Nu-unclear
Last night, JTA and I wrote a piece for KTAB News about Iran’s nuclear programme stirring up controversy.
However, it was a difficult article for me to write; firstly, there didn’t seem to be very much funny about nuclear weapons or indeed nuclear power and secondly, I’ve got no idea where I stand on this issue.
It seems a little unfair that while I am fairly heavily in favour of nuclear power for us in the UK I would not extend this same eagerness to the Iranians. They are on exactly the same warming globe with rising fossil fuel prices as we are, so why would I deny them the best solution to the power problem?
A few kilos of uranium can power a city for decades. Or flatten it in seconds.
I recently watched Dr Strangelove, a mid-sixties black comedy about the couple of hours preceding global nuclear holocaust. The closing montage of nuclear explosions (all footage of weapons tests in those days when you couldn’t just film it all in a warehouse and wait for the boys with the computers to sort it all out afterwards) depicts an eerie and disturbing end of the world.
Even though the whole affair is peppered with jokes and a little dated, there’s still something disquieting about watching humanity’s self-inflicted fate set to music.
Thankfully, the mad days of Mutually Assured Destruction are probably over, with the powers with enough warheads to assure destruction no longer mutually repulsed. However, I still find nuclear weapons quite scary. To think that one device could wipe out twenty million people in a single mushroom cloud is scary enough, but that it would also render the area a radioactive wasteland for decades afterwards, slowly killing many who survived the heat and the blast with withering cancer is the horrifying icing on a cake mostly composed of terror.
In the case of Iran, or any other small nuclear power, the international community, armed to the teeth with nuclear and conventional weapons, would probably round on them if they deployed an atomic bomb and, far from mutually assured destruction, the aggressor would face totally assured ‘being screwed by every other nation’, or TABSBEON. Quite what form it would take I wouldn’t like to predict, but to set off a nuke would almost certainly not achieve your aim. Unless your aim was to have about six billion enemies.
But there would still be millions of dead people, millions of malignant tumours and a suspiciously circular barren wasteland to show for your geopolitical tantrum.
My worry with nuclear weapons is that it only takes one nutter. Spreading them around to all and sundry means that there’s inevitably more access for nutters. There’s no real reason to believe that Iran or its contents are any more nutty than some other powers we know or suspect possess nuclear arms. However, it only takes security which isn’t that tight or an imperfect military or governmental system to give increased access for nutters.
On the other hand, allowing Iran access to nuclear arms might make them feel like one of the international big boys, and might reduce their ire in a slightly non-specific way which somehow doesn’t allay my fears of mass destruction.
And they claim that they don’t want to develop arms anyway: all they want is electricity. A large part of my uncertainty stems from not knowing how much we can trust this promise, and not knowing how easy it would be to monitor their attempts to make sure they didn’t. And even if we could, I’d have reservations about whether we’d want to. I mean, we’ve got atomic bombs: it’s not fair, is it?
And then, if they’re a fledgling nuclear state, might they screw up and cause Chernobyl-like disaster even if all they make is electricity?
The result of all this steady decline into punctuating entirely with question marks is that the KTAB News article is mainly Yankee-bashing because I know exactly where I stand on America’s foreign policy: somewhere else, lest I get hit by the crossfire between their own troops. So, the moral of this post is “don’t try to write topical satire when you’re this confused about the issues”, because I’m damned, as, I suspect, is anyone else, if there’s a moral to be extracted from my multitudinous thoughts on Iran.
January 21st, 2006 at 19:45
It only takes one nutter - unfortunately, there’s one already in the white house, and it looks like there’s another one now in Tehran.
And why would one of the most oil rich states in the world want nuclear electricity generation anyway ?
But it is unfair - the nuclear prolifieration treaty is basically saying “we’ve got ours, but now nobody else is allowed” - if I were Iranian I’d be a bit peeved, especially given that the dictat is coming to them from the “decadent west”.
But then, if they got nuclear weapons, they’d surely use them to nuke Israel, and that would set off the middle east powder keg good and proper, and would probably turn the world into a nuclear wasteland, so its probably best if they don’t get the bomb.
Confusing, but deadly.
January 23rd, 2006 at 15:48
“And why would one of the most oil rich states in the world want nuclear electricity generation anyway ?” - Pates
Because the price they get for selling the oil (which will run out) will buy plenty of uranium (which will also run out, but lasts longer). Plus, they want to make nice big bombs to scare off the American bullies who’ll come and steal their country when oil production decreases push the price-per-barrel up. My; that’s a cynical view. =o)
There’s no real reason to believe that Iran or its contents are any more nutty than some other powers we know or suspect possess nuclear arms. However, it only takes security which isn’t that tight or an imperfect military or governmental system to give increased access for nutters.
There’s no real reason to believe that there’s anything wrong with Iranian security. In the last 20 years, they’ve had a lower ratio of hijacked flights than almost anywhere else. That’ll be because they thoroughly search everybody who boards a ‘plane and have armed guards on every flight. Security? Iran knows how to do security! I’ll concede there’s a difference between protecting an aircraft and protecting a missile silo, but the point is much the same. If I were a terrorist wanting to get hold of radioisotopes, I’d bribe a high-ranking militaman in a former Soviet state. They’ve lost loads of weapons-grade stuff over the decades.
But then, if I were a terrorist, I’d be far better at it than that anyway. =o)
January 23rd, 2006 at 16:24
I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble, though. An oil power plant is pretty simple, but a nuclear one, which they can’t have mastered or the wouldn’t still be researching, isn’t. I’d also guess that pumping oil is cheaper than pumping it, selling it and buying uranium with the profits, unless Iran is a nation of middlemen! This is compounded by the vast extra expense of researching and building those power stations. Knowledge of fire, on the other hand, can be obtained from passing cave-man!
Weapons development or electricity generation, I think Iran probably wants to be one of the Big Boys and that may be more important than economic considerations.
My original point was that any proliferation at all increases access to nutters by a tiny amount by default. Then I muddied the waters in editing by adding “it only takes security which isn’t that tight or an imperfect military or governmental system”: I’m actually most worried by the possibility of some non-terrorist nutter working his way up the government or the military and nuking Israel or something, like an Arabic Jack D. Ripper (the nutcase general from Dr Strangelove).
However, it is reassuring that Iran can do security. And that you’re not a terrorist!