Nuclear Free Middle East

Choices need to be made today that will affect the lives of everyone many decades into the future. A growing band of governments and politicians are talking about a nuclear renaissance using nuclear power to reduce the emissions of green house gasses, or using it to secure alternative energy sources to oil.

We are being asked to accept the certain danger of nuclear technology, its legacy of long lived deadly radioactive wastes, the ever present threat of catastrophic nuclear accidents, routine transports of dangerous radioactive materials and a poor economic track record as a way of avoiding either climate change or future resource wars. We are being asked to believe that nuclear power can be peaceful and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation can be controlled. A Faustian bargain which we must reject.

There is another way, we can phase out fossil fuels and adopt a new energy system based on benign renewable energy sources, without the need to rely on nuclear power.

In fact, exploiting the potential of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies such as solar power would massively decrease energy demand while not impacting economic development. This would allow renewables to contribute some 50% of global primary energy including the Middle East production by 2050.

All of the above factors are being played out in the Middle East, a region that is no stranger to danger.  For generations, it has faced the imminent threat of armed conflict.  Now it faces a new threat as regional developments make tensions worse—as the region speeds into a race over going nuclear.

The irony is that the technology at the core of the 20th century’s arms race now finds itself as the new symbol of power in the Middle East.  While controlling and reducing nuclear technology ended the Cold War, nuclear know-how in the Middle East is too often now being viewed as a way to to guarantee every nation’s “security” – a region wide adoption of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD.  The deadly legacy of nuclear technology the rest of the world came to fear now threatens new generations in the part of the world that should fear it the most. 

Today the Middle East is on the precipice of nuclear proliferation, real and ‘virtual’. After decades of an uneasy compromise dominated by Israel’s ‘policy of ambiguity’, it has now been thrown into stark relief by Iran’s civil nuclear programme. Whether Iran’s goal is peaceful or not, the fear and suspicion that nuclear technology brings now threatens to spark an arms race that no one can win.

Egypt, The Gulf Cooperation Council, Tunisia, and Yemen, have all declared that studies are underway, moving inexorably down a nuclear road.  For power, granted, there’s nothing peaceful in anything nuclear.  And with each new study and each new nuclear step, mistrust is sharpened and suspicion grows in a region already prone to distrust.

Why Radiate When You Can Shine!?

The Middle East’s massive oil reserves are both a blessing and curse.  But it also enjoys bountiful natural, renewable and peaceful energy resources, intense enough to provide power for all of its people.

By using the bounty of nature’s winds and the sun, countries in the Middle East can meet their energy needs without courting nuclear oblivion.  The option exists to create a sustainable future, without the certainty of a deadly legacy of radioactive waste—or the possibility of nuclear weapons proliferation. Instead of threatening the safety of all with more nuclear power, the option is available to increase security of all by using energy already on hand.

 

A brighter future for the Middle East is possible.  Negotiating a Nuclear Free Middle East, which rejects all nuclear technology, region-wide, is how to get there.