Is the Nuclear Security Summit about to begin in Seoul a way for those who profit from nuclear power to sweep the concerns of the world’s people under the rug? This editorial from South Korea’s The Hankyoreh warns that the summit – the first nuclear summit to be held since Fukushima – is in danger of being hijacked by a ‘nuclear power mafia’ comprised of the major nuclear powers and