NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

Nuclear proliferation is the one issue that has kept every U.S. president since Harry Truman awake at night. Today in Washington, President Barack Obama continues his nuclear security and proliferation summitry with leaders from more than 40 nations (with two notable absentees – North Korea and Iran). Prime Minister Stephen Harper has put proliferation on the agenda of the G8/20 sessions that Canada will host in June. And yesterday, after meeting with the President, he announced a Canada-U.S. entente to further secure inventories of spent highly enriched uranium. It’s a welcome return to a file on which every postwar Canadian prime minister eventually comes to play a constructive role.

• Let’s act like an energy superpower

Canada is a uranium superpower. Mines in northern Saskatchewan provide nearly a quarter of the world’s production. Nuclear power is going to be part of the global energy solution. For example, it is France’s main source of electricity.

The challenge is what to do with the spent fuel and the byproduct plutonium, the vital ingredient in making nuclear bombs.

Therein lies an opportunity for another Canadian initiative that would be a real game-changer in the high-stakes world of nuclear proliferation: Declare our stewardship of Canadian uranium and its byproducts from “cradle to grave.” As the Prime Minister told a news conference yesterday, “It’s our view that the best thing for all countries to do – not just ourselves – is to return such material to their countries of origin.”

Invite the other uranium producers – Australia is the next biggest producer – to follow suit. International solidarity among the producer states would effectively close the proliferation loop. Put this on the table at the June summits with a suitable mix of incentives for those “steward nations” who will inevitably have to care for more than their own uranium (other producers include Kazakhstan and Niger). International action on the containment of blood diamonds is an example of how effective management and solidarity by the producers can change the dynamic.

Containing proliferation has been a consistent thread and driver in Canadian foreign policy. We developed expertise and experience at the United Nations through the diplomatic brilliance of ambassadors whose last names included Ignatieff and Rae. British historian Denis Brogan shrewdly observed of Canadian policy: “The basic Canadian relationship is not either with the United States or with the United Kingdom but with the world of the hydrogen bomb. The very fact that Canada is now one of the treasure houses of the world makes the naive isolationship of the inter-war years … impossible. A uranium-producing country cannot be neutral.”

Over the years, we earned both place and standing on the nuclear file. Transforming our uranium into plutonium at our Chalk River laboratories made us a partner in the development of the atomic bomb. We became the first nation to voluntarily turn down membership in the nuclear club, although, sensibly, we once kept U.S. bombs on our soil in deference to our collective security commitments.

We led in the peaceful use of nuclear power with the development of the Candu reactor and shared it, despite our later disappointment with Indian perfidy. We led in the civil-society movement. The first meeting of concerned scientists in Pugwash, N.S., gave its name to a peace movement that, like its sister, Project Ploughshares, endures. With the end of the Cold War, much of the steam has gone out of the peace movement although its spiritual heirs have found a new home with the green movement around the debate on climate change. Too bad, because nuclear proliferation is still a clear and present danger that requires the voice of civil society. For a graphic portrayal of the problem, watch the new documentary Countdown to Zero.

Canada continues to play a useful role on disarmament – for example, through the disposition of excess weapons-grade plutonium from the former Soviet Union in support of the Nunn-Lugar threat-reduction initiative. There are challenges around security and transport of the noxious material and Canadians such as Franklyn Griffiths have already done useful and cautionary research.

In the wake of this week’s summit, we can report at the G8/20 about the safe conduct and storage of spent fuel and its byproducts, drawing on the new Canada-U.S. project and our previous experience. The International Atomic Energy Agency could take on responsibility for the safe passage of the spent fuel back to the source country. Monitoring of nuclear reactors is its responsibility and it has long experience in detecting scofflaws as we latterly appreciated in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

This initiative will require broad consultation at home and abroad. There is a strong moral argument in support of the proposal: As the producer, we have some obligation to take back what we produce and give it a permanent home, perhaps in the same ground from where it was mined. Costing will be an important consideration and should be worked into the pricing at the outset. But peace of mind on proliferation is beyond price. And what a worthwhile Canadian initiative it would be.

Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat, is a distinguished senior fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.