Canada’s Nuclear Industry and
the Myth of the Peaceful Atom

by Gordon Edwards

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1

• Introduction
• Atoms for War: Uranium and Plutonium for Sale
• Atoms for Peace: The Non-Proliferation Treaty

Part 2

• India, Pakistan and the Middle East
• Taiwan, South Korea and Argentina

Part 3

• The Collapse of the CANDU Market
• Canada and the Uranium Cartel: The South African Bomb

Part 4

• Canada’s Uranium Abroad: The Ambiguous Atom
• The Nuclear Lobby in Canada: Towards a Plutonium Economy
• Conclusion
• References

Part One

Introduction

Through its dealings with other countries, Canada has played a major role in fostering the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world. This brief history concerns itself with Canada’s involvement as a supplier of nuclear reactors and uranium, leading to both “vertical proliferation” — the ever-accelerating competition for bigger, better, faster and smarter bombs among the existing nuclear powers — and “horizontal proliferation” : a more insidious process whereby dozens of national and subnational groups are slowly but surely acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. It will also describe how the Canadian nuclear lobby has influenced the way Canadians view the proliferation problem.

Atoms for War: Uranium and Plutonium for Sale

 

Canada’s involvement began at the very beginning. The World War II atomic bomb project was the largest secret operation in history. It involved elements of the military, government, industry and academia in Canada, Britain and the United States. At its height, it employed over 500,000 people, producing two of the most destructive weapons the world has ever known: the Hiroshima bomb, made from highly enriched uranium, and the Nagasaki bomb, made from plutonium.

         

The Hiroshima bomb , “Little Boy”                  The Nagasaki bomb , “Fat Man” ;

These two replicas were photographed by Robert Del Tredici          

Building the bombs was relatively easy compared to the major technical difficulties involved in obtaining the two nuclear explosive materials: highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Canada helped the United States to overcome these obstacles.Canada supplied the American military with uranium from the Port Radium mine in the Northwest Territories. In addition, uranium ore concentrates from the Congo were found in a warehouse on Staten Island, stored there by its Belgian owners for safekeeping. All of this uranium was refined at Port Hope, Ontario. Some of it was processed directly into weapons-usable material — highly enriched uranium for the Hiroshima bomb — at a top-secret enrichment facility covering several acres of land near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The remainder was used to fuel special military nuclear reactors built at Hanford, Washington, in order to produce plutonium (which does not exist in nature) for the Nagasaki bomb. The Hanford reactors required an exceptionally pure form of graphite to moderate the nuclear reaction — for without a moderator, a uranium-fueled nuclear reactor simply cannot function, and therefore cannot produce the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, at a secret laboratory in Montreal financed entirely by the Canadian government, war-time research on a more efficient way to produce plutonium was carried on. The basic idea was to use heavy water instead of graphite as a moderator. It was expected, on theoretical grounds, that a reactor moderated by heavy water would produce two or three times as much plutonium as other kinds of reactors. The theory was proven correct after the war, when Canada’s NRX reactor (built at Chalk River, Ontario) earned an international reputation as the world’s most efficient plutonium-producing reactor, using heavy water as a moderator.

The work in Montreal was carefully supervised by British and French scientists, who had brought to Canada the world’s only existing supply of heavy water, spirited out of Norway by a French diplomat to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Canadian scientists welcomed the opportunity to work with the Europeans on the atomic bomb project. In addition to the heavy water research, the Montreal laboratory performed important chemical experiments involving plutonium separation, also known as “reprocessing”. Meanwhile, Canada arranged for the Americans to manufacture their own strategic supply of heavy water at a reconverted chemical plant in Trail, British Columbia.

By the end of the war, Canadian participation in the atom bomb project had become more expensive than all other scientific research activities of the Canadian government combined. A large, secret organization had come into being under the direction of British scientists — the French had returned home when the war ended — and it was soon producing results.

The dust had scarcely settled over Hiroshima and Nagasaki when, on 5 September 1945, the first Canadian nuclear reactor (called ZEEP) began producing plutonium for the continuing American bomb program. Nearby, construction of another, larger reactor for the same purpose (the NRX) was under way.

Both reactors were located at Chalk River, 150 miles northwest of Ottawa, where — at war’s end — bulldozers were preparing a huge nuclear site in accordance with a secret military decision taken in Washington, D.C. in 1944. Within weeks of the war’s ending, however, the Americans and the British were preparing to abandon the Canadian project in order to pursue their own military programs at home. For although the war was over, the nuclear arms race was just beginning.

On 6 September, one day after the ZEEP reactor started up, a cipher clerk in the office of the Soviet Military Attaché in Ottawa defected. Igor Gouzenko revealed the existence of an extensive Soviet spy network in Canada, whose mission included obtaining information about the atomic bomb. Incidents such as this heightened the mutual fear and distrust that have characterized the nuclear arms race ever since, even though the uncontrollable nature of this race was well understood from the outset.

On 15 November 1945, just three months after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, thethree countries involved in the atom bomb project — the U.S., the U.K. and Canada — issued a Joint Declaration containing three prophetic insights. It stated:

 

1. that nuclear weapons provide “a means of destruction hitherto unknown, against which there can be no adequate military defence”;
2. that “no system of safeguards will of itself provide an effective guarantee against the production of atomic weapons”;
3. that atom bombs are weapons “in the employment of which no single nation can, in fact, have a monopoly.”

In other words, the Joint Declaration prophesied that unless nuclear weapons are totally abolished, every country will sooner or later acquire them. At some stage, then, all-out nuclear war would likely result. And, in the absence of any adequate military defence, devastation on a global scale would ensue. To prevent this, the Joint Declaration urged the United Nations to find a way of “entirely eliminating the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes and promoting its use for industrial and humanitarian purposes.”But prejudices and preconceptions die hard. For millennia, military conquest has run like a bright red thread through human history. In the days following the Japanese atomic bombings, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee offered his opinion that nuclear weapons would not be relinquished unless war itself was renounced. In his view, although people can easily understand that

 

rivers as strategic frontiers have been obsolete since the advent of air power, it is infinitely harder for people to realize that even the modern conception of war is now completely out of date. The only course which seems to offer a reasonable hope of staving off imminent disaster for the world is joint action by the U.S.A., U.K. and Russia based upon stark reality. We should declare that this invention has made it essential to end wars.

In the dying days of World War II there was, however, no basis for mutual trust. The USSR had not even been informed by its Western allies about the atomic bomb program. The Soviets interpreted the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an implied threat against themselves, which was partly true. The Allied Forces had apparently adopted Hitler’s technique of terrorizing civilian populations from the air. Having used their dreadful weapon twice in a single week against an enemy which did not even have a nuclear research program, would they hesitate to use it again?

On the other side, fear of the Soviets replaced fear of Hitler as the driving force behind the American nuclear weapons program. The ambitious U.S. arms buildup was spurred by the realization that some day, someone might do to America what America had already done to Japan. Against such an imagined threat, only one defence seemed possible: a counter-threat of massive retaliation which would inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy. In the meantime, any perceived communist aggression could be met with nuclear bombardment if all other measures failed.

Echoing America’s determination to build a nuclear arsenal, the Soviets , the British and the French were equally determined to establish nuclear deterrent forces, as were the Chinese and many other nations. The profound insights contained in the Joint Declaration of 1945 were all but forgotten. The language of nuclear deterrence swiftly became the logic of nuclear proliferation.

In the ensuing Cold War atmosphere, the U.S. intensified its wartime policy of strict secrecy and non-cooperation with all other nations, including, in large measure, Canada and Britain. The U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1946 placed a total embargo on the export of all nuclear-related materials and information, in a desperate attempt to retain the American monopoly on the atom bomb.

As it turned out, exclusive U.S. control was not to last long. Russia exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, followed by the British in 1952. That same year, America detonated its first “hydrogen bomb” or “H-bomb,” with an explosive force more than a thousand times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. The Soviets were only eight months behind the Americans with their own H-bomb, while France and China were hard at work to join the nuclear arms race.

But Canada chose a different course. Back in the autumn of 1945 Canada renounced any intention to build atomic bombs. Not long afterwards, responsibility for the Chalk River complex was transferred to the civilian National Research Council, which funded the project until 1952, at which time it was turned over to the newly created crown corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Canadian nuclear research, it was said, would be dedicated exclusively to bringing the peaceful applications of nuclear energy to commercial fruition. Nevertheless, for twenty years after World War II, Canada sold plutonium (from Chalk River) and uranium (from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie District) for use in the American and British nuclear weapons programs.

To a limited degree, revenues from plutonium sales helped to finance Canada’s enormously expensive nuclear research program, including the construction of a second research reactor (called NRU) at Chalk River. Plutonium revenues also helped pay for repairs to the NRX reactor, which suffered a devastating accident in 1952, as well as a massive cleanup operation following severe contamination of the NRU reactor during another nuclear accident in 1958. However, it is fair to say that the government’s motivation in selling plutonium was not primarily economic. A sense of loyalty, coupled with a desire to maintain close ties with the nuclear establishments in America and Britain, was the dominant consideration.

Meanwhile, stimulated by lucrative military contracts, Canadian uranium production boomed. It peaked in 1959, with twenty-three mines operating in five districts. Over 12,000 tonnes of uranium were exported in that year, valued at more than $300 million. Uranium ranked fourth among Canada’s exports, after newsprint, wheat and lumber. It was almost all for bombs.

Many private fortunes were made in the uranium trade, but Canada as a whole derived little economic benefit from it. Indeed, as a result of Canada’s participation in fueling the nuclear arms buildup during the 1940s and 1950s, over 50 million tonnes of loose radioactive residues were dumped in huge tailings piles near Elliot Lake, Bancroft, Uranium City and Great Bear Lake. The cost of disposing of these long-lived toxic wastes is expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. At some future time, Canadian taxpayers will be presented with the bill. Those who made the profits — and the bombs — are not legally liable.

We will return to the details of Canada’s uranium trade later in this chapter. But first, we will examine the origin of the nuclear power industry and its subsequent role in the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons.

 

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Atoms for Peace: The Non-Proliferation Treaty

On 8 December 1953, speaking to the UN General Assembly, President Eisenhower announced a new direction in U.S. nuclear policy. He proposed “to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers [and put it] into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.” A new international agency would be established, dedicated to “Atoms for Peace.” In particular, nuclear power reactors would be developed “to provide abundant electrical energy to the power-starved areas” of the world.

Eisenhower’s speech created an impression that the peaceful application of nuclear energy would be completely divorced from any possible military application. He even hinted that the nuclear powers would beat their swords into ploughshares, promising that the Atoms for Peace program would “diminish the potential destructive power of the world’s atomic stockpiles.” Taken at face value, it seemed that the new American initiative could fulfill both of the main objectives of the 1945 Joint Declaration by “entirely eliminating the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes and promoting its use for industrial and humanitarian purposes.”

Canada enthusiastically supported Eisenhower’s plan. Once adequately developed, nuclear power was expected to become an enormously profitable venture. Canada was fortunate to be in on the ground floor, it was thought. From a commercial point of view, the timing seemed perfect. Just one year earlier, in 1952, Ottawa had had the foresight to create a crown corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), to take over the Chalk River complex and to develop and market the peaceful applications of nuclear energy. Now, thanks to Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace concept, Canada’s nuclear program might finally begin to pay for itself.

Between April 1955 and October 1956, Canada assisted in drafting the statute governing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA non-proliferation objectives were carefully designed not to interfere with the activities of the nuclear salesmen. According to article 2 of the statute, “the Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic power to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world. It shall ensure, as far as it is able, that assistance provided by it is not used to further any military purposes.” Nuclear regulation was clearly intended to take a back seat to promotional interests.

Over the next decade, the CANDU nuclear power system was developed at a cost of more than one billion dollars.

 

• • • • Canada’s nuclear electricity program began in earnest in 1954, when AECL and Ontario Hydro agreed to build a small nuclear power demonstration plant (the NPD reactor, in service in 1962 with a 22 megawatt capacity) at Rolphton, Ontario.
      • In 1959, three years before the demonstration plant was even completed, these same partners decided to proceed with a prototype CANDU power reactor (Douglas Point, on-line in 1968 at 200 megawatts), ten times larger than the NPD reactor, located on the Bruce peninsula.
      • Then, in 1964, without waiting for the Douglas Point plant to be finished, construction began on a huge nuclear generating station (Pickering “A”) consisting of four even larger CANDU reactors (500 MW each) just 20 miles from downtown Toronto.
      • In 1966, two years before Douglas Point started up, plans for the Gentilly-1 nuclear power plant in Quebec (sporadic operation beginning in 1972, at a nominal power rating of 250 MW) were set in motion.

