Nuclear folly

IN REPORTS about North Korea’s atomic aspirations, what hasn’t been mentioned is that British designs have been purloined to build plants for nuclear explosives. The Magnox nuclear plant design provided the blueprint for the North Korean military plutonium programme.

Douglas (now Lord) Hogg, then a Conservative minister, admitted in a parliamentary reply in 1994: ‘North Korea possesses a graphite moderated reactor which, while much smaller, has generic similarities to the reactors operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc.

‘However, design information of British reactors is not classified and has appeared in technical journals.’ The uranium enrichment programmes of North Korea and Iran also have a UK connection. The blueprints were stolen from the URENCO enrichment plant in the Netherlands, one-third owned by the UK government, in the Seventies.

The technology was sold to Iran, who later exchanged it for North Korean ballistic missiles.

History shows us that the globalisation of nuclear energy has been a reckless mistake.

DR DAVID LOWRY, ex-director, European Proliferation Information

Centre, Stoneleigh, Surrey.