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Is an International Nuclear Fuelbank a Good Idea?
An anonymous reader writes "A roundtable at the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences explores the notion of nuclear fuel banks which would offer nations a guaranteed supply of low-enriched uranium if they renounce the right to enrich on their own. From the article: 'The basic idea behind an international fuel bank is that it would, in a reliable and nondiscriminatory way, make emergency supplies of market-priced low-enriched uranium available to states that sign up to participate. States that opt for membership in a fuel bank would gain increased confidence that their access to reactor-grade fuel would not be interrupted. In return, they would renounce the right to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel on their own. Such an arrangement could be appropriate for a number of states. But for others, it might be less than ideal.'"
Thorium can be used to produce U-233 which can be used to produce a simple bomb.
Those US basketball players over there apparently get around without trouble and have a big fan following. The culture is changing and it's a bit of a race whether they will get nukes and wreak havoc with them (nice place you've got Bahrain - pity if something happened to it) before the younger generation takes over. There's now the very old running the place, a very low population between 30-60, and a huge population of young adults due to a baby boom after the war with Iraq and they are not brainwashed like North Koreans. Read up on where the phrase "young Turks" came from to get an idea of what might happen. The weird old extremists have nobody to hand the torch to, and while it is no democracy (the position of President is a mostly powerless joke filled by a clown), there's enough of an appearance of one to give people the desire for a real one.