Report: US offered to let Israel buy nuclear reactors without joining NPT
Haaretz reports that in the summer of 2010, after the blowup over Ramat Shlomo, and when the Obama administration realized just how badly Democrats were likely to fare in the midterm elections (those are my gloss - not Haaretz's), the Obama administration attempted to mollify Israel by allowing it to bid on the purchase of nuclear reactors without joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Arad's investigation was triggered by a momentary alarm that gripped Netanyahu over a trifling matter - a situation to which he is prone. In the summer of 2010, the Obama administration worked hard to appease Israel, which feared that President Barack Obama had retracted a long-standing presidential understanding not to infringe on Israel's strategic deterrence. Officials in Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem drafted a letter from Obama to Netanyahu. On the Israeli side it was crafted by Arad.Hmmm.
Some Israelis, not Arad, hastened to expose a marginal civilian-commercial point intended for later publication - that the American side had authorized Israel, as an exception to the rule, to conduct talks on the purchase of nuclear power reactors, even though it is not party to the nonproliferation treaty.
It is doubtful whether the reactors' advantage, in reducing the dependence on fuel and gas, would exceed their harm. See last year's Fukushima disaster in Japan as a case in point; or Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas placing them on their target list.
In the spring of 2010, interested parties had started boasting openly of the reactor innovation. In the summer, some Israelis published this clause from Obama's letter. Gary Seymour, the White House official in charge of arms control and nonproliferation, was angered by the publication and considered canceling a visit to Israel.
The storm died down within days. But meanwhile Netanyahu got alarmed, asked the Atomic Energy Committee for a damage estimate (not from the Defense Ministry's experts on the issue ) and launched a Shin Bet investigation - with the attorney general's approval - but without any supervision over proceedings.
The rest of the column may be less interesting to a lot of you. It deals with a Shin Bet (General Security Service) investigation into alleged leaks by former National Security Adviser Uzi Arad, and how the Shin Bet's investigative powers need to be restrained.
But I don't recall a report like that in the summer of 2010....
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, General Security Service, Israeli nuclear capability, Uzi Arad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:28 PM
6 Comments:
If I were Israel, I'd be doing everything possible to perhaps team with groups outside Israel for technology development and adoption, but to stay as independent of these Obama government schemes as possible. Obama's schemes are not the normal U.S. market opportunities that the world is used to. Having high tech enterprises accepting $billions of Obama's dictator stash or undermining your own small nuclear generator development by letting him give you someone elses... you've got the science horsepower to make your own, right?... install them next to some desal on your coast, demo it, get the costs down, the bugs out, safety up, then sell the set-up later to California. It is a huge long term business opportunity. Why undermine your own initiative by letting these Obama people tie you up?
Israel accepting non-military related $$ from these marxist Obama people, who are literally demolishing the western engines of innovation and commercialization is a really bad idea.
Sprinkling darkness at every opportunity,
Sunlight
Exactly, Sunlight.
Israel must stop being attracted to bright, shiny objects offered by this Israel-hating, pro-Islamist regime. These objects will always be fraught with danger and have the potential of damaging Israel's capabilities. Hint - check for any attached quid pro quo and opportunities for spying and leaking.
Soon (we fervently hope), Romney will oust Comrade Hussein in a landslide, and the US will install to a sane foreign policy and repair its relations with Israel and other allies.
Exactly, Sunlight.
Israel must stop being attracted to bright, shiny objects offered by this Israel-hating, pro-Islamist regime. These objects will always be fraught with danger and have the potential of damaging Israel's capabilities. Hint - check for any attached quid pro quo and opportunities for spying and leaking.
Soon (we fervently hope), Romney will oust Comrade Hussein in a landslide, and the US will install to a sane foreign policy and repair its relations with Israel and other allies.
Ashan, many of us are trying to vote them out while we still can. But even if we can't, people need to stop taking the Obama posse's sleazy cash.
There are a few good reasons not to. Even though a reactor for power generation would be great, we don't presently have the domestic capacity to refine and fabricate THAT MUCH fuel. Scaling up to that level would be both expensive (in the short term) and pointless (since it would never become an export industry, so it would never scale).
Worse still would be buying the reactor from an American company. Current nuclear industry practice is to sell the reactors at less than cost, and then sign a long term contract for fuel processing. The mid and long term outlook on the US nuclear industry is bad, with much of the (USA) domestic capacity being sold off or shut down.
Also, this would give cart-blanche to ever state in the ME to develop their own nuclear capacity.
Lastly, if Israel were ever to make it's fuel cycle independent we would either have to adopt commercially unproven technologies (like LFTR) or use fast breeders to make plutonium. Which would, justifiably, cause every player in the middle east to sh!t bricks.
When the Obama posse put out the funding, such as ARPA-E, and loan programs that Bright Source and Better Place (and who else?) have participated in, they selected for funding ZERO nuclear development projects. A couple of small nuclear programs are ready for fielding and their LICENSES have been BLOCKED. The EPA is using not congressionally-voted legislation, but PROMULGATED REGULATIONS that, for example, are shutting down the biggest enterprise (coal to a coal fired power plant - which is targeted to be shut down by the Obama dictatorship) of the Navajos, one of the biggest Native American tribes with massive poverty problems.
Lists of companies and people who are helping with and benefitting from this disaster are starting to be compiled in some (brave) newspapers and blogs. If Israel is on that list in a big way and we end up voting out the dictatorship, much of the fabulous PR work of the Start Up Nation brand managers (and a bunch of others of us out here) will be undone.
I'm pretty sure there are people reading this blog who should be figuring out something to do about this.
Uh oh... maybe this is the darkness referred to,
Sunlight
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