Nuclear Training Software Downloaded To Iran

SixFactor sends in word of a theft of training software for a nuclear plant. An ex-employee of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, in Arizona, allegedly downloaded training software to his laptop while he was in Iran. The software was downloaded from a Maryland-based contractor to the nuclear plant. It contained information about the Palo Verde facility: control rooms, reactors, and design. It was used to simulate situations for training at the site. Why the ex-engineer downloaded the software is not known. What is troubling is this person's ability to access the software after his employment at the site ended.

Comments

Yawn.

[Black Parrot]

Got to make sure everyone is scared of the Iranians, so there won't be an outcry when the bombing starts.

Re:Yawn.

[arivanov]

So what if he was?

Playing the devil advocate - I would rather have them manage their nuclear stations safely correctly and being properly trained then having yet another Chernobyl. So if their nuclear espionage stays within the limit of nicking our safety training software for a nuclear plant I would say: Spy more please. And do it more successfully. Please. Pretty please...

Consider the time, though.

[Kadin2048]

Well, that's really not too hard to believe -- up until 1978, when the current bunch of crackpots took over, Iran was a fairly strong U.S. ally in the region. Which isn't to say that the Shah was exactly a nice fellow that you'd want to invite over for dinner, but that GE and Westinghouse were working to sell nuclear-power stuff there isn't as untoward as it might sound. It's just like U.S. corporations doing business in China right now. Sure, they may be a bunch of despicable despots, but they're despicable despots allied with us.

The Iranian Revolution is a little before my time, so I'm not sure exactly what the zeitgeist in the U.S. was when it happened, but it certainly seems like we got caught with our pants down -- I mean, we had all those people in the embassy that got caught, because we didn't pull them out before the shit hit the fan; I don't know if that was just the Carter administration being typically asleep at the switch, or if nobody suspected things were deteriorating that quickly, but in either case, it explains why, a few years previously, nobody was really thinking too hard about selling them crap (particularly not when it would have brought a few billion bucks to the U.S, which at the time was seriously rusting). Plus, anything to keep them on our side instead of going over to the Soviets for their nuclear needs -- it's not as though they would have had (or have had, since) much compunction about selling reactors to anyone with the hard currency to buy them.

When viewed in the context of the period, the U.S. actions may have been a little shortsighted, but they're not as bald-facedly hypocritical as some people today like to make them seem.

Ultimately, the critical mistake of U.S. policy during the latter part of the 20th century was to think that the enemy of our Enemy (and that's how we really seemed to think about it; Enemy with a capital 'E,' that's E that rhymes with C and that stands for Communism) was our friend. In time, I think we're going to look back on the halcyon days of the Cold War with nostalgia, when we had an enemy who was basically rational and we could sit down over a negotiating table and talk to, or pull out a map and point at.

Re:Consider the time, though.

[Kadin2048]

I'm with you on pretty much everything you said. Only thing I'd point out is that India didn't use the NPT in quite the way I think you're suggesting -- they were never a signatory to it in the first place, and thus opted out from any assistance from the west, in return for never promising not to make weapons.

That was sort of the deal behind the NPT: sign it, agree to no bombs, and we'll help you build a peaceful programme -- just sign on the dotted line and Westinghouse will be there on Monday, basically; the alternative is to not sign, get left out of the nuke-power club, and do what you can on your own, locked out from the rest of the world.

India basically chose the second path, although because they're good allies with the West, they did end up getting a certain amount of assistance in various indirect forms (and I think in the near future they'll probably be buying Uranium from NPT countries like Australia, even though that ought to be against the rules). So they were never under any formal obligation not to build weapons, and no U.S. or other NPT-country firms can build reactors there as a result.

I think the era of the NPT is almost to an end. What India showed is that it's possible for a country to develop nukes entirely on its own, without Western assistance. Now that it's happened, the NPT countries are going to be the ones breaking the rules, because with the cat out of the bag, they're just losing money by not being in on the plant-building in non-NPT countries. You can bet that GE and Westinghouse would really like to get in on India's new plants, and they're going to be lobbying pretty hard to do it.

Re:Murderous Dictator is the word you're looking f

[b0s0z0ku]

People don't own something just because they were born within 300 miles of it. Before the Western oil companies sank hundreds of millions of dollars into the area in order to develop that oil, it didn't exist -- not in any meaningful way.

That's a problem to be solved by international arbitration, NOT by deposing democratically elected leaders and putting thuggish princelings back in power. Not just from a humanitarian standpoint, but from a pragmatic one as well -- the coup against Mossadegh lead to the 1979 revolution, which lead to the 80s Iran-Iraq war in which we armed Hussein's Iraq, which lead to a strong Iraq that could bully Kuwait... etc. And now it's 2007 and we're mired in the Iraqi situation.

-b.