in 1986, tend toward the shorter fuel burnup times. The plutonium in the spent fuel is the 20,000 kilograms that the Federation of American Scientists estimates is produced each year by the world’s currently operating 438 reactors. Other sources estimate the amount of plutonium in spent fuel as much higher. For a good description of these issues, see David Albright, et. al., “Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies,” SIPRI, Oxford U. Press, 1997. Finally, before the plutonium-239 created in nuclear reactors can be used in weapons, it must first be separated from the uranium, transuranics and other fission products. This is done in “reprocessing” plants and is often benignly referred to as plutonium recycling. Currently there are only a handful of commercial reprocessing facilities, the one in France and the one in the United Kingdom having operated the longest. Much of the plutonium extracted by these plants is mixed with uranium and reused for nuclear fuel in commercial reactors. But reprocessing plants also exist in countries using plutonium for nuclear weapons. Thus, North Korea, the most recent country to join the nine-member nuclear weapons “club,” made weapons through its reprocessing facility.