WISE - NIRS Nuclear Monitor 582

NIRS and WISE both celebrate their 25th anniversaries this year. This is the second article in a series, "25 Years Ago", comparing anti-nuclear news "then" and "now", to mark our first quarter-century of anti-nuclear campaigning.

Then
In issue 1 of WISE Bulletin we wrote about one of the biggest anti-nuclear demonstrations in The Netherlands, against the Urenco uranium enrichment plant at Almelo. The demonstration was against the enlargement of the facility and planned export of uranium to Brazil: "Nation-wide mobilisation in the Netherlands, in cooperation with several groups in Federal Germany, lead up to a demonstration of 50,000 people, on March 4, at Almelo. The aim was to express popular resistance to the proposed enlargement of the uranium enrichment plant located there. It is considered that this would boost the spread of both civil and military uses of nuclear power". (WISE Bulletin 1, May 1978)

Now
The plan to enrich uranium for export to Brazil (which had not yet signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty) met big opposition. Eventually, the enrichment work was done at Capenhurst (UK) in order to avoid export licensing problems in the Netherlands. The fact that civil nuclear technology can be misused for military weapons construction was demonstrated by the espionage of Urenco technology by Pakistani Abdul Qadir Khan. He stole enrichment technology from Urenco to develop a nuclear weapon for Pakistan. Khan was recently accused of having supplied the same technology to North Korea, which he denied. (Country Status Reports UK and Netherlands, Laka Foundation, February 1995; and WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 581, 17 January 2003)

In 1978, Urenco planned to build a 1000 tons SWU/y (Separative Work Unit per year) plant. Presently, Urenco's plant at Almelo has a capacity of 2,500 tons SWU/y and is planning to extend it to 3,500 tons SWU/y. The Urenco consortium (Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany) has a worldwide share of 12-15% on the uranium enrichment market (Information from Laka Foundation, 30 January 2003). Urenco is also part of the Louisiana Energy Services (LES) consortium planning to build a uranium enrichment plant in the U.S. state of Tennessee.

WISE-Amsterdam/NIRS

ISSN: 0889-3411

Editorial team: Stuart Field, Robert Jan van den Berg (WISE Amsterdam), Michael Mariotte (NIRS). With contributions from Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (Japan), Friends of the Earth Europe, Watercourse cc (South Africa) and WISE Ukraine.

Reproduction of this material is encouraged. Please give credit when reprinting.

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