 

 

E a r l y   C A N D U   R e a c t o r s
CANDU Power Station	Geographic Location	Date of Conception	Nominal Power Rating	In-service Date	Shut-down Date	Lifetime of Plant
NPD	Rolphton Ont. (NW of Ottawa)	1954	22 MWe	1962	1987	25 years
Douglas Point	Tiverton Ont. (near Kincardine)	1959	200 MWe	1968	1984	16 years
Pickering A	Pickering Ont. (E of Toronto)	1964	4 x 540 MWe	1971-73	1997	24 to 26 years
Gentilly-1	Bécancour QC (Trois Rivières)	1966	250 MWe	1972	1978	6 years

 

Only the Pickering plant, built by Ontario Hydro, was destined to become a commercial success. All the others, built by AECL, were subsequently plagued with poor performance records and serious design problems.

During this initial busy period, overseas contacts were also being established. In 1956, under the terms of the Colombo plan of foreign aid, Canada gave India an NRX-type research reactor (called CIRUS), worth almost $10 million. In 1959, Canadian Westinghouse contracted to supply a 125 MW power reactor to Pakistan (called KANUPP). In 1963, AECL offered to assist India in the construction of a 200 MW CANDU power reactor (called RAPP-1), modeled on the Douglas Point plant. A second unit (called RAPP-2) was sold to India in 1967. Of course, India and Pakistan gave solemn assurances that all these facilities would be used for peaceful purposes only. In exchange, Canada gave India and Pakistan loans of $33 million and $47 million respectively (the latter to be repaid over a fifty-year period with no interest charges, following a ten-year period of grace).

Around the time of the CIRUS and KANUPP agreements, the U.K. sold two power reactors — one to Japan and one to Italy — and France sold one to Spain. Canada also began selling uranium to West Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden and Euratom (the European nuclear power consortium), all “for peaceful purposes only.” However, although many countries acquired research reactors during this period, no further export sales of power reactors occurred until the late 1960s. On a global basis, the Atoms for Peace program was off to a rather slow start.

During these early years, one perplexing question kept recurring: How can “atoms for peace” be distinguished from “atoms for war”? Uranium has only two significant uses: atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. However, these two uses are not mutually exclusive. If the uranium which is used to power a reactor is not weapons-grade material to begin with, it will inevitably produce plutonium as a by-product. That plutonium can be recovered later and used to make atomic bombs.

During the 1940s, Britain and France had developed their basic expertise in plutonium recovery in Canada, beginning with the Montreal experiments and ending with the construction and operation of a pilot plutonium separation plant built at Chalk River. This pioneering work, which proved essential to both the British and the French atomic bomb programs, was difficult and dangerous. In order to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel, everything must be done by remote control, because of the deadly radiation fields associated with the irradiated uranium as well as the extraordinary toxicity of the plutonium itself. The chemistry is further complicated by the presence of a great many radioactive substances unknown in nature. In 1950, during an experiment at Chalk River involving the extraction of plutonium, a chemical explosion injured six men, contaminating three of them and killing one.

Plutonium extraction on a large scale must be carried out in a special factory called a reprocessing plant, which resembles an oil refinery in appearance. Building on basic knowledge gained in Canada, Britain and France soon became the undisputed world leaders in plutonium reprocessing technology. In most instances, as we shall see, this has been the key technology in the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons. The only other route to atomic bombs is via uranium enrichment, which poses more difficult technical problems in general.

From the outset, the Atoms for Peace program was afflicted with an unfortunate ambiguity. Plutonium, the essential ingredient for “cheap atom bombs,” was simultaneously portrayed as the nuclear fuel of the future. From the earliest days of the atomic age, it was recognized that uranium supplies would not outlast oil supplies if nuclear power were to provide a significant proportion of the world’s energy needs. To keep the reactors running, plutonium would have to replace uranium as a reactor fuel. Indeed, a whole new generation of nuclear reactors called “breeder reactors” would be required to replenish the plutonium supply as needed. In accordance with this grandiose vision of the future, as Victor Gilinsky of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has pointed out:

 

a desire for plutonium has been kindled by almost universally held assumptions — our own included — that the use of plutonium is a natural, legitimate, desirable, and even indispensable result of the exploitation of nuclear power for the generation of electricity. The powerful grip of this assumption has complicated efforts to prevent this nuclear explosive material from becoming widely and freely available throughout the world.

In effect, by selling uranium and reactors overseas, Canada has helped to create plutonium repositories around the world. For any government wishing to build atomic bombs in the future, this is very convenient, for, at any time, the plutonium can be extracted from the spent nuclear fuel already on hand and used as a nuclear explosive. It can even be done under the guise of Atoms for Peace, ostensibly to gain experience in handling the “fuel of the future.” Eisenhower’s 1953 speech had skirted around this uncomfortable truth. He had assured the UN General Assembly that “our scientists will provide special safe conditions under which a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure, [even without] a completely acceptable system of worldwide inspection and control.” To this day, no one knows what he had in mind.It was foreseen from the beginning that no system of international safeguards based solely upon auditing procedures, inspections and security measures could possibly prevent the diversion of plutonium from civilian reactors for military purposes. As early as March 1946, the U.S. Acheson-Lilienthal Committee concluded that

 

the development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are, in much of their course, interchangeable and interdependent. From this it follows that although nations may agree not to use in bombs the atomic energy developed within their borders, the only assurance that a conversion to destructive purposes would not be made, would be the pledged word and the good faith of the nation itself. This fact puts an enormous pressure upon national good faith.We have concluded unanimously that there is no prospect for security against atomic warfare in a system of international agreements to outlaw such weapons controlled only by a system which relies on inspection and similar police-like methods.

The same conclusion had been succinctly stated in the 1945 Joint Declaration. By the 1950s, however, it had been unaccountably forgotten.

Meanwhile, the nuclear arms race was accelerating year by year. In 1957, Britain exploded its first H-bomb in Australia. Two years later, France joined the nuclear club by detonating an atomic bomb over the Sahara Desert. A worldwide public outcry over the health hazards of radioactive fallout led to a treaty in 1963 banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. However, in no way did the Limited Test Ban Treaty slow down the pace of the nuclear arms race. In the U.S. and the USSR, testing simply moved underground. France, refusing to sign the treaty, continued to explode its bombs in the atmosphere along with China, which detonated an atomic bomb in 1964 and an H-bomb in 1967. The Atoms for Peace program provided a convenient smoke screen to obscure what was really going on.

Other nations were also moving towards a nuclear weapons capability. In the early 1960s, ten years before India exploded its first atomic bomb, Indian scientists at Chalk River were asking Canadian scientists pointed questions about plutonium metallurgy — questions having no known civilian application. Also in the 1960s, India, Pakistan and Taiwan all made separate efforts to acquire their own reprocessing plants. Only India succeeded, with American assistance. Then, in 1964, in the greatest possible secrecy, India decided to build an atomic bomb. Knowledgeable observers in Canada, Pakistan, America and elsewhere had little difficulty in guessing the truth. Just a few years later, in a top-secret report prepared in 1968, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimated that Israel had already developed its own atomic bomb.

By 1965, it had become obvious that assumptions made by the IAEA about the separation of civilian and military uses of nuclear power were simply not valid. The superpowers decided that something must be done to stop the bomb from spreading any further. Three years of negotiations took place before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was approved in 1968. Two more years elapsed before it came into force.

Built into the NPT is a sharp distinction between nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states. The distinction is frankly discriminatory, as the obligations imposed on each are quite different. Each non-nuclear-weapon state which is a party to the NPT has agreed to accept a system of full-scope safeguards policed by the IAEA. The safeguard measures (to be applied on all nuclear facilities, with no exceptions) include elaborate accounting procedures and on-site inspections — exactly the kind of measures which were judged to be ineffective by the Acheson-Lilienthal Report of 1946. Moreover, nuclear-weapon states need not subject themselves to any such onerous requirements, according to the terms of the NPT. Thus the Soviets, who helped draft the NPT, have never allowed IAEA inspections of any of their own nuclear facilities.

The nuclear-weapon states signing the NPT agreed to provide “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of atomic energy,” in exchange for promises from the non-nuclear-weapon states not to acquire atomic bombs or any other nuclear explosive devices. The nuclear-weapon states also undertook to negotiate in good faith a complete cessation of the nuclear arms race towards the ultimate goal of total disarmament — a pledge that has been honoured mainly in the breach.

Among the nuclear-weapon states, France and China flatly refused to sign the NPT. As an added inducement, nations that did sign were given the right to withdraw at any time on three months’ notice. Even so, ten non-nuclear-weapon states with significant nuclear programs — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey — refused to sign. Despite these drawbacks, had the spirit of the NPT been rigorously upheld throughout the 1970s by all parties, it might have had a profound effect in restraining both vertical and horizontal proliferation. Without such a determined commitment, it was crippled from the start.

As subsequent events showed, vertical proliferation continued unabated while Canada and other nuclear vendors willingly engaged in nuclear trade with countries which had refused to sign the NPT. Major nuclear cooperation agreements involving Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and Franco’s Spain were soon entered into. The dictatorial and militaristic leanings of the ruling elites in these countries proved to be no impediment. In practical terms, their refusal to accept the NPT made little or no difference to their nuclear ambitions; they were still able to get what they wanted.

Soon, the international non-proliferation regime came to be regarded with cynicism. As in Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, the splendid-sounding words cloaking the motives of the nuclear-weapon states and the reactor vendors appeared altogether transparent. Atoms for Peace was merely a slogan, not a genuine objective.

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 2

India, Pakistan and the Middle East

In October 1971, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada warned Prime Minister Gandhi of India that the use of plutonium from the Canadian-supplied CIRUS, RAPP-1 or RAPP-2 reactors “for the development of a nuclear explosive device, would inevitably call on our part for a reassessment of our nuclear cooperation with India.” Gandhi dismissed Trudeau’s concern as “hypothetical.”

On 18 May 1974, India’s first atomic bomb was detonated in the Rajasthan desert. India later admitted that the plutonium for the bomb had been produced in the CIRUS reactor. Nevertheless, India insisted that the agreement with Canada had in no way been broken. The Indian government maintained that the bomb was a “peaceful nuclear explosive” and not a military weapon. It was also pointed out that the uranium fuel which bred the plutonium was not of Canadian origin.

France congratulated the Indian government on its accomplishment. Pakistan was the only Third World country to condemn those responsible for the test. The Americans, who had supplied heavy water for the CIRUS reactor and tutored Indian scientists in plutonium-handling techniques, were shocked and chagrined. Twenty years earlier, American scientists had created a fundamental ambiguity by introducing the foolish notion of a “peaceful nuclear explosive” which might be used to create harbours, dig canals and hollow out underground reservoirs of natural gas. Though the concept was subsequently discredited, the ambiguity remained and could now be exploited by any nation wishing to make its own “nuclear devices” without calling them “bombs.”

The Canadian government immediately suspended all nuclear cooperation with India. It was a relatively empty gesture, for the Canadians were not really needed in India any more. After RAPP-1 and RAPP-2, the Indians went on to build four more CANDU reactors without Canadian assistance. Towards the end of 1974, Canada responded further to the Indian explosion by announcing more stringent safeguards on all future sales of Canadian nuclear materials and equipment. Though well- intentioned, this approach unfortunately served to perpetuate the myth that truly effective safeguards agreements are possible. In effect, the Emperor was merely ordering a new set of clothes.

The Indian episode illustrates the uncanny accuracy of the insights contained in the 1945 Joint Declaration: there is no adequate defence, there is no effective control, and there is no possibility of monopoly. As long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely spread like a contagious disease. Writing in The Nation in 1976, Richard Falk observed:

 

Underlying the whole policy of the nuclear age is the fantastic notion that you can both promote a peaceful world and, at the same time, retain the domineering capacities that come from having nuclear weapons.In order to obscure the perverse logic, we have had to proliferate nuclear technology for so-called peaceful purposes; and that is where the Catch-22 factor comes in. To prevent the spread of nuclear capabilities, we’ve had to spread nuclear capabilities — because the problem of how to keep nuclear weapons exclusively for ourselves poses quite an impossible political puzzle. This immense process of deception and self-deception is implicit in the effort to have the benefits of nuclear force, but somehow deny them to others.

And then we have the audacity to lecture the Indians on their temerity in exploding a single nuclear device, while in the same week that India exploded that device, the Soviet Union and the United States between them exploded seven far more destructive devices.

The Indian explosion also revealed something of great significance concerning the gap between the have and the have-not nations. Following hard on the heels of the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, the Indian action communicated a forceful message: the age of Western hegemony is drawing to a close. In 1978, the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry into Uranium Mining in Saskatchewan reported that Canada had seriously underestimated

 

the significance of the Indian achievement in the eyes of the Third World. India’s action provided new incentives for other nations to go nuclear; revealed a new route via nuclear explosions for “peaceful purposes;” challenged the claim that nuclear explosives are only peaceful if done by a Nuclear-Weapon State; and successfully defied a system regarded by many of the Third World nations as one of superpower domination.

At the NPT Review Conference held in Geneva just one year after the Indian explosion, a new mood was apparent among the unaligned Third World countries, who clamoured for the superpowers to start living up to their own neglected NPT obligations. As William Epstein of Canada reported, the developing nations challenged the nuclear-weapon states “to end underground nuclear tests, to reduce nuclear arms, to pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against Non- Nuclear-Weapon Parties to the Treaty, and to agree to rules for creating nuclear-free zones.” However, “all of these major proposals were rejected by the superpowers and their NATO and Warsaw Pact allies.” It is hardly surprising that the NPT came to be viewed as a combined East-West effort by nuclear bullies to prevent Third World countries from ever becoming equal.

Ali Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, was especially determined not to knuckle under. Writing in 1979, he pointed out what must be obvious to most Arabs: “Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. Only the Islamic civilization was without it.” Throughout his political career, Bhutto was determined to make Pakistan a nuclear power. As early as 1967, when he was living in Paris, he had observed:

 

All European strategy is based on the concept of total war. A war waged against Pakistan is capable of becoming a total war. Our plans should therefore include the nuclear deterrent. India is unlikely to concede nuclear monopoly to others. It appears that she is determined to proceed with her plans to detonate a nuclear bomb. Pakistan must therefore embark upon a similar program.

The decision to build the Islamic world’s first atomic bomb was taken b y Pakistan in January 1972, less than a month after Bhutto came to power. Since then, much of the necessary research has been financed through the efforts of Libyan dictator Colonel Qaddafi. Qaddafi had been trying to break into the nuclear club since 1968, when he first suspected that Israel had the bomb. His suspicions were not without foundation, for in December 1974, the president of Israel told a group of visiting science writers: “It has always been our intention to develop a nuclear potential. We now have that potential. If we should have need of such arms, we would have them in a short time — even a few days.”

Pakistan had earlier acquired a source of plutonium in the form of the 125 MW KANUPP reactor from Canada, committed in 1959 with assurances that it would be used “for peaceful purposes only.” The responsibility for safeguarding this nuclear power plant was transferred from AECL to the IAEA in 1969, three years before it went into commercial operation. Following the Indian atomic explosion, Canada tried to obtain binding assurances from Pakistan that plutonium produced in the KANUPP reactor would never be used as a nuclear explosive. By December 1975, it was evident that Pakistan would simply not agree to this condition; the Canadian government therefore terminated its program of nuclear cooperation with Pakistan. About the same time, Bhutto vowed that his country would “never surrender to any nuclear blackmail from India. The people of Pakistan are ready to offer any sacrifice, and even eat grass, to ensure unclear parity with India.”

Since 1973, Pakistan has been negotiating to purchase a large plutonium reprocessing plant from France. Despite Pakistan’s reluctance, the plant would have to be subjected to IAEA safeguards or France would not sell. Pakistan finally agreed, but only after deciding to build a much smaller “pilot plant” for plutonium separation based on technical information and experience gleaned from the French project. The smaller plant would not be subject to IAEA inspections. According to a French telex dated 28 July 1975, Pakistan’s nuclear chief Munir Khan boasted that, with such a pilot plant, “his country would be in a position to produce — using the irradiated natural uranium produced by their Canadian reactor — the few kilograms of plutonium necessary for an explosive device.”

Although Ali Bhutto was overthrown by General Zia ul-Haq in April 1978, Pakistan’s nuclear plans remained essentially unchanged. Two months later, France finally bowed to American pressure by canceling the contract for the reprocessing plant. It was too late, however. Pakistan already had almost everything needed to complete the project alone. Both the large and the small plutonium separation facilities were expected to be operational in 1983.

The Indian explosion had ramifications throughout the Middle East. The Shah’s Iran, an apprehensive neighbour of both India and Pakistan, promptly ordered several nuclear reactors. Iranian students were sent abroad to study nuclear physics and engineering. The equally militaristic Iraqi regime began shopping around for nuclear reactors as well. According to Yves Girard of the French Department of Energy (as reported in The Islamic Bomb), several CANDU salesmen who were in Baghdad in December 1974 were quick

 

to point out the virtues of the CANDU reactor, hinting broadly at its excellence in producing the deadly substance [plutonium], and even more broadly at the possibilities of keeping safeguards to a minimum. What bothered Girard most was not that they had tried to sell the CANDU that way. It was their later hypocrisy in pointing to the French sale as a danger for nuclear proliferation, when actually they had desperately wanted the sale for themselves, and had indicated no concern whatsoever whether Iraq got the bomb or not.

In a general sense, hypocrisy may be the crux of the proliferation problem. How can Canada expect other nations not to develop nuclear weapons, when it clearly accepts the right of the U.S., the U.K., the USSR, France and China to have them? Canada does not object in principle to nuclear weapons, it seems, but only cares whose finger is on the nuclear trigger.

Like all double standards, this one is odious. Herbert Scoville, who spent many years in the U.S. nuclear weapons business and in the CIA before joining the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, portrays the nuclear arms race as

 

symbolic of a perverted world, where the possession of nuclear weapons is taken as a sign that a country is important and should be listened to. Instead, I believe that we must create an international atmosphere where the possession of nuclear weapons is a cause for embarrassment and shame, rather than for power and prestige.Unless we all work together to establish a climate in which nuclear weapons are not assigned political or military value, we may see mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv and Cairo, and lingering radiation casualties throughout the Middle East.

But no one knows how to limit a nuclear war. It could escalate out of control. These horrors, multiplied many times over, could equally well be visited on Washington and New York, London and Belfast, Paris and Marseilles, Moscow and Leningrad.

If the nuclear powers are seeking to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, they are certainly going about it the wrong way.

 

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Taiwan, South Korea and Argentina

Canada’s nuclear dealings with Taiwan, South Korea and Argentina, taking place later than those with India and Pakistan, revealed much about the nature of the International nuclear trade.

In 1969, Canada sold Taiwan an NRX-type research reactor very similar to the CIRUS reactor that was supplied to India in 1956. An agreement was signed whereby the reactor would not be used “to further any military purpose.” Shortly afterwards, however, Canada recognized mainland China and severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan, an already-isolated country, obsessed with its own defence.

Supplying Taiwan with the means to make nuclear weapons, and then joining in its international abandonment, might be said to invite the spread of the atomic bomb. As former U.S. Department of Defense Director George Rathjens said in 1976: “If mainland China made a determined effort to take Taiwan, the Taiwan government could only effectively respond with nuclear weapons.”

In fact, by 1974, Taiwan had actually built a small clandestine facility for separating plutonium. It had also ordered a much larger reprocessing plant from France, similar to the one ordered by Pakistan. When the Americans got wind of this, they forced Taiwan to cancel the order and to dismantle the existing plutonium separation plant immediately, threatening to withdraw all military aid otherwise.

Canada’s next export sale came in December 1973, when a contract was signed obligating AECL to supply a 600 MW CANDU reactor to Argentina (the EMBALSE reactor). The contract became effective in April 1974, just weeks before the Indian atomic explosion. Meanwhile, negotiations were under way with South Korea for the construction of another 600 MW CANDU (the WOLSUNG reactor), for which the contract was signed early in 1975. In retrospect, it is clear that both Argentina and South Korea were interested in acquiring nuclear arms.

Argentine dictator Juan Peron had boasted of his country’s capacity to develop the atomic bomb as early as 1951, based on research done in Argentina by Ronald Richter, an ex-Nazi nuclear physicist. Of the thousands of German Nazis who fled to Argentina after the collapse of the Third Reich, many were destined to play key roles in the Argentine nuclear industry. To give one example, during World War II Walther Schnurr helped to develop Zyklon-B gas, which was used to exterminate millions in Nazi death camps. He fled Germany at the end of the war and settled in Argentina. Recalled to Germany in 1955, Schnurr subsequently negotiated the delivery to Argentina of a small plutonium separation facility in the 1960s, as well as a medium-sized reactor called ATUCHA-I (375 MW) which was started up in 1974. With these two German nuclear facilities, Argentina could in fact build an atomic bomb. In 1973, Schnurr was awarded the Mayo medal, Argentina’s highest award for foreigners.

The additional purchase of a CANDU reactor would add significantly to Argentina’s plutonium inventory. Because it is moderated with heavy water, the CANDU design produces more plutonium than any other power reactor on the international market. The CANDU reactor also has an efficient system of “on-line refueling,” by which spent fuel can be removed from the reactor by remote control at any time of the day or night, even while the reactor is operating at full power. No other commercial power reactor has a comparable capability. On-line refueling makes it particularly difficult to safeguard a CANDU reactor; an inspector would have to be present 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to ensure that all the spent fuel is accounted for at all times. Moreover, since the CANDU is fueled with natural uranium, with which Argentina is well endowed, the Argentine regime would be free from any dependence on America, Europe or the USSR for supplies of enriched uranium. With the CANDU system, Argentina’s nuclear fuel supply could never be cut off.

The Korean dictatorship of General Park Chung Hee had secretly decided in the early 1970s to build an atomic bomb. In 1972, discussions began with France for the purchase of a reprocessing plant, and the actual contract was signed early in 1975. As in the case of Pakistan and Taiwan, the military implications of this move were not lost on the Americans. On 8 March 1975, the French ambassador wired his government from Seoul: “The United States has no doubts that the Koreans have in mind putting to ulterior military ends what they can make use of, such as plutonium.” In June 1975, General Park told the Washington Post that if the Americans were ever to weaken their support, South Korea would have to develop its own nuclear weapons. “We have the capacity to do it,” he declared. That same month, Newsweek magazine reported that General Park had ordered the Korean Defence Development Agency to begin research on atomic weapons.

By December 1974, the political impact of India’s explosion the previous spring began to be felt by the team of CANDU salesmen peddling their wares in Baghdad and Seoul, and by the Argentine officials about to sign an agreement to allow routine IAEA inspections of the EMBALSE reactor. Canada unveiled its new policy on nuclear safeguards: henceforth all items of Canadian origin, and all nuclear materials produced by or with Canadian-origin items, would have to be used exclusively for non-military and non-explosive purposes. In addition, prior consent would have to be obtained from Canada before any high-level enrichment, reprocessing or re-transfer of such nuclear materials would be permitted. IAEA safeguards (or equivalent) would have to be applied for the lifetime of the facilities or materials in question, and acceptable physical security measures would have to be employed to prevent theft or sabotage. Pending re-negotiation of Canada’s existing nuclear cooperation agreements, nuclear exports (including exports of uranium) would be allowed to proceed on a “business-as-usual” basis for one year. (This was later extended to two years.)

Throughout 1975, Canada worked to obtain bilateral agreements with Argentina and South Korea incorporating the conditions of the new policy, and agreements were finally concluded in January 1976. In South Korea’s case, ins view of that country’s continuing efforts to obtain a plutonium reprocessing plant, the Korean regime was officially notified that Canada “would not be prepared, at this time, to agree to the reprocessing of nuclear material.” Later, under intense pressure from the Americans, Korea (like Taiwan) was forced to abandon its efforts to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. However, rumours persisted that Korea was still intent on pursuing a nuclear weapons option, as documented in a 1978 U.S. congressional report. On the other hand, Argentina frankly and openly stated that a nuclear weapons option must be regarded as an Argentine prerogative. The Argentine regime refused to ratify the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which would keep Latin America free of nuclear arms. Under these circumstances, even the new Canadian safeguards agreements seemed but a flimsy defence against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The ineffectiveness of unenforced nuclear safeguards was recognized in the upper echelons of the federal government at this time. In October 1975, Joseph Stanford, director of the Legal Advisory Division of the Canadian Department of External Affairs, stated: “Safeguards by themselves cannot prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. All they can do is detect breaches of the safeguards.” Speaking to an international gathering of lawyers in Washington, D.C., Stanford pointed out that even the most stringent safeguards were “not much good,” because there was no international consensus “on what is to be done if the agreements are violated.” Without such a consensus, any nation violating the non-proliferation objectives “could bargain one country off against the other.” In that case, relaxation of the safeguards would inevitably “become a factor in commercial negotiations for nuclear reactor sales” — a prophetic statement, as subsequent events would show. At any rate, Stanford observed, safeguards without teeth are, by definition, not enforceable; they will never succeed in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Six months later, these sentiments were echoed by Sigvard Eklund, Director of the IAEA, in an address to the UN General Assembly.

At the same time, Canadian public opposition to nuclear power was growing by leaps and bounds. To begin with, the Indian atomic explosion in 1974 had shocked Canadians from coast to coast. The following year, evacuation of radioactively contaminated homes and schools in Port Hope, Ontario, made national news. Then, by the autumn of 1975, it became public knowledge that AECL was going to lose over $100 million on its Argentinian sale due to financial bungling. Around the same time, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility began publicly disputing the need for nuclear power as an energy source, arguing in favour of cheaper, safer, more suitable energy alternatives. The federal Liberal Party, at its policy convention in Ottawa in November 1975, unanimously adopted a resolution calling on its government leaders to launch a national public inquiry into nuclear power “in order to acquaint the people of Canada with the hazards and the benefits of nuclear technology.” The government ignored this resolution and turned a deaf ear to the nuclear critics.

But the controversy would not die. In 1976, the Auditor-General’s Report revealed that on top of its $100 million loss, AECL had committed major financial indiscretions in connection with the Argentinian and Korean sales — including the payment of huge sums in unauthorized agents’ fees. In the case of Argentina, AECL deposited $2.5 million in an anonymous Swiss bank account; the identity of the recipient was never discovered. In the case of Korea, Shoul Eisenberg of Tel Aviv received $18 million in unaccountable payments from AECL. Amidst charges of bribery, corruption and kick-backs, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee launched an investigation. However, the committee was denied power of subpoena by the Liberal majority on the committee, AECL refused to present its books for inspection, and top AECL officials stonewalled the committee by refusing to answer questions. The committee reported that AECL witnesses were “reluctant,” “uncooperative” and “evasive” in testifying. The committee also concluded that

the successful concealment, by complex and sophisticated payment and banking procedures in foreign countries, of the identities of the ultimate recipients of the funds and the nature of services rendered, leads your Committee to suspect that some of the payments were indeed used for illegal or corrupt purposes.

It is sobering to reflect that IAEA inspectors have even fewer powers of inquiry than the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has. If $20 million can disappear without being accounted for, then surely 20 pounds of plutonium — enough to make an atomic bomb — could also disappear without anyone being the wiser. (In the United States, the amount of plutonium which is officially acknowledged as missing — that is, “unaccounted for” would be sufficient to make hundreds of atomic bombs.)

In June 1976, in the face of mounting public opposition, Prime Minister Trudeau publicly defended his government’s determination to provide nuclear technology to countries like Argentina and South Korea. In a world “starved for energy,” Trudeau insisted that Canada had a “moral obligation” to share its nuclear technology with Third World countries. “You’ve got to live dangerously if you want to live in the modern age,” he said. “In a sense,” he added, “we’re relying on the signed word” to prevent misuse of nuclear technology. In a similar vein, Donald Macdonald, then minister of energy, told the House of Commons that Canada would have to “trust the motives” of her nuclear clients and rely on them “to honour their undertakings and obligations in good faith.”

For all their emphasis on “moral obligations,” both Trudeau and Macdonald avoided the most perplexing question: Are the military rulers in Argentina and South Korea trustworthy? Under these brutally repressive regimes, political freedom is unknown. Human rights and civil liberties are trampled upon. Rigid class structures are maintained with an iron fist. Taiwan and South Korea both yielded to U.S. pressure and canceled their orders for reprocessing plants, because they depended so heavily on American economic and military aid. But what could Canada do if either Argentina or South Korea decided to renege on the non- proliferation promises?

Just three months before Trudeau’s speech, in March 1976, General Videla’s junta seized power in Argentina by violently overthrowing the government of Isabel Peron. Since then, twenty thousand people from all walks of life have simply disappeared; most of them were never heard from again. Two-thirds of the “disappeared ones” were labour organizers, kidnapped and imprisoned by army’s security forces. Men, women and children have been tortured and murdered for obscure reasons. Writers and other members of the intelligentsia have been systematically incarcerated.

In South Korea, likewise, strong-arm methods have become a way of life. Strict censorship, illegal detentions, mass arrests and torture are not uncommon occurrences. General Park seized power in 1961 through a military coup. Throughout 1974, as CANDU salesmen were wooing Korean officials, the country was teetering on the brink of martial law. In May 1975, shortly after the contract was signed with AECL, General Park passed Emergency Law Number 9, which forbade any criticism of the government and prevented the reporting of any opinions not in accord with official government policy. Political gatherings, even in private homes, were outlawed, as were public demonstrations of any kind. Jail terms and death sentences were prescribed. The Emergency Law remained in force until 1979 — the year when General Park was shot through the head at a state dinner by his own chief of central intelligence.

In December 1976, in an effort to forestall further criticism, Canada unilaterally adopted the most stringent safeguards requirements in the world. The new policy went considerably beyond the 1974 requirements, but unfortunately, it was based on the crumbling foundation of the NPT. In future, nuclear cooperation would be authorized only with nations which had ratified the NPT, or which had made “an equally binding commitment to non-proliferation.” In either case, full-scope safeguards on all nuclear activities would have to be applied.

Korea automatically satisfied the new Canadian requirements, having signed the NPT in 1975 with all the IAEA inspection and auditing procedures already accepted. However, Argentina stubbornly refused to conform. The Argentine generals accepted neither the non-proliferation objectives nor the full-scope safeguards demanded by Canada’s new policy. Facilities built in Argentina without foreign assistance would not be subjected to the indignity of inspectors from outside the country. Since the construction of the EMBALSE reactor was well under way, Canada decided to abide by the 1974 policy in Argentina’s case.

While Canada was stiffening her nuclear safeguards requirements, the U.S. was trying very hard to stop the sale of “sensitive technologies” — uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants — which could bring any country dangerously close to a nuclear weapons capability. If the atomic bomb becomes generally available, the American doctrine of nuclear deterrence based on “mutually Assured Destruction” would become totally meaningless. As one U.S. official remarked, “in a few years’ time we might wake up to find Washington, D.C. gone — and not even know who did it!”

As the result of a joint Canada-U.S. initiative to curb horizontal proliferation, the “Nuclear Suppliers’ Group” (commonly known as the London Club) met for the first time in April 1975, with representatives from Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, West Germany, the U.S. and the USSR. Meetings were held every few months. The list of participants gradually expanded to include fifteen industrialized nations, but with no representation from the Third World. Meanwhile, vertical proliferation continued unchecked. Despite six years of Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, the U.S. and the USSR produced only one meaningful agreement — the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty. In 1976, Herbert Scoville, director of the Arms Control Association, scornfully referred to the superpowers as “two nuclear alcoholics who take a pledge to stop drinking aperitifs and instead guzzle brandy into the wee hours.”

Finally, in January 1978, the London Club published a “trigger list” of nuclear items which must not be sold without solemn assurances that they would be used solely for non-explosive purposes. The list included heavy water and reactor-grade graphite as well as plutonium and highly enriched uranium. However, the Canadians were not successful in having all nuclear suppliers require full-scope safeguards of their customers, and the Americans failed completely in their attempt to impose an outright ban on the export of enrichment and reprocessing facilities. France and West Germany, who were selling these technologies, were determined not to let the Americans tell them what to do.

Perhaps the most telling failure of the London Club lay in its inability or unwillingness to define a common course of action, to be followed by all, in the event of a violation of the “non-explosive use” clause. Thus the only assurance that a country would not misuse nuclear technology continued to be “national good faith.” Safeguards without teeth, promulgated by nuclear powers showing no restraint in their own nuclear weapons programs, offered scant protection against horizontal proliferation.

The awkwardness of Canada’s position was revealed in November 1978, when the Washington Post reported that Admiral Carlos Castro Madero of Argentina had clearly indicated his country’s intention to build an atomic bomb. Madero’s words were recorded on tape. When questioned on 21 November, Donald Jamieson, Canadian secretary of state for external affairs, told the House of Commons that Madero “may not be a formal spokesman for the [Argentine] Government. I think it can be said that the Government of Argentina has no intention of going into reprocessing.” (At that time, Admiral Madero was Head of the Argentine Atomic Energy Authority.) Three weeks later, in response to further questioning, Jamieson confessed that “whether he is a spokesman for the Government of Argentina per se, and Argentina has endorsed his statements, we still have not officially determined.” At any rate, Jamieson pointed out that Canada’s 1974 safeguards policy forbids Argentina from using Canadian technology to make a bomb. “In the event of non- compliance,” he declared, “Canada may suspend cooperation, and may request that Argentina immediately cease to use any Canadian supplies.” Yet similar signals continued to come from Argentina without provoking any such response.

 

 

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Part 3

The Collapse of the CANDU Market

Throughout the turbulent 1970s, the CANDU salesmen never slackened their efforts. Prior to 1975, overtures were made by AECL to Mexico, Romania, Australia, Greece, Italy and Denmark, without any success. Each separate effort cost $1 million or more. In the latter half of the decade, Great Britain, Japan, China, Venezuela, Romania, Yugoslavia, Indonesia and Ireland (among others) were targets of CANDU marketing efforts. This ambitious sales push resulted in only one further sale of a single 600 MW CANDU reactor to Romania in 1978. Even that sale came under attack from Conservative MP Flora MacDonald who did not believe that Canada should be selling nuclear technology to Warsaw Pact nations.

By the end of 1978, the future was beginning to look bleak for the Canadian nuclear industry. Domestic markets for CANDU reactors had evaporated. Electrical growth rates had been dropping steadily since 1973, and most provincial utilities were beginning to experience large surpluses of electrical capacity. A similar phenomenon was occurring all over North America and Western Europe. Yet a report commissioned by the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) indicated that two sales per year would be needed to keep the CANDU industry alive. Where would these orders come from?

The American light-water reactor had already captured the European mark et, while Japan and Great Britain were more interested in developing their own reactor systems than importing Canadian technology. Not a single reactor vendor had yet turned a profit anywhere in the world, yet the competition was extraordinarily keen. Only Third World countries were seen as potential customers for CANDU reactors, but the obstacles were formidable. It soon became apparent that nuclear power is not a suitable energy source for most developing countries, for a variety of reasons.

To begin with, only a handful of Third World countries have electrical grids large enough to accommodate a nuclear power plant. Even then, in many cases the majority of people live in areas where there are no electrical services. Amulya Reddy of India’s Bangor Institute has observed that “most Third World countries are in fact dual societies with small, affluent, largely urban-based elites (10-20 per cent of the population) and large masses of poverty-stricken people, most of whom live in rural areas. When electricity is introduced into rural regions, it rarely penetrates beyond the richer farmers of agribusiness who are close to major distribution grids. So the development impact of nuclear power transfer, for the majority of rural poor, will not be great.” Even in the cities, few are rich enough to afford electricity.

In most cases, then, nuclear power actually concentrates more economic and political power in the hands of those who already have too much. David Rogers, a Canadian nuclear physicist, wrote that, for this reason, nuclear programs generally increase “the degree of undemocratic social control exerted in developing countries.” At a 1979 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted by the World Council of Churches, delegates from over fifty developing nations signed a declaration asserting that the only Third World governments wanting nuclear power were dictatorial regimes with ulterior motives: “The motivation for importing reactors in these states derives from military-political considerations and aspirations for prestige.” The declaration was read out to the assembly in support of a resolution calling for a global moratorium on nuclear power plants, which passed by a wide margin.

These observations are valid even in the more technically advanced Third World countries. Dr. Miguel Ussher, a special assistant to the president of Argentina, appeared on a panel in Knoxville, Tennessee in November 1981 to discuss the role of nuclear power in developing nations. He said:

…if we consider the amount of money invested, [nuclear power] is the most costly electricity ever made. But from other points of view it has been entirely convenient. Militarily and strategically, it’s not exactly the same.
For example, since we [Argentina] have 70 years reserve of gas, we could cover the country with gas turbines and that would solve all the problems. We know that perfectly, and it would cost less. But this is a different matter. We have to deal with the problem under the conditions that really exist. Brazil is in the same case.

When asked if this meant that Argentina wanted nuclear technology in order to have a nuclear weapons option, Dr. Ussher said “Right.”

Once a developing nation decides that it wants nuclear power, the biggest obstacle is lack of capital. Romania is a case in point. Despite a billion-dollar line of credit advanced by the federal government’s Export Development Corporation in 1979 to help finance the CANDU sale, Romania had still not ordered a single CANDU component three years later. During the intervening years, tortuous trade negotiations took place. In order to earn enough foreign currency to pay for the CANDU, Romania wanted Canada to buy (or find buyers for) Romanian farm machinery and textiles. In June 1981, to keep the negotiations alive, Romanian officials initialed an agreement to purchase a second CANDU — but still no orders were placed for the first. In the spring of 1982 the Export Development Corporation finally withdrew the Romanian line of credit.

None of these bleak realities jibed with the magnificent vision of a nuclear-powered planet that had been conjured up earlier by nuclear enthusiasts. For example, in 1974, AECL vice-president A.J. Mooradian had stated that, thanks to nuclear power, “For the first time in human history, mankind can look forward to a world civilization of 10 or 20 billions, well-clothed, well-housed, well-fed, living in peace and harmony for thousands of generations.” Four years later without domestic or export markets, the CANDU manufacturing industry was facing inevitable collapse. While the full ramifications were not to be felt for several more years, the handwriting was on the wall as early as 1978.

And so it was a lean and hungry sales team that returned to Argentina in 1978-79 to try to sell a second CANDU reactor. Admiral Madero, head of the Argentine Atomic Energy Authority, offered the Canadians a lukewarm reception. Lengthy delays and serious cost overruns had plagued the EMBALSE reactor, and there had been the irksome negotiations necessitated by Canada’s evolving safeguards requirements. The Argentinians were not pleased.

By April 1979, however, AECL had come up with an offer which (it was hoped) Argentina could scarcely refuse. For $1 billion, Argentina could acquire not only a second 600 MW CANDU reactor, complete with a five-year supply of heavy water and uranium fuel, but also an NRX-type research reactor, a heavy-water manufacturing plant, a CANDU fuel fabrication plant, uranium exploration and exploitation technology, and a licensing arrangement which would allow Argentina to build and sell its own CANDU reactor in future — in short, everything needed to make Argentina self-sufficient in CANDU technology. Meanwhile, a German and Swiss consortium offered a very similar package at a much heftier price of $1.5 billion. Moreover, the European deal involved a 600 MW heavy-water reactor which had not yet been designed, whereas the Pickering reactors in Ontario had already proven themselves to be the best electricity-producing reactors in the world. The Canadians were jubilant. It seemed the contract was in the bag.

In the summer of 1979, longshoremen and other workers in Saint John, New Brunswick, refused to load a shipment of heavy water bound for the EMBALSE reactor. They demanded the release of sixteen trade unionists who had been imprisoned without charges in Argentina. The action was organized by the No CANDU for Argentina Committee, and had the full backing of the Canadian Labour Congress, representing 2.5 million Canadian workers. A few days after the boycott, six of the trade unionists were released from Argentine prisons. In October of that year, speaking at the United Nations, External Affairs Minister Flora MacDonald denounced the atrocious human rights record of the Argentine regime. Within days, the Argentinians announced that they were accepting the more expensive German-Swiss deal over the AECL offer.

Disappointed and angry, AECL spokesmen lashed out at the Canadian government for its vacillations on nuclear safeguards, and at Flora MacDonald for her ill-timed remarks. “Canada’s standards are too tough,” lamented Ray Burge, chief of public relations for AECL. Ross Campbell, chairman of AECL, bitterly criticized Ottawa’s “waffling” on nuclear safeguards, saying that AECL’s position internationally had been “thoroughly undermined.” He also referred to Flora MacDonald’s remarks as a “gratuitous offence by Canada.” “The ripples from this will be far greater than we’ve estimated,” said Mr. Campbell, warning that the CANDU system was in danger of becoming extinct. Liberal external affairs critic Allan MacEachen took up the refrain in the House of Commons, blaming the loss of the sale on “imprudent remarks at a critical time. It was a very ham-handed way to deal with a very important international negotiation involving billions of dollars.”

However, it seems that if anyone deserved such sharp-tongued criticism, it was the German government. In April 1980, the Canadian embassy in Bonn publicly expressed disappointment that “non-proliferation safeguard requirements did become an element of the competition” for the Argentine sale, despite a previous commitment from West Germany to accept Canada’s position on the need for full-scope safeguards as a non-negotiable condition of the sale. Just before the contract was awarded, the German-Swiss consortium apparently broke this agreement with Canada by dropping the requirement for full-scope safeguards. At the time, a confidential memorandum circulated within the German cabinet warned Chancellor Schmidt that there would probably be hostile reactions from Ottawa and Washington. Nevertheless, combined Canadian-American pressure exerted in the spring of 1980 was unable to prevent the sale on non-proliferation grounds. Thanks to the Germans and the Swiss, Argentina would soon be able to build a complete nuclear fuel cycle of its own, free from any kind of international safeguards.

The heavy water boycott may have been taken as a warning by Argentina t o tread cautiously with Canada. Still, the Canadian reactor being built in Cordoba province was vitally important. “If the Cordoba plan fails,” declared Mario Bancora, director of the Argentine utility Thermomission, “then I feel all our atomic program will be affected. We need this desperately to achieve our future Argentine atomic program.” With this in mind, Admiral Madero went to Ottawa in April 1980 to placate the Canadians and to ensure that the EMBALSE reactor would be finished without any hitches. The Canadians were relieved to learn that they would not be losing any more than the $130 million they already knew they would lose on the project. They were also encouraged to think that Argentina might order more CANDU reactors later on if Canada was not too demanding.

In July, Ian Adams published an article in Today magazine entitled “Nazi A-Bomb,” telling the story of Argentina’s nuclear ambitions. Referring to Madero’s visit to Ottawa, Adams wrote:

Of course there was no press conference. The Liberal ministers, willing to shake hands with fascists in private, were not about to let themselves be photographed doing so. Some two weeks later, on May 16, General Videla and President Joao Figueiredo of Brazil signed a nuclear accord and weapons development treaty. The dream of the generals — engineered by former German Nazis, fueled by the CANDU reactor, and subsidized in part by the Canadian taxpayer — moved one step closer to reality.
On 1 May 1980, immediately after Admiral Madero’s visit to Ottawa, Prim e Minister Trudeau declared to the House of Commons that only urgent action would salvage the CANDU industry. “The time schedule for keeping our industry viable is very, very short,” he said. “We are now in danger of seeing the Canadian industry become obsolete and lose its chance to sell in other countries unless we make some quick decisions on some basic questions.” Trudeau revealed that an in-depth review of the nuclear industry would be undertaken by the Department of Energy, but he rejected opposition demands for a public inquiry. While there was “no intention” of preventing the Canadian public from expressing its views, Trudeau maintained that “we cannot wait for a long inquiry to decide whether we stay in the game or get out of the game.”

The nuclear review was carried out by an interdepartmental committee of government officials, with assistance and advice from AECL, Eldorado Nuclear Limited, the Atomic Energy Control Board, and the Canadian Nuclear Association — all organizations which are dedicated to the promotion of nuclear technology. However, there was no opportunity for groups critical of nuclear power to make their views known effectively. Despite a written mandate from sixty-five organizations across Canada, which was communicated personally to Marc Lalonde, then minister of energy, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility was prevented from even making a presentation to the minister or to the review committee.

A draft version of the committee’s final report was leaked to the Ottawa press in June 1981. The review committee noted that it was doubtful “whether the nuclear industry in Canada will survive the 1980s.” With no domestic demand for CANDU reactors, “virtually all firms in the industry could be out of business by the mid-to-late 1980s.” The committee observed that export sales were hampered by safeguards requirements and financial constraints, as well as soft markets and fierce competition. Significant relaxation of safeguards could open up the possibility of “nuclear cooperation with a number of countries: South Africa, the Middle East and Taiwan,” not to mention the “U.S. military program,” but only at great political cost. The report urged Ottawa to offer “concessional financing” in relation to potential CANDU sales — in effect, large “implicit subsidies” to the nuclear industry, to be paid for by the taxpayer. Meeting the terms being offered by competitors such as France and Germany” may involve subsidies equivalent to 25% to 30% of the cost of a reactor sale.” Since the federal government had already invested more than $3 billion in the Canadian nuclear industry, Ottawa mandarins argued that Canada could not afford to let the nuclear industry collapse.

Two months earlier, in April, the federal government “forgave” $825 million in loans owed by AECL’s Heavy Water Division. The draft report made it clear that there was no “plausible scenario in which the output of all Canada’s heavy water plants will be required. The stark alternatives are to accumulate costly inventories or to shut plants down. Even with the most optimistic sales scenario, [heavy water] inventories could total 15 reactor loads by 1990 at a cost of about $2 billion.” The only alternative market for heavy water, according to the report, was the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Lorne Gray, who had been president of AECL, during the signing of the Korean and Argentinian contracts, and who had been reprimanded by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee for mismanagement and evasion, addressed the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Nuclear Association on 9 July 1981. He ridiculed Canadian efforts to restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons, portraying Canadian officials as quixotic knights wearing blinkers, out of touch with reality. On 15 July 1981, James Donnelly, then president of AECL, told the House of Commons Committee on Latin American Relations that Argentina already had everything it needed to make atomic bombs, so selling it a second CANDU reactor would make no difference in terms of proliferation. He said it would be “poor sales tactics” for him to discuss the stability of the military government in Argentina or the likelihood of its seeking nuclear weapons. In fact, he admitted, “the consideration as to the political regime of the country with which we are trading has not been an uppermost consideration” to AECL.

Senior cabinet members intensified their efforts to sell CANDU reactors abroad. During the summer, Energy Minister Marc Lalonde’s parliamentary secretary, Roy McLaren, went to Romania to try to sell more CANDU reactors. In September, Prime Minister Trudeau went to South Korea with the same objective in mind. Since the murder of General Park in 1979, political repression had not been lifted in Korea. Martial law had remained in force throughout 1979 and 1980. In May 1980, violent clashes with Korean police and paratroopers had resulted in 1,200 civilian deaths and countless arrests. Only government-controlled trade unions were allowed to exist, so that “cheap labour” practices could be perpetuated. However, human rights issues were not even mentioned by Prime Minister Trudeau for fear of jeopardizing the sale of a CANDU reactor.

Meanwhile, in October, AECL had submitted a bid for four CANDU reactors to be built in Mexico. Competitive bids were also submitted, in sealed envelopes, from France, Germany, Sweden and the U.S. Mexico, however, did not like Canada’s safeguards requirements, particularly the clause requiring “prior consent” from the Canadian government before any high-level enrichment or reprocessing could be carried out. Accordingly, the Department of External Affairs had for some time been searching for a more “non-intrusive” arrangement which would not prove so irksome to potential customers. In a paper prepared by External Affairs in the spring, it was pointed out that “the Canadian Government is not opposed to reprocessing and plutonium use or to high enrichment per se, but does wish to satisfy itself that effective measures to minimize the risk will be developed and applied.”

In January 1982, the Canadian cabinet approved a financing package in support of the Mexican bid. Canada offered to pay 100 per cent of the capital costs of the project, to be repaid at a very attractive interest rate — less than 8 per cent. This was at a time when the Canadian government would have to borrow on the international money markets at a rate of about 16 per cent. Trudeau visited Mexico to promote the deal. A few days later, Marc Lalonde was signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with Egypt. The nuclear industry was still hoping for a miraculous recovery, but its hopes were dashed in May, when Mexico returned all the bids unopened. The Mexican government had decided that it could scarcely afford to invest in nuclear reactors that it did not need.

Despite these setbacks, the Trudeau cabinet continued to act as if recovery of the CANDU industry was just around the corner. The problem of proliferation of nuclear weapons was publicly downplayed.

In the spring of 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, there was the added dilemma that Argentina had provoked a war with a Canadian ally, the U.K. At the time of the invasion, 3,000 CANDU fuel bundles were being manufactured in Moncton, New Brunswick, for the EMBALSE reactor. The Trudeau cabinet met to consider whether to discontinue nuclear cooperation with Argentina. Should Canada withdraw all AECL and Ontario Hydro personnel from Argentina, who were now putting the finishing touches on the reactor? Should the fuel bundles be delivered as promised?

In April, a secret cabinet briefing document was leaked to Margaret Munro at the Ottawa Citizen. The document reveals that

Argentina continues to show no inclination to accept Canadian policy requirements. In fact, Admiral Madero has in recent statements been unequivocal in rejecting the NPT and full-scope safeguards, while reaffirming his country’s desire to retain a nuclear explosives option. Argentina is well on the way to developing an indigenous fuel cycle that is completely free of safeguards. Fuel fabrication, heavy water production and reprocessing facilities are all nearing completion.
The choice, according to the document, was to “continue with business as usual, suspend cooperation, or terminate the relationship.” If either of the latter two options were chosen, then with EMBALSE “added to RAPP and KANUPP, Canada’s reputation as a reliable reactor supplier might be irretrievably damaged.” The cabinet therefore opted for a “business as usual” policy.

The Saint John longshoremen announced that they would refuse to load the fuel bundles. If necessary, they would go to jail rather than comply. The Canadian Labour Congress again supported the longshoremen, and hundreds of letters and telegrams of support were received from across Canada. The brutal reality of the Argentine regime was now more evident than ever. Thousands of Canadians joined in expressing opposition to the shipment of uranium fuel to Argentina — fuel that could be used to breed plutonium for bombs. To avoid trouble, with cabinet approval, the fuel bundles were secretly trucked to Mirabel airport in Quebec and airlifted to Argentina.

The future of the CANDU industry is not looking good. Ontario Hydro, with 50 per cent overcapacity above peak demand and a $14 billion debt, has begun to cut back on the Darlington nuclear station (already under construction). Quebec and New Brunswick are the only other provinces with CANDU reactors operating, and, in both cases, those plants are entirely surplus to provincial needs for electricity. Hydro-Quebec announced in December 1981 that it would make no further nuclear investments until at least 1990. In the fall of 1982, AECL recommended that its two heavy water plants in Cape Breton be closed, and hundreds of nuclear scientists from AECL’s Mississauga research centre have been laid off. Those countries which have opted for CANDU technology are in dire financial straits, and it is questionable whether they will ever be able to pay for the reactors they have ordered. Of course, the problem of raising additional capital for waste disposal and decommissioning — two enormously expensive undertakings which yield no return on investment — will become a monumental problem for the future. Canada accepts no obligations for these future expenses.

It is to Canada’s role as a supplier of nuclear fuel that we now return .

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Canada and the Uranium Cartel: The South African Bomb

As we saw earlier, the Canadian uranium industry started out as part of the American war machine. In 1942, Ottawa expropriated a privately-owned radium company and turned it into a crown corporation now known as Eldorado Nuclear Limited. Its original job was to mine and refine uranium for atomic bombs. In the ten years following World War II, Canada sold uranium only to the U.S. and the U.K., for their nuclear weapons programs. After 1956, however, no new defence contracts were signed, since both countries had developed alternative sources of supply — Colorado, Portugal, Australia and South Africa. Without the lucrative military markets, Canadian uranium production declined rapidly: by 1965, production had fallen below 3,000 tonnes per year (down from 12,000 in 1959), and only three mines (out of twenty-three) remained in operation. By that time, Elliot Lake was in danger of becoming a ghost town, and there had been virtually no uranium exploration in Canada for almost a decade.

The practice of selling Canadian uranium for use in nuclear weapons was officially terminated in 1965, when Prime Minister Pearson told the House of Commons that henceforth any uranium exported from Canada “is to be used for peaceful purposes only.” Under the circumstances, Pearson’s words simply reflected the status quo. However, selling uranium for peaceful purposes turned out to be exceedingly difficult, partly because of American protectionist policies which were soon to emerge.

From 1964 to 1967, over sixty electricity-generating reactors were ordered in the United States. It was the first major commercial breakthrough for the nuclear power industry anywhere, precipitating a blizzard of reactor orders from overseas. The American light-water reactor system very quickly dominated the world market. Uranium exploration resumed in Canada in 1966, in anticipation of rapidly expanding demand for nuclear fuel. However, U.S. markets were effectively closed to foreign suppliers of uranium because of policies adopted in Washington, and the expected economic recovery did not occur. World uranium prices dropped to an all-time low of about $4 per pound. In a desperate attempt to keep the Canadian uranium industry alive, Ottawa paid for the stockpiling of more than $100 million worth of uranium during the late 1960s. By 1971, when all diplomatic efforts had failed, the Trudeau cabinet decided to embark on a different course of action.

In April 1972, with the blessing of the Canadian government, an international, with the blessing of the Canadian government, an international uranium price-fixing cartel was established in Paris. The purpose of the cartel was secretly to manipulate world uranium prices using a phony bidding system. Hidden quotas were established by representatives from Canada, France, Australia, South Africa and Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ), the giant British mining conglomerate that, through its holdings in South Africa, Namibia, Canada and Australia, accounts for about a quarter of both the world’s present uranium production and its estimated reserves (excluding the USSR and China). At an Ottawa meeting on 28 May 1972, Jack Austin — then deputy minister of energy under Donald Macdonald, now a Liberal senator and cabinet member — intimated that the cartel might be judged illegal under Canadian anti-combines legislation. Nevertheless, by June, the cartel had formal government approval.

The Canadian government’s role in the cartel was questionable not only from the point of view of Canadian law, but also from the broader perspective of international morality. In effect, for purely commercial motives, Canada was turning a blind eye to South Africa’s brutal apartheid policies and its determination to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Canada was also acting in defiance of the International Court of Justice, which had ruled in 1971 that South Africa’s occupation of the territory of Namibia was illegal and that UN members were to “refrain from any dealings with South Africa that would imply recognition of, or the legality of, such presence.” Since most of South Africa’s uranium is mined in Namibia at RTZ’s Rossing mine, Canada was directly contravening the court’s ruling by conspiring with South Africa and RTZ to fix world uranium prices. Indeed, when Energy Minister Donald Macdonald was asked in 1981 why RTZ had been involved in the cartel discussions as an equal partner, he replied that the participation of RTZ was essential because of the Namibian uranium it controls.

Beyond the narrow question of legality is the ethical reality of the RTZ operation in Namibia. The Plunder of Namibian Uranium, a booklet published by the United Nations in 1982, describes Namibian uranium as being

mined by virtual slave labour under brutal and unsafe working conditions, transported in secrecy to foreign countries, processed in unpublicized locations, marked with false labels and shipping orders, owned by a tangle of multinational corporations whose activities are only partially disclosed, and used in part to build the nuclear power of an outlaw nation….
Nevertheless, from a business point of view, Canada’s collaboration wit h RTZ and South Africa was a great success. In just four years — from 1972 to 1976 — the world price of uranium rocketed to $40 per pound. By the end of 1974, the uranium market had improved so much that the cartel was disbanded. However, great secrecy was maintained for several more years in order to circumvent anti-trust laws in various countries.

In 1974, around the time when the Canadian government was scolding India for failing to live up to the spirit of the safeguards agreement associated with the CIRUS reactor, the UN Council on Namibia issued a decree ordering that

no person or entity, whether a body corporate or unincorporated, may search for, prospect for, explore for, take, extract, mine, process, refine, use, sell, export of distribute any natural resource, whether animal or mineral, situated or found to be situated within the territorial limits of Namibia.
The Canadian government completely ignored this decree. The practice of refining Namibian uranium at Eldorado’s federally-owned facility in Port Hope, Ontario, was already well established by 1974, and continued uninterrupted into the 1980s. RTZ’s Canadian subsidiary, Rio Algom, actually owned 10 per cent of the Rossing mine, and Falconbridge Nickel — a Canadian subsidiary of Superior Oil of Texas — had been exploring for uranium in Namibia since the mid-1970s. The Canadian government did not consider itself legally or morally bound to obey the UN Council’s decree, or the UN General Assembly’s 1981 resolution, which specifically requested that Canada and the other countries involved in the cartel “take measures to prohibit their state-owned corporations, together with their subsidiaries, from all dealings in Namibian uranium.”

When news of the cartel finally surfaced in 1976, one result was that Westinghouse Electrical Corporation launched a lawsuit against the cartel. To prevent secret cabinet documents from being released, the Trudeau government responded with an Order-in-Council making it a criminal offence, punishable by five years in jail and/or a $10,000 fine, for any Canadian citizen to discuss details of the uranium cartel in public. This law was never repealed, but it was amended in 1977 to apply only to civil servants, government officials and members of the Canadian nuclear industry.

Other repercussions were not long in coming. Ontario Hydro contracts signed in 1977 guaranteed the Elliot Lake producers, Rio Algom and Denison Mines, over $2 billion in profits for a thirty-year supply of uranium at cartel-inspired prices of about $35 per pound (by 1982, the spot price for uranium was under $20 and still going down). A four-year investigation into the entire affair, launched by Solicitor-General Warren Allmand, was completed in May 1981. Although the report was never made public, six uranium firms were subsequently charged with conspiracy to engage in illegal price-fixing activities, and two senior government officials — John Runnals and Gordon McNabb — were named as unindicted co-conspirators. No charges were laid against these men, since they were technically only carrying out the directives of Energy Minister Donald Macdonald and a few of his cabinet colleagues (the combines law dictates that agents of the crown are exempt from prosecution if their actions are in accordance with their mandate).

Ontario was not the only province to be affected by the cartel. Following the remarkable rise in the price of uranium, there was a sudden boom in uranium-prospecting activities across Canada. Every province and territory was subjected to intense exploration: holes were drilled, lakes drained, ground bulldozed and rock formations blasted. Logistical and financial support was lavishly provided by the federal and provincial governments, beginning with a $50 million Uranium Reconnaissance Program launched by Ottawa in 1974. Over a hundred multinational corporations became involved. For the most part, these were controlled by British, American, and Dutch oil companies, or by electrical utilities in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan.

As we saw in Chapter 5, many of the companies involved have nuclear weapons connections. In Saskatchewan, for example, the Cluff Lake mine is jointly owned by a provincial government and by Amok, an aptly-named French company. One of Amok’s parent companies is le Commissariat de l’Énergie Atomique, a corporation wholly owned by the French government, which is in charge of that country’s nuclear weapons program. The entire output of the rich Cluff Lake deposit is destined for France and Germany. These two countries are among the worst offenders in terms of the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons, because of their willingness to sell plutonium reprocessing equipment to regimes in Pakistan, Taiwan, Korea and South America.

In March 1978, the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry absolved itself from all moral responsibility for approving the exploitation of Saskatchewan’s uranium resources by French and German transnational corporations. “Because ‘wars begin in the minds of men’,” reads the Final Report,

all people ought to work to create the political will for world disarmament, the real answer to the problem of proliferation. The withholding of uranium from Saskatchewan from world markets is an action which for all practical purposes is irrelevant to the formulation of that political will for world disarmament.
In the same report, Saskatchewan’s uranium reserves were estimated to be “about 30% of the known Canadian reserves, which in turn represent between 10% and 13% of the known total world reserves.” Thus Saskatchewan alone controls between 3 and 4 per cent of the world’s uranium. The export of this dangerous material was justified by Saskatchewan’s NDP government on the grounds that it was to be used “for peaceful purposes only.” Premier Allan Blakeney, writing in 1978, sidestepped the proliferation problem with familiar “atoms for peace” arguments:

…for many Third World countries, the only energy available for industrial development is nuclear energy. To refuse them energy is to condemn them to a future of subsistence living. I do not believe that we, in energy-rich Canada, have the right to make that choice for other people.
This attitude so prevalent in official circles at both the federal and provincial levels, was not noticeably ruffled when, on 22 September 1979, a nuclear explosion reportedly took place in the South Atlantic, in a region near the Prince Edward Islands. A bright flash of light, followed by a longer flash, was detected by a U.S. satellite high over the Indian Ocean. Peculiarities in the upper atmosphere at that site make it difficult to detect an atomic test with certainty, but many scientists are agreed that a nuclear weapon was exploded and that South Africa did it. (The Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry heard evidence from competent witnesses in 1977 that South Africa had made preparations for a nuclear test, but aborted it after international diplomatic pressure was brought to bear. The incident was offered as an indication to the board that international safeguards to prevent the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons can be made to work.)

As it happens, South Africa’s most important ally in the nuclear field has been the U.S., which not only supplied the apartheid regime with its first research reactor, but also gave it access to classified information which the Americans would not even share with the Canadians or the British. In a less conspicuous fashion, Canada has also assisted the South African regime by trading with it and conspiring with it in violation of national and international law.

The Canadian nuclear safeguards policy depends entirely upon the pledged word of the recipient that the spirit and the letter of the law will be respected. As the story of the uranium cartel shows, the Canadian government has proved to be quite adept at twisting the law to suit its own purpose, ignoring important moral considerations in the process. Is there any reason to suppose that other governments will not be equally willing to do so?

 

Part 4

Canada’s Uranium Abroad: The Ambiguous Atom

Canada is one of the world’s largest suppliers and processors of uranium. It was second only to the United States as of 1982, though Australia may surpass Canada by 1985.

As mentioned previously, since 1965 Canada has insisted that its uranium is not to be used for military purposes. Nevertheless, by continuing to sell uranium to countries with nuclear weapons programs — the United States, Britain and France — Canada is undoubtedly helping them to make bombs. As Ernie Regehr points out in Chapter 5, even if Canadian uranium were being used in these countries only to fuel electricity-producing reactors, still that frees up more uranium to be used in bombs. In addition, as we will see, some Canadian uranium does find its way into weapons. Directly or indirectly, therefore, Canada is helping to sustain three nuclear weapons programs — and, perhaps more importantly, to justify those programs by lending them a veneer of respectability. As Bill Harding of Regina wrote in 1981:

 

The claim that this particular pound of uranium will be the one used for producing weapons is a monstrous fantasy designed to get concerned citizens debating that very question, the way we might debate the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. What difference does it make where the uranium comes from, if the country it goes to is making nuclear weapons?

Following the Indian nuclear explosion, Canada’s 1974 policy dictated that no uranium of Canadian origin might be highly enriched or reprocessed without the prior consent of the Canadian government. Despite two years of intense negotiations, neither Japan nor the European Economic Community (EEC) would submit to the “prior consent” clause. Accordingly, all shipments of Canadian uranium bound for Japan or the EEC were halted in January 1977. Within months, Japan agreed to accept Canada’s terms, and regular nuclear trade was restored. However, the EEC — comprised of two nuclear-weapon states and seven non-nuclear-weapon states — proved to be a much more difficult customer.

Uranium shipments to the EEC were resumed in July 1977, but only under the conditions of an interim agreement. Except on a strictly temporary basis, the Europeans were not willing to concede Canada’s right to consultation prior to the reprocessing of nuclear fuel of Canadian origin. Negotiations dragged on for two more years. Finally, in September 1980, the Canadian government signed an agreement with the EEC which was seen by many as a simple act of capitulation. Canada agreed to waive the requirements for consultation on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, although France stubbornly refused to sign the NPT or to accept full-scope safeguards, the Canadian government judged that the conditions of its 1976 safeguards policy were met well enough when France arranged for IAEA safeguards on its civilian (but not its military) nuclear facilities.

As this episode shows, Canada has never actually tried or intended to stop selling uranium. In fact, the Canadian government has gone to great lengths to continue selling uranium, subject to “acceptable” safeguards. The definition of “acceptable,” however, seems to depend on circumstances. In particular, it depends on whether or not the customer will stop buying.

Speaking at the United Nations in 1978, Prime Minister Trudeau advocated a “strategy of suffocation” for halting the nuclear arms race by choking off the “vital oxygen” which feeds it. He was referring only to those materials which are defined as “strategic nuclear materials” by the IAEA namely, highly enriched uranium and plutonium, neither of which is presently sold (as such) by Canada. But the surest way to strangle the nuclear arms race is to stop the trade in uranium, for without uranium there could be no nuclear weapons of any description. Cutting off access to weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, without suppressing the raw material from which they are both derived, is rather like pulling a weed without removing the root.

What is weapons-grade uranium? A brief explanation follows. Natural uranium is a blend of two types: uranium-235 and uranium-238. Only the first of these can be used directly as a nuclear explosive, and it is rare: less than 1 per cent of the natural uranium blend. Since this concentration of uranium-235 is too low to allow an atomic explosion to occur, natural uranium is not a strategic material. In an enrichment plant, however, the concentration of uranium-235 is too low to allow an atomic explosion to occur, natural uranium is not a strategic material. In an enrichment plant, however, the concentration of uranium-235 is significantly increased by separating out the unwanted uranium-238 — a sophisticated and difficult operation, for the two types of uranium are chemically identical. At present, only countries having large nuclear weapons programs have uranium enrichment plants, each occupying a huge tract of land and requiring as much energy as a large city. The weapons-grade uranium produced by these plants is typically enriched to more than 90 per cent uranium-235, although a bomb could be made with uranium of only moderate enrichment — 20 per cent uranium-235 would suffice.

The Canadian CANDU reactor, moderated by heavy water, uses natural uranium directly as fuel. However, the American light-water reactor requires low-enriched fuel (about 3 per cent uranium-235). It follows that if Canadian uranium were used only in CANDU reactors, no enrichment would be required at all. But such is not the case. Eighty-five per cent of the uranium mined in Canada is sold abroad, mostly for use in light-water reactors. A sizable portion of that (between 5 and 40 per cent, depending on the year) goes to the USSR for enrichment, while almost all the rest goes to enrichment plants in the U.S., France and Britain. These enrichment plants are primarily military facilities with civilian spin-offs, but the military and civilian aspects are in no way separated except by bookkeeping methods. Natural uranium from several different countries is used as a feed stock. When it has been enriched to the 3 per cent level, the correct amount is siphoned off and forwarded to Canadian customers in various countries. However, most of it continues to be enriched until it becomes weapons-grade material. Thus the peaceful nuclear power program “piggybacks” on the weapons program, by using military enrichment facilities to produce civilian fuel.

To produce one pound of fuel for a light-water reactor requires more than five pounds of natural uranium as feed stock. Consequently, over 80 per cent of all uranium exported by Canada is discarded as “depleted uranium” mostly uranium-238, with very little uranium-235. This cast-off uranium is not explicitly mentioned in any of the nuclear safeguards agreements, nor are stocks of depleted uranium (usually stored at the enrichment plant) ever inspected by the IAEA.

 

Containers of depleted uranium
photo by Robert Del Tredici

Although depleted uranium is not categorized as a strategic nuclear material, it is an essential ingredient in the construction of H-bombs. For this reason, when the USSR enriched Canadian uranium for use in Finnish, Swedish, Spanish or East German reactors, Canada required that the depleted uranium not remain in the Soviet Union; it had to be forwarded to the customer along with the enriched fuel. However, the Americans, the British and the French are under no such obligation; they are simply trusted not to use the leftovers from the enrichment of Canadian uranium for military purposes. (In actual fact, there is only one stockpile of depleted uranium at any enrichment plant, and it is drawn upon freely for military uses as needed. Canadian depleted uranium has no independent existence, except in terms of bookkeeping : a certain number of tonnes are simply “designated” as Canadian. Thus some Canadian depleted uranium inevitably gets used in the weapons program.)

While depleted uranium is not by itself directly usable as a nuclear explosive, nevertheless, it is responsible for 50 per cent of the explosive power in an H-bomb. An H-bomb is a three-stage nuclear weapon: it is a “fission-fusion-fission” bomb. First a small plutonium bomb (called the “trigger”) is detonated. This ignites an enormously powerful nuclear fusion reaction, involving concentrated deuterium and tritium — two heavy isotopes of hydrogen (hence the “H” in “H-bomb”). The high-energy neutrons produced by the fusion reaction — the second stage of the weapon — causes fission to occur in a surrounding blanket of depleted uranium — the third stage of the weapon, which accounts for more than half of the force of the explosion.

So, for a nuclear-weapon state, depleted uranium is a nuclear explosive; but for a non-nuclear-weapon state, it is not. The same can be said of tritium. Consequently, neither depleted uranium nor tritium is regarded as a strategic material by the IAEA, whose job it is to impede new countries from acquiring nuclear weapons without interfering with the mass production of H-bombs by the existing, officially recognized, nuclear powers.

Depleted uranium is also used in military reactors to breed plutonium f or nuclear weapons. (Inside the reactor, some of the uranium-238 is converted into plutonium which can subsequently be separated out by reprocessing.)

 

A box of “target elements”, made of metallic depleted uranium.
They will be bombarded with neutrons in a “production reactor”
to produce the plutonium that is needed for nuclear weapons.

photo by Robert Del Tredici

Slugs of depleted uranium could be used in a CANDU reactor for the same purpose. By inserting depleted uranium into a few selected fuel channels when no inspector is around, and then removing them again using the CANDU system of on-line refueling — a large stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium could be accumulated without fear of detection.

In fact, this trick has already been attempted in a different context, and there is a Canadian connection to the story. When Israeli jets leveled Iraq’s OSIRAK reactor near Baghdad in 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin justified his action on the grounds that the Iraqis were intending to produce plutonium for bombs by a method similar to the one just described. This allegation was supported by an IAEA inspector, who had resigned his job in order to provide public testimony to that effect.

Just about a year before the Israeli bombing raid, Eldorado Nuclear Limited was engaged in a bizarre transaction set up by the West Germans. After chemically refining some depleted uranium from Britain, Eldorado sent the material to a firm in the U.S. to be fabricated into metal rods and then returned to Port Hope, Ontario. American officials became extremely curious and began asking questions. What on earth did Eldorado want with depleted uranium? It soon emerged that the ultimate destination fro the material was Iraq. The deal was hastily squelched.

In sum, for a material that is classified as “non-strategic,” depleted uranium is remarkably useful to those in the nuclear weapons business; yet Canada has done little to control its disposition. As one official from the Department of External Affairs commented: “There’s so much of the stuff around that it’s hardly worth worrying about.”

Meanwhile, newer methods of enriching uranium are being developed, such as the “nozzle process” (developed by West Germany and South Africa, and assumed to be the means by which the latter was able to arrange the 1979 test explosion in the South Atlantic), which require less land and less energy than the existing “gaseous diffusion” plants, but they are still very demanding technologies. In recent years, Pakistan — still determined to acquire nuclear weapons — has been trying to build an ultracentrifuge uranium enrichment facility. Pakistani agents have been shopping for crucial components in several countries. In 1980, three Canadian men of Middle Eastern origin were arrested in Montreal by the RCMP for smuggling strategically important information and electronic equipment to Pakistan, related to the ultracentrifuge project. For security reasons, their trial had to be held in secret.

The latest concept in uranium enrichment is “laser separation,” which may eventually make it possible to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material in a basement or garage, at a reasonable cost, in a relatively short time, using only modest amounts of energy. If this technique succeeds, natural uranium — like plutonium — may have to be regarded as strategic nuclear material. Overnight, Canadian uranium facilities could become top-security installations requiring paramilitary police surveillance. As the Flowers Report, published by the British Government in 1976, has pointed out:

 

The construction of a crude nuclear weapon by an illicit group is credible. We are not convinced that the Government has fully appreciated the implications of this possibility. Given existing or planned security measures, the risks from illicit activities at the present level of nuclear development are small; the concern is with the future.

At present, weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are imported into Canada in small quantities for use in research facilities at Chalk River and elsewhere. Precise transportation routes are kept secret, communities along the way are not notified, and even the provincial police are left uninformed. Nuclear authorities feel that the less people know about the shipments, the better. When plutonium is flown into Mirabel or Toronto airports from Europe, even the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) does not know what plane it will be on until the last moment. Stringent security also applies to shipments of highly enriched uranium, traveling by truck from Tennessee to Chalk River, since each shipment contains enough weapons-grade uranium for one or two atomic bombs. Indeed, in the late 1970s, the U.S. briefly suspended such shipments because of overly lax Canadian security measures.

After the weapons-grade uranium has been irradiated, the spent fuel is returned to the United States so that the unused portion can be recycled in the American bomb program. Successive bans on the transit of this dangerous material by the St. Lawrence Bridge Authority, the Governor of Michigan and the Governor of Vermont, have made the routes more circuitous, but the traffic has continued. According to the Canada-U.S. Agreement on the Civil Uses of Atomic Energy, no Canadian-supplied nuclear materials are supposed to be used for weapons purposes. However, officials in the Department of ?External Affairs have argued that the weapons-grade uranium in question was American property to begin with; the Americans are merely taking back what was theirs already, and if they wish to make bombs with it, that is their business, not Canada’s.

It is a dangerous kind of argument to use, for Canada does not give Third World countries the same latitude. As it happens, the 23,000 CANDU fuel bundles that were flown to Argentina in July 1982 were fabricated from Argentinean uranium, since Canadian safeguards policies prevented the sale of domestic uranium. Might not Argentina feel justified in using those fuel bundles for military purposes, since it was Argentinean uranium in the first place? Legally, the situation is not comparable to the Canada-U.S. situation, but in terms of practical politics, it may be.

Since 1975, public opposition to uranium mining in Canada has been growing, not just because of the proliferation question, but for reasons of public and occupational health, environmental pollution, waste disposal, Native rights and socio-economic impact. In Saskatchewan, all the major churches came out against the government’s plan to exploit the province’s uranium resources for export purposes. Nevertheless, the government of Premier Blakeney went ahead with the Cluff Lake, Rabbit Lake and Key Lake mines. In British Columbia, the B.C. Medical Association and the West Coast Environmental Law Association joined with churches, unions, fruit growers, anti-nuclear activists and Native people to oppose uranium mining. This unprecedented coalition exerted such political pressure that the government of William Bennett declared a seven-year moratorium on uranium mining and exploration in the province, without even waiting for the results of a Royal Commission of Inquiry which was under way at the time. Eldorado’s plans to build two new uranium refineries at Warman, Saskatchewan and Port Granby, Ontario, were soundly defeated by the overwhelming opposition of local residents. Following a public inquiry in Labrador, the government of Newfoundland prohibited uranium mining in that province. Public inquiries have also taken place in Ontario, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories, as a result of widespread public concern.

Yet public dissent against uranium mining — and against the export of Canadian nuclear technology -is clearly still in its early stages. Canadian citizens do not yet have the resources or the contacts with decision-makers that might compare with those enjoyed by the Canadian nuclear lobby, which has become entrenched over the last forty years.

 

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Nuclear Lobby in Canada: Towards a Plutonium Economy

The Atoms for Peace program was based on a carefully cultivated myth, promulgated by a powerful international lobby. Nuclear power was portrayed as safe, clean, cheap and abundant — a miraculous energy source of infinite potential, having little or nothing to do with atomic bombs. Due to its strategic origins, every aspect of the nuclear industry was shrouded in extraordinary secrecy. In addition, the mysterious world of nuclear science seemed incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Government policies were largely based on the uncontradicted advice of the nuclear technologists who had dedicated their lives to making nuclear power a success.

The power base of the Canadian nuclear lobby originates in the upper echelons of AECL and Eldorado. Most of the key figures in the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) come from these two crown corporations, as do most of the top Canadian government advisors on nuclear policy. In 1970, the Canadian Senate Committee on Science Policy declared that it was “startled to learn that most of the members of the AECB prove to be senior representatives of the very agencies” which the AECB is supposed to control. This tightly-knit power base is supplemented by the nuclear divisions within Ontario Hydro, Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Electric, together with the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA), comprised of nuclear manufacturers and financial backers. Movies, slide shows, comic books, brochures, museum displays, educational kits for schools, full-page ads, even a glossy magazine called Ascent, all are used by the nuclear lobby to promote a near-utopian vision of a nuclear-powered world. As one CNA comic book (still in circulation in 1983) glowingly reports: “In time it is possible that nuclear power will lead to temperature-controlled, germ-free cities and a better life for all mankind.”

Within the U.S. industry-regulatory structure there has been some awakening to the fallacies of Atoms for Peace. David Lilienthal, the first chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, confided in 1970:

 

The basic cause I think was a conviction, and one that I shared fully and tried to inculcate in others, that somehow or other the discovery that had produced so terrible a weapon had to have an important peaceful use. We were grimly determined to prove that this discovery was not just a weapon.

By 1976, however, Dr. Lilienthal had concluded that Atoms for Peace was in fact a dangerous exercise in self-deception:

 

Once a bright hope shared by all mankind, including myself, the rash proliferation of nuclear power plants is now one of the ugliest clouds hanging over America. Proliferation of capabilities to produce nuclear weapons of mass destruction is reaching terrifying proportions. If a greater number of countries come to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, then I’m glad I’m not a young man, and I’m sorry for my grandchildren.

But in Canada, even after the Indian nuclear explosion, the Canadian nuclear lobby expressed no concern whatsoever about the proliferation aspects of the nuclear trade. Lorne Gray, president of AECL during the signing of the Korean and Argentine contracts, told a graduating class at Carleton University in November 1975:

 

If we don’t help the developing world with their energy resource problems, the odd nuclear explosion will be a minor event to the international conflicts that will arise.

A few months later, on 30 March 1976, Ian MacKay of AECL testified to the Prince Edward Island Legislature as follows:

 

Now first of all, what is nuclear power? Well, it’s just a method of generating electricity using uranium as fuel instead of oil. It has practically no technology in common with nuclear bombs. This, of course, is undramatic, and any possible relationship with bombs is much more news than claiming no relationship; so you can’t blame the press for reporting on that sort of thing. Now the used fuel contains plutonium, which is about a quarter of one percent of the used fuel, and this is potentially useful in the future. Right now it is not useful. It is not useful for making bombs. I would like to emphasize that.

This kind of assertion has been discredited many times, perhaps most forcefully just two days before MacKay’s address, when Dr. Bernard Feld, in charge of the explosive mechanism for the Nagasaki bomb during the World War II Atomic Bomb Project, had this to say on British television:

 

Plutonium is the stuff out of which atomic bombs are made. And the amount of plutonium in the world is increasing year by year as nuclear power spreads. Within the next ten years nuclear power plants will be producing around 100 tons of plutonium a year, enough for 10,000 atom bombs, each with the same power as the one that destroyed Nagasaki … This terrifying possibility will become an inevitability if the major industrialized nations persist in their current grossly irresponsible policies. Nuclear reactors, plutonium reprocessing plants, uranium enrichment facilities and the technologies needed to operate them are today being sold to any country with sufficient cash or oil to buy them.

Yet Ian MacKay’s remarkable explanation that plutonium “is not useful for making bombs,” broadcast live throughout the Maritimes, has never been set straight by AECL or by the Canadian government, despite repeated requests to three successive Liberal energy ministers to do so.

The nuclear lobby in Canada has defended its position by arguing that “reactor-grade plutonium,” produced by a nuclear power plant, is not the same thing as “weapons-grade plutonium.” Ross Campbell, chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works on 14 December 1977:

 

As far as quality goes, neither light-water reactors nor the CANDU produce plutonium of a grade that would make a high-energy release weapon. You could in theory make a weapon from it but it is quite likely to go off in the face of the man who tries.

Campbell’s statement was incorrect and misleading. Nevertheless, members of the committee were baffled, and hence unable to deal with the weapons issue in a realistic way. Frank Maine, one of the few MPs on the committee with any technical training, lashed out angrily at nuclear critics for muddying the waters by suggesting a link between nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons which, he felt had no basis in fact.

But like Ian MacKay, Ross Campbell was no expert. He was a career diplomat who had become a CANDU salesman. Where did he get his information? Since AECL had never built an atomic bomb, the organization had no experts in nuclear weapons. Among those who are experts in the field, there is a broad consensus that there is no magical dividing line between “reactor-grade” and “weapons-grade” plutonium . In July 1976, Science magazine reported that Carson Mark, one of the few Canadian nuclear scientists with extensive bomb-making experience in the U.S. military program, “is on record as saying that nuclear weapons can be made without insuperable difficulty from ‘essentially any grade of reactor-produced plutonium.'” In November of the same year, Victor Gilinsky of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was even more explicit;

 

There is an old notion, recently revived in certain quarters, that so-called “reactor-grade” plutonium is not suitable to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The floating of this idea is perhaps a natural move by those who want to exclude plutonium from strict controls. The obvious intention here is to create the impression that there is nothing to fear from separated plutonium derived from commercial power plants. This is not true.As far as reactor-grade plutonium is concerned, the fact is that it is possible to use this material for nuclear warheads at all levels of technical sophistication. Even simple designs, albeit with some uncertainties in yield, can serve as effective, highly powerful weapons reliably in the kiloton range.

Despite the added “uncertainty in yield,” Albert Wohlstetter, author of a major study on proliferation for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has pointed out that if the Nagasaki bomb had been made of reactor-grade plutonium, it still would have devastated the city. In fact, the U.S. has since detonated an atomic bomb made from reactor-grade plutonium to demonstrate the feasibility of using this material as a nuclear explosive.

As it happens, the CANDU is an exceptionally versatile reactor. It can produce weapons-grade plutonium as well as reactor-grade plutonium, without interfering with the normal operation of the plant. Early in 1977, a major U.S. nuclear policy review — the Ford-Mitre Report — singled out Canadian reactors as being particularly suited to meet clandestine military needs, noting that the CANDU

 

can be operated without undue economic penalty at low fuel irradiation to produce plutonium with a low concentration of plutonium-240, which is more suitable for reliable weapons. It is in operation or under construction in Argentina and India as well as Canada.

Victor Gilinsky was right when he intimated that the nuclear lobbyists did not want to see tough international restrictions imposed on plutonium reprocessing, because they were eager to get into the act themselves. Even in Canada, they estimated that, with a large nuclear program, uranium supplies would become inadequate early in the twenty-first century. In February 1977, AECL hosted a secret briefing where top civil servants were told that Canada should immediately begin planning for the separation of plutonium from spent CANDU fuel. Ross Campbell opened the day-long seminar on a note or urgency: “We are already late in starting to bring this new energy source on stream in the critical last decade of this century, when real shortage of energy will appear.” AECL president John Foster closed the seminar with this thought:

 

Admittedly, a positive decision takes a certain amount of guts, because authorities all over the world are proceeding with understandable caution in the face of the bad name undeservedly attached to plutonium. But plutonium is an extremely useful substance and we will be dealing in it.

AECL was proposing that, in addition to the $2.2 billion in subsidies that the federal government had already provided to develop the CANDU system, another $2.2 billion should now be invested in an experimental “Fuel Cycle Centre.” At the Centre, all the spent fuel from CANDU reactors would be reprocessed and plutonium would be fabricated into new fuel for reactors, while the rest of the radioactive garbage would be solidified and buried in underground storage chambers excavated out of hard rock.

The prospect of plutonium becoming the nuclear fuel of the future has alarmed more than one observer of the nuclear industry. As Dr. Bernard Feld puts it:

 

So within the next ten years, there will be hundreds of tons of plutonium wandering around the world. It will be as easy as pie for a determined group to get hold of the twenty or so pounds needed for a Nagasaki-type bomb. And making a crude version of one of these bombs, once you’ve got the plutonium is not all that difficult. Even a crudely-made bomb, much less efficient that the Nagasaki bomb, would be powerful enough to level whole areas of a city and to cause thousands or tens of thousands of immediate fatalities, not to speak of the further thousands condemned to slower death by lung or bone cancer from plutonium inhalation.

The Canadian government forbade AECL to proceed with its plans for reprocessing until the results were in from the Carter Administration’s International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, set up in the fall of 1977 to see if there is any way that nuclear fuel could be reprocessed without producing weapons-usable materials. The answer, delivered in 1980, is “no.” Since then, the nuclear lobby in Canada and elsewhere has nevertheless been pushing hard to get commercial reprocessing facilities committed.

Canadian nuclear lobbyists often refer to the “thorium cycle” as an alternative to the “plutonium economy.” By itself, thorium — which is more plentiful than uranium — cannot be used to build an atomic bomb or to fuel a nuclear reactor. However, when thorium is placed inside a nuclear reactor, it “breeds” a new substance called uranium-233, which does not exist in nature. If the thorium is then reprocessed, the uranium-233, can be separated from the rest of the radioactive garbage and used as a reactor fuel. But uranium-233 is also an excellent weapons-grade material, in many respects superior to plutonium. Thus the thorium cycle in no way avoids the security problems associated with a plutonium economy. In January 1982, AECL announced plans to build a laboratory at Varennes, Quebec, to produce uranium-233 as an “artificial substitute” for natural uranium. (In technical terms, the AECL thorium cycle involves a “near-breeder” rather than a “breeder” concept.)

The new enthusiasm for the plutonium economy and the thorium cycle shows that, as before, any attempt to change the priorities of Canada’s nuclear industry will run up against the wall of technological complexity that has given it a certain degree of immunity from lay scrutiny. But there is a larger obstacle: because of huge investments of public money and extensive public ownership, the goals of the nuclear lobby are inextricably intertwined with those of governments at various levels. It sometimes seems that the nuclear industry is a force unto itself, operating with impunity. On one of the rare occasions when AECL was held publicly accountable, during the investigations into financial wrongdoing by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, unsettling revelations came to light. In its final report, tabled on 27 February 1978, the committee concluded:

 

Some witnesses of AECL management were reluctant and uncooperative in testifying, and in the case of the chief witness, J. Lorne Gray, evasive as well.Mr. Gray, then President of AECL, on his own initiative, committed the Crown corporation, and therefore the Government and the people of Canada, to immense expenditures of public funds for agents’ fees. Furthermore, Mr. Gray did not know what services were being performed by the agents nor who ultimately received the payments. In the case of the Argentine sale, he stated that he did not even want to know the agent’s identity.

Mr. Ross Campbell, Chairman of the AECL, not only failed to put the agreement [ with sales agent Shoul Eisenberg] on a better footing, but also appointed Eisenberg as exclusive agent for the sale of a second [CANDU] unit to South Korea without specifying the charges to be made for these services.

AECL management did not follow acceptable business practices … nor did it have due regard for the high standard of business ethics which Crown corporations should observe.

The senior management of AECL, including the Secretary, the Treasurer, and the Internal Auditor, did not properly discharge their responsibilities as officers.

Following the publication of the committee’ report, John Foster was fired from his position as president of AECL for financial mismanagement. Nevertheless, a few years later, Lorne Gray and John Foster were elected to serve terms as executive director and president respectively of the CNA, during which time they assailed the government’s non-proliferation efforts and called for a relaxation of Canadian safeguards to help promote overseas sales.

 

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Conclusion

Over the years, in Albert Wohlstetter’s words, Canada has been “spreading the bomb without quite breaking the rules.” By accepting the double standard implicit in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which assumes that some nations are entitled to have nuclear weapons while others are not, the Canadian government has blinded itself to the true magnitude of the challenge facing humanity, which is to eradicate these weapons from the face of the earth. Sister Rosalie Bertell of Toronto has suggested that Canada withdraw from the NPT on the grounds that the superpowers have already violated it. This could be a very constructive step on Canada’s part, for the NPT could then be tested in the International Court of Justice. Unless one of the parties to the treaty alleges that its provisions have been breached, the International Court has no jurisdiction to intervene.

Canada is too small to be a world power in terms of military might, but not too small to be a world leader for peace and disarmament. It is time to recognize that nuclear disarmament is an essential prerequisite for any peaceful application of nuclear power on a large scale. Canada could withhold its uranium and its reactors from world markets while bending all its diplomatic efforts to halt the nuclear arms race, and to reverse it. During the fall of 1982, in 118 municipal elections held across Canada, 76.5 percent voted in favour of phased, multilateral disarmament. If the government in Ottawa wishes to represent the people of Canada, these are the kind of policies it should be pursuing.

In so doing, Canada would acknowledge the wisdom of the Flowers Report from Britain, which concluded that horizontal proliferation and vertical proliferation are inextricably linked. Preventing horizontal proliferation

 

would be possible only in an atmosphere of general disarmament, and the prospects for this are receding rather than improving. It has been argued that the possession of these weapons by the USA and the USSR has been a powerful force for mutual toleration, but however true this is it would be folly to suppose that proliferation would necessarily lead to a similar balance and restraint in relations between other nations. Indeed, we see no reason to trust in the stability of any nation of any political persuasion for centuries ahead. The proliferation problem is very serious and it will not go away by refusing to acknowledge it.

~ finis ~

 

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

References

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. “Nuclear Fuel Cycle Seminar.” Ottawa, 1977. (Available from Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, C.P. 236, Snowdon P.O., Montreal H3X 3T4).

Canada. Nuclear Policy Review Background Papers. Ottawa: Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, 1981.

Dunn, Lewis A. Controlling the Bomb. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Duric, Sheila, and Edwards, Rob. Fueling the Nuclear Arms Race. London: Pluto Press, 1982.

Flowers, Sir Brian. Nuclear Power and the Environment. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1976.

Harding, Bill. Uranium Mining in Northern Saskatchewan: Correspondence with the Premier. Regina: Regina Group for a Non-Nuclear Society, 1979.

Inter-Church Uranium Committee. Atoms for War and Peace: The Saskatchewan Connection. Saskatoon, 1981.

Lovins, Amory B., and Lovins, L. Hunter. Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link. San Francisco: Friends of the Earth, 1981.

Markey, Ed. Nuclear Peril: The Politics of Proliferation. Boston: Ballinger, 1982.

Moss, Norman. The Politics of Uranium. London: Andre Deutsch, 1981.

Nuclear Energy Policy Study Group. Nuclear Power: Issues and Choices (Ford-Mitre Report). Boston: Ballinger, 1977.

Nuclear Free Press, c/o OPIRG, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

Robertson, A. Preventing Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: A Positive Factor for Peace. Ottawa: AECL, 1982.

Saskatchewan. Final Report of the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry. Regina, 1978.

United Nations. The Plunder of Namibian Uranium. New York, 1982.

Weissman, Steve, and Krosney, Herbert. The Islamic Bomb. New York: Times Books/Quadrangle, 1981.

Wohlstetter, Albert, et. al. Swords From Ploughshares. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979