Ghana joins U.S.-initiated nuclear project

VIENNA, Austria — Ghana and 10 other nations have backed the concept Sunday of a U.S.-initiated project that aims to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation and control radioactive waste, while acknowledging that they were far from achieving such goals.

The other countries that signed for the first time Sunday were: Australia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine.

At issue is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, under which a limited number of countries, including the U.S. and Russia would provide uranium fuel to other nations and then retrieve it for reprocessing.

That would allow countries to obtain fuel to power reactors for generating electricity but would deprive them of their own nuclear fuel enrichment programs, which can be used to make atomic arms. Iran's refusal to scrap its enrichment program, coupled with suspicious past nuclear activities, have led to two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of concerns that it wants to make such weapons.

Iran, North Korea and other proliferation dangers past and present have played a role in the U.S. concept — and GNEP will also be discussed at a 144-nation International Atomic Energy Agency conference opening Monday.

The dangers of uranium enrichment have come into sharp focus over the past four years because of the international standoff with Iran, which has defied a U.N. Security Council demand that it freeze development of the activity because it can be used to create an atomic bomb.

Iran argues it has a right to enrichment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and says it seeks to use enrichment only for generating energy. There is general recognition that nations should have access to low-enriched uranium for such peaceful uses.

Still, fears that indigenous enrichment programs could be misused for weapons have led to attempts to create global fuel banks. These would guarantee supplies of energy-capable enriched uranium without the need for home-run enrichment programs and their potential for weapons making.

Such plans could indirectly hasten the nuclear arms race, however, by encouraging countries to start or revive past programs before any global plan is in place.

Already, Argentina and South Africa have said they plan to revive their enrichment activities, while Australia plans to start from scratch. While no one suggests they are looking for a weapons program, their examples could embolden other nations in less stable regions.

Additionally, critics of the initiative say resuming reprocessing — abandoned in the 1970s over proliferation concerns — can make it easier for terrorists or enemy states to obtain weapons-usable plutonium. And although the program envisions reprocessing through a technique where pure plutonium is not separated, that technology is commonly said to be decades away.

But senior U.S. officials played down concerns Sunday as they hosted a signing ceremony for the GNEP "Statement of Principles" — a nonbinding document that basically expresses support for "the common vision of the necessity of the expansion of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes worldwide in a safe and secure manner."

Iran is "not something we have really thought about" at Sunday's Vienna meeting, said U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman. He denied suggestions that the project was meant in part to "identify some countries that are out to develop nuclear weapons" by casting the spotlight on nations that refused to join the plan and opted instead to develop their own enrichment program.

Still, the two-page agreement noted that, beyond managing waste and making nuclear technology more affordable, the project aimed to "ensure nuclear energy systems are used only for peaceful purposes," and reduce "the risk of nuclear nonproliferation" through monitoring, controls and the development of new technology.

Sixteen nations signed the agreement — the U.S., Russia, China, France and Japan, which had previously agreed to the plan, and 11 more countries that loosely backed the principle of a "long-term vision of the future global civilian nuclear fuel cycle."

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei praised the GNEP concept Sunday, saying it could "help the international community with some of the greatest international challenges we are facing — which are development and security."

"Without development, there is ... conflict, there is war," he told delegates, noting that 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity.