James Lovelock and the big bang

Nuclear power programs have indirectly supported a number of weapons programs by providing a rationale for acquiring uranium enrichment plants, research and training reactors, or reprocessing plants. Five of the 10 countries to have developed nuclear weapons did so under cover of a “civil” program. India and Israel use research reactors to produce plutonium for weapons; South Africa and Pakistan acquired enrichment technology and produced highly-enriched uranium bombs; and, as mentioned, North Korea used its “Experimental Power Reactor” for plutonium production.

Iraq's nuclear weapons program from the 1970s to 1991 illustrates the indirect links between power and weapons. Iraq never actually built power reactors but its professed interest in nuclear power facilitated the acquisition of a vast amount of nuclear technology and expertise which was put to use in the weapons program. It was later described as a "shop-till-you-drop" weapons program in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, with much of the shopping done openly.

According to Khidhir Hamza, a senior nuclear scientist involved in Iraq's weapons program:

Acquiring nuclear technology within the [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards system was the first step in establishing the infrastructure necessary to develop nuclear weapons. In 1973, we decided to acquire a 40-megawatt research reactor, a fuel manufacturing plant, and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities, all under cover of acquiring the expertise needed to eventually build and operate nuclear power plants and produce and recycle nuclear fuel. Our hidden agenda was to clandestinely develop the expertise and infrastructure needed to produce weapon-grade plutonium.

Israel demonstrated its lack of faith in the IAEA's safeguards system by bombing a research reactor in Iraq in 1981, but Iraq's nuclear weapons program continued until the 1991 Gulf War. The IAEA failed to detect Iraq's nuclear weapons program or its use of “safeguarded” research reactors to produce materials used in tests of “dirty” radiation bombs.

The Iraq debacle prompted efforts to tighten the safeguards system, yet the current Director-General of the IAEA, Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, characterises those efforts as "half hearted".

Nuclear power is the one and only energy source with a repeatedly-demonstrated connection to the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. To deny that connection - as James Lovelock does - is inaccurate, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.