Premier Debate 2016 September/October ld brief

AFF – Proliferation

Nuclear Power is on the rise—NPT doesn’t check prolif.

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]

The global nuclear order is changing. Concerns about climate change, the volatility of oil prices, and the security of energy supplies have contributed to a widespread and still-growing interest in the future use of nuclear power. Thirty states operate one or more nuclear power plants today, and according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea), some 50 others have requested technical assistance from the agency to explore the possibility of developing their own nuclear energy programs. It is certainly not possible to predict precisely how fast and how extensively the expansion of nuclear power will occur. But it does seem probable that in the future there will be more nuclear technology spread across more states than ever before. It will be a different world than the one that has existed in the past. This surge of interest in nuclear energy–labeled by some proponents as “the renaissance in nuclear power”– is, moreover, occurring simultaneously with mounting concern about the health of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the regulatory framework that constrains and governs the world’s civil and military-related nuclear affairs. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt) and related institutions have been taxed by new worries, such as the growth in global terrorism, and have been painfully tested by protracted crises involving nuclear weapons, proliferation in North Korea and potentially in Iran. (Indeed, some observers suspect that growing interest in nuclear power in some countries, especially in the Middle East, is not unrelated to Iran’s uranium enrichment program and Tehran’s movement closer to a nuclear weapons capability.) Confidence in the npt regime seems to be eroding even as interest in nuclear power is expanding.

Expanding nuclear power increases the risk of terrorism and proliferation

Shrader-Frechette 8 [Kristin; teaches biological sciences and philosophy at the University of Notre Dame; “Five Myths About Nuclear Energy”; American Magazine, 6/23; http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10884; [Premier]

Myth 4. Nuclear Energy Will Not Increase Weapons Proliferation Pursuing nuclear power also perpetuates the myth that increasing atomic energy, and thus increasing uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing, will increase neither terrorism nor proliferation of nuclear weapons. This myth has been rejected by both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. More nuclear plants means more weapons materials, which means more targets, which means a higher risk of terrorism and proliferation. The government admits that Al Qaeda already has targeted U.S. reactors, none of which can withstand attack by a large airplane. Such an attack, warns the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, could cause fatalities as far away as 500 miles and destruction 10 times worse than that caused by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. Nuclear energy actually increases the risks of weapons proliferation because the same technology used for civilian atomic power can be used for weapons, as the cases of India, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Pakistan illustrate. As the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Hannes Alven put it, “The military atom and the civilian atom are Siamese twins.” Yet if the world stopped building nuclear-power plants, bomb ingredients would be harder to acquire, more conspicuous and more costly politically, if nations were caught trying to obtain them. Their motives for seeking nuclear materials would be unmasked as military, not civilian.

Nuclear energy is too vulnerable to misuse towards prolif

Arms Control Today 8 [Peter Crail and Jessica Lasky-Fink; “Middle Eastern States Seeking Nuclear Power”; May 2008. Vol. 38, Iss. 4; pg. 40; [Premier]

In addition to the concern that an expansion of nuclear energy may lead to state proliferation, the development of a nuclear industry in states with little regulatory capacity and a history of illicit trafficking points to a vulnerability for the smuggling of nuclear materials and technology.

A September 2007 study commissioned by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories on the expansion of nuclear energy in the region claimed that, in the case of several states in the region, the threat from illicit nuclear trafficking is a greater proliferation concern than the potential development of nuclear weapons by states. The study cites in particular Egypt's defense collaboration with states such as Russia and North Korea, and the UAE's history as a transshipment point for illicit nuclear technology aiding nuclear weapons programs in Libya and Iran.

Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to diversion to proliferation—Japan proves

Assadourian 03 [Erik; research associate at Worldwatch Institute; “The new clear threat”; World Watch; May/Jun 2003, Vol. 16, Iss. 3; pg. 30; World Watch; [Premier]

. In addition, nuclear plants are often unsecured against terrorist attack. In January, 19 Greenpeace activists stormed the U.K.'s Sizewell power plant, scaling the reactor without resistance. The goal was simply to expose the plant's vulnerability, but if the intruders had been actual terrorists the result would have been catastrophic. Finally, nuclear materials have also been known to disappear, and not just in Russia; early this year, the Japanese government admitted that it could not account for 206 kilograms of plutonium-enough to make 30 to 40 bombs.

Nuclear power plants are bomb factories risking prolif

Caldicott 6 [Helen; Founder and President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute; “Nuclear Power is not the answer”; [PREMIER]]

Adding to the danger, nuclear power plants are essentially atomic bomb factories. A 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 500 pounds of plutonium a year; normally ten pounds of plutonium is fuel for an atomic bomb. A crude atomic bomb sufficient to devastate a city could certainly be crafted from reactor grade plutonium. Therefore any non-nuclear weapons country that acquires a nuclear power plant will be provided with the ability to make atomic bombs (precisely the issue the world confronts with Iran today). As the global nuclear industry pushes its nefarious wares upon developing countries with the patent lie about "preventing global warming," collateral consequences will include the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a situation that will further destabilize an already unstable world.

Nuclear energy provides the perfect cover for nuclear weapons development by militarizing states.

Caldicott 6 [Helen; Founder and President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute; “Nuclear Power is not the answer”; [PREMIER]]

As for those nations currently vying to add nuclear capability to their arsenals, nuclear power plants offer the perfect cover. It is only a short step from uranium enrichment for energy to the production of highly enriched uranium suitable for atomic bomb fuel, or even to reprocessed plutonium from spent fuel, suitable for bomb fuel. Most nuclear technology associated with nuclear power can be diverted for use in weapons production: North Korea has almost certainly built at least two nuclear weapons using plutonium obtained from its research nuclear reactors.

Many countries are angry about the paternalism and arrogance displayed over the years by the nuclear-haves. As the new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, which is now actively developing uranium enrichment facilities, said recently when referring to the United States, "Who do you think you are in the world to say you are suspicious of our nuclear activities? ... What kind of right do you think you have to say Iran cannot have nuclear technology? It is you who must be held accountable."! Hugo Chavez of Venezuela displayed similar feelings when he said recently, "It cannot be that some countries that have developed nuclear energy prohibit those of the third world from developing it. We are not the ones developing atomic bombs, it's others who do that.

In addition to Iran and North Korea, this chapter will look at three of the nuclear-haves who built their nuclear weapons arsenals using various components of the nuclear fuel cycle. Israel developed a very large nuclear arsenal from plutonium created in a reactor specifically designated for that purpose, India created a nuclear arsenal from heavy water nuclear power plants, and Pakistan developed nuclear weapons largely from uranium enrichment facilities.

Nuclear power is inextricably linked to prolif-science and politics prove

Gottfried 6 [Kurt; "Climate Change and Nuclear Power." Social Research: An International Quarterly 73.3 (2006): 1011-1024. Project MUSE. Web. 8 Aug. 2016. .][Premier]

Both the fuel entering a nuclear reactor and the spent fuel pose serious proliferation risks. A nuclear chain reaction can take place in suitably configured assemblies of either of the elements uranium or plutonium. Uranium exists in nature, but plutonium does not because it decays with a half life of some 24,000 years. Both elements can be used in a controlled manner—that is in nuclear power reactors—or as an explosive—in nuclear weapons. That is why nuclear power and nuclear armaments have an inherently deep relationship. Naturally occurring uranium from uranium ore must be “enriched” before the material can be used as reactor fuel, but that same enrichment technology can, with a relatively small additional effort, produce highly enriched weapons grade uranium. When the uranium fuel is “burned” in a reactor, a fraction of the uranium atoms are turned into atoms of the preferred weapons materiel, plutonium. The latter can be extracted from the spent fuel by a chemical process called “reprocessing.” (The nuclear reactor was invented in the Manhattan Project for the express purpose of producing plutonium from uranium, and this plutonium was then used on the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. The Hiroshima bomb used highly enriched uranium.) There is a serious worry that Iran will with time gain a weapon capability by acquiring the ability to enrich uranium for its large civilian nuclear reactor. The reason is that such a reactor needs a very large and steady stream of reactor grade uranium, and that a plant that can produce this “docile” stream can very quickly prepare the rather small quantity of weapons grade uranium needed for a bomb (Albright and Hinderstein, 2004). Climate Change and Nuclear Power 1019 The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) suffers from a serious defect in that it allows a non-nuclear power to acquire essentially all the capabilities for manufacturing weapons material short of actually using this capability for that purpose, and to leave the treaty regime shortly before taking this last step. That was done by North Korea. Removing this defect in the NPT is very difficult politically, mainly because the nuclear powers have for decades put higher priority on satisfying their own, separate national interests than on strengthening the NPT regime. In recent years the United States has p u t an extra heavy burden on the NPT by adopting nuclear weapons policies that are in conflict with the spirit (though n o t the letter) of its obligations under the NPT, and by refusing to ratify the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The United States has not carried out any reprocessing to obtain plutonium from civilian reactors for some 30 years. But North Korea did while abiding to the letter though certainly not the spirit of the NPT. Some countries that do not worry us also reprocess. In particular, Japan does, but its accounting system is such that enough plutonium for more than 10 weapons is not accounted for. The rising concern about climate change, and the heightened interest in nuclear power, has brought with it a campaign in favor of reprocessing in the United States. The nuclear power industry is not behind this because it knows that reprocessing is not even close to being cost-effective. Other private interests, some government laboratories, and segments of the Bush administration are pushing reprocessing, however. They claim that the supply of naturally occurring uranium will eventually run out, and that it is cheaper and safer to deal with the radioactive wastes after reprocessing than with the waste from conventional uranium -fueled reactors. However, the case for reprocessing in the near term (a decade at least) cannot withstand scrutiny on technical or economic grounds. It seems that nuclear power will acquire a significant share of the global energy menu, even if it does not in the United States. At least some of the new plants will be in politically volatile countries. Unless an effective international regime governing the supply of fissile fuel is established, this will bring with it an unacceptable proliferation risk. The Bush administration has recently created a new initiative—the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which would require nations with advanced nuclear knowledge to provide nuclear fuel to new comers under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency so as to limit the proliferation risk (see Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, n.d.). This is a laudable concept, but it is being advertised in terms of a technology that would in an integrated manner bum and reprocess fissile material. At this time the technology only exists in PowerPoint. It is far too early to claim that GNEP will provide a proliferation-proof or affordable means for a major expansion of nuclear power (Garwin, 2006)

Rogue nations, bad security, and transferring intel leads to weaponization

Pedraza 12

Jorge Morales Pedraza, consultant on international affairs, ambassador to the IAEA for 26 yrs, degree in math and economy sciences, former professor, Energy Science, Engineering and Technology : Nuclear Power: Current and Future Role in the World Electricity Generation : Current and Future Role in the World Electricity Generation, New York. [Premier]

There are three issues of particular concern for the international community when the nuclear energy option is considered by any government as a real alternative to satisfy the foresee increase in the demand of electricity in the country in the coming decades. These issues are the following: a) the existing stocks of fissionable materials in the hands of several countries that are directly usable for the production of nuclear weapons; b) the number of nuclear facilities with inadequate physical protection and controls. The lack of adequate physical protection of nuclear installations in several countries could be used by terrorist groups to have access to certain amount of fissionable materials in order to use them for the production of a nuclear weapon; c) the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology, especially enrichment and reprocessing technology, to countries implementing a nuclear power programme that brings them closer to a nuclear weapons capability.

Empirically, nuclear power leads to nuclear weapons

Schneider et al 11

Mycle – consultant and project coordinator, Antony Frogatt – consultant, Steve Thomas – prof of energy policy @ Greenwich University, “Nuclear Power in a Post-Fukushima World 25 Years After the Chernobyl Accident” World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2010-11, http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/2011MSC-WorldNuclearReport-V3.pdf [Premier]

Political stability. Globally, civil nuclear power production has often been accompanied by, and in some cases led to, the spread of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear proliferation. Further deployment of nuclear power raises genuine concerns about the proliferation of nuclear materials, especially in politically sensitive regions. Energy expert José Goldemberg notes that of the nine developing countries that have installed nuclear reactors for electricity production (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and North Korea), five of them (China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and North Korea) developed nuclear weapons, although South Africa later dismantled its stockpile.10 And Argentina and Brazil both had weapons programs, even if they did not actually manufacture them. The current case of Iran provides an even more graphic example, given the considerable concern within the international community about Iran’s nuclear program and the risk of direct or indirect leakage.

AT Ban CP

Ban on nuclear proliferation is useless – most states don’t want nukes

Biswas 14

Biswas, Shampa. Prof of PoliSci @ Whitman, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order. Minneapolis, US: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 August 2016. [Premier]

In his most recent book, titled Atomic Obsession, John Mueller (2010), in his characteristically witty, unsubtle, and provocative manner, offered a devastating account of the “usefulness” of nuclear weapons and nonproliferation efforts. In thrall to the alleged awesome powers of nuclear weapons, we live in such great fear of them and spend endless effort to prevent their proliferation. Yet nuclear weapons have been historically useless, Mueller suggested— unnecessary ­ in bringing an end to World War II and irrelevant in keeping the peace during the Cold War. Hence spending massive resources on acquiring and keeping them has been wasteful. But also useless, he argues, have been the enormous and quite costly efforts expended on nonproliferation— ­useless, because most states don’t want nukes, and the few who do won’t be any the better for acquiring them. Nor are terrorists really able to buy or make or operate them, despite all the hyped-­ up drama around nuclear terrorism in policy and popular culture. Wasteful and costly expenditures pursuing useless nonproliferation initiatives trying to prevent the acquisition of useless weapons! Mueller’s critique was brutal and controversial.

