11 nations enlist in N-control effort

VIENNA, Austria — A U.S.-initiated project that aims to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation and control radioactive waste gained support Sunday, as 11 more nations signed on with original members Russia, China, France and Japan.

Under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a limited number of countries including the United States and Russia, would provide uranium fuel to other nations for powering reactors to generate electricity and then retrieve the fuel for reprocessing. This would deprive those nations of their own nuclear fuel enrichment programs, which can be used to make atomic arms.

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.

The 11 countries that signed for the first time Sunday were Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine.

The Iranian government says it seeks to use enrichment only for generating energy, and there is general recognition that nations should have access to low-enriched uranium for such peaceful uses.

But 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 atomic 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.

One suggested solution to the controversy over Iran's program is for it to abandon its efforts to enrich uranium and just buy the necessary fuel from Russia. In Tehran Sunday, state television quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Mouchehr Mottaki as saying enriched uranium fuel is ready to be shipped from Russia to Iran's first nuclear power plant. But Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency quoted an unidentified Russian diplomat as saying that was not so.

It is fears that indigenous enrichment programs like Iran's could be misused for weapons that have led to attempts to create global fuel banks, guaranteeing supplies of energy-capable enriched uranium.

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.