Totally_Baffled wrote:
Ahhhh , so there isnt a problem with Uranium resources then. Excellent.
Irans gas reserves at current consumption will last over 100 years according to BP.
If they kept all the gas for themselves then at current Iranian consumption there gas reserves would last tens of thousands of years!!
That means they forsee Uranium lasting even longer than that!
If there is a genuine issue with Uranium , then the Iranians wont half be kicking themselves! (why did we bother !
)
Iranian gas reserves are 970 tcf and consumption is 8.4bcf (FYI)
Sorry TB, I'm going to have to disagree with you a couple of points
If we are using the BP estimates for Iranian gas we can use the nuclear power industry estimates for world uranium supply. Both are large and both are questionable, but we should use them together.
Why not build a network of nuclear plants, with a long (ish) term future (like France did) and then sell as much gas as you can shift to hungry customers? That's a valid economic strategy, more so if prices go higher, so just from a "free market" perspective, that's a perfectly valid reason.
Recently a bunch of UK power generators stopped generating and sold their gas contracts back into the market for a profit. That's the free market. Did the generators have a "duty" to provide electricty because they have gas? Does Iran have a duty ot use gas for internal power instead of selling it for profit?
Surely they are free to choose?
Moreover though, and as others have said, as an NPT signatory the IAEA has a commitment to supply nuclear power information to Iran and to help them build a nuclear power infrastructure, if Iran requests such.
The fact that we wish the NPT was in fact the "nuclear facilities not allowed in the middle east, only the west (et al)" treaty, and try to enforce it as tho that was the case, doesn't mean we are right.
Moving from power to weapons; there is a deep-rooted cultural position in the west that it's ok for us, and israel, to have nuclear weapons but not for any other middle easten country to have them. I find little reason to base this on other than a fundamental mistrust of certain cultures.
There is questionaable evidence at best that Iran wants the bomb, but if they do, why should we stop them?
Will they first-strike israel knowing they will be devestated by the response? MAD has always been truely mad but nevertheless effective.
What's the difference between a decent sized chemical weapons programme and limited nuclear programme? Not much, and many countries have the former.
I can see no other route - apart from force - to preventing Iran legitimately aquiriing both nuclear power and latterly weapons skills other than by the established powers meeting all their NPT commitments to activly persue disarmament - anything less invites allcomers to try and "join the club".