AT Deterrence

Major states already have nukes – don’t need that many for deterrence

Biswas 14

Biswas, Shampa. Prof of PoliSci @ Whitman, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order. Minneapolis, US: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 August 2016. [Premier]

But questioning the quality of survival of a relatively small-­ scale nuclear attack still leaves us with the issue of the massive overkill capacity that many states, such as the United States, continue to possess in the name of deterring just such an attack. Someone could reject Mueller’s claim that nuclear weapons are simply not necessary for deterrence but still have no sound basis to argue for the massive stockpile of thermonuclear weapons that the United States and other nuclear weapons states have and continue to possess, during the Cold War and long after its supposed demise, far in excess of what may be necessary for deterrence. In that sense, I think Mueller pushes us to think about the usefulness of nuclear weapons in ensuring security, and I believe the case for the uselessness of nuclear weapons for poorer states, such as Iran and North Korea, with fewer resources to expend is stronger still. But I suggest that we think a little harder about how to think about this question of usefulness: if nuclear weapons are not just instruments of security, how else might they be useful for states that have a lot of them and want to keep many of them, and even for those who want to acquire them despite their massive expenses and the global opprobrium they now seem to invite?

Deterrence backfires and arms reduction measures fail, outweighed by the structural violence of sanctions

Biswas 14

Biswas, Shampa. Prof of PoliSci @ Whitman, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order. Minneapolis, US: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 August 2016. [Premier]

Along with his dismissal of the usefulness of nuclear weapons, Mueller also, and in my mind more controversially, questions the usefulness of the countless efforts and initiatives undertaken on behalf of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation. On one hand, he suggests that many anti-­ and counterproliferation efforts aimed at particular rogue states have been enormously costly and essentially ineffective and, indeed, have only served to make nuclear weapons more attractive. In this respect, his attempts to document the costly actual toll in human life and suffering that the long and brutal sanctions imposed on Iraq and North Korea, to prevent a nuclearization that could have devastating possible effects in the future, are commendable. Sanctions against Iran to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons are taking a similar toll on ordinary citizens, while possibly only strengthening the resolve of sections of the regime. Any possible military action against Iran, as is suggested time and again by Israeli and sometimes U.S. leaders, will only make that worse. That preventing future nuclear weapons use is currently costly— ­n i tragic human forms— ­is a singularly important point to make.

But Mueller is also skeptical of the outcomes of a massive undertaking of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, efforts that he suggests have involved countless amounts of time, energy, and money yet have neither curtailed the ambitions of nuclear states nor made the world more or less safe. He takes a particularly hard swipe at various key treaties. The 1962 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) simply banned the kinds of tests that had already been discarded and drove more tests underground, where they are still conducted by the one state (North Korea) that continues to test explosively. The bilateral arms control treaties negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union were quite ineffective— for ­ instance, SALT I only offered a pretext to the two sides to innovate by adding more warheads to missiles when the former were limited, and SALT II capped the level of weapons, but at very high levels, and did not prohibit qualitative improvements. Most important, however, is the NPT— that ­ linchpin of nuclear nonproliferation efforts— practically ­ universal in scope, negotiated and extended indefinitely in 1995 with such great and heroic efforts, and yet, according to Mueller, so utterly useless in restraining the nuclear desires of those few hapless idiots who still want to pursue nuclear weapons. Most states refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons because they have smartly realized that they are a waste of time, money, and energy, not because of the force of the NPT. So can it be that such a well-­regarded treaty such as the NPT and so many well-­intentioned efforts to restrain the awesome destructive powers of nuclear weapons and create at least some semblance of nuclear peace are that useless?

Discourse Key

The way we talk about nuclear power spills up to policy

Biswas 14 summarizes Tannenwald

Biswas, Shampa. Prof of PoliSci @ Whitman, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order. Minneapolis, US: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 August 2016. [Premier]

To find the “objective” existence of this taboo, Tannenwald (2007, 13) looks for evidence in “discourse,” which she defines as “the way people talk and think about nuclear weapons,” which includes “public opinion, the diplomatic statements of states and leaders, the resolutions of international organizations, and the private moral concerns of individual decisionmakers.” International laws, arms control agreements, state policies on nuclear weapons, all “supplement” this discourse, and in her chronological narrative, the taboo emerges “bottom-­ up” as a result of “societal pressure” and is subsequently “institutionalized in bilateral (U.S.–­ Soviet) and multilayered arms control agreements and regimes” (56). Indeed, it is only in chapter 7 of a very long book that Tannenwald takes up the question of institutionalization and discusses the different arms of the NNP regime that helped delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons. Even though different in emphasis and more attuned to societal processes of norms diffusion, Tannenwald’s characterization of institutions and regimes, and that of the norms-­ based accounts of IR more generally, is ultimately fairly consistent with the neoliberal institutionalist understanding of regimes as mechanisms to instantiate the good intentions of policy makers in collaborative state actions toward the ends of global peace. Thus both Adler’s account of the ways that the work and strategic assumptions of the arms control epistemic community helped draw the United States and the Soviet Union toward negotiations on the Anti-­ Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and Tannenwald’s account of the many bilateral and multilateral arms control treaties as emergent from the efforts of policy makers to stabilize deterrence and circumscribe the use of nuclear weapons see the institutions and agreements of the NNP as well-­ intentioned steps toward a more peaceful nuclear world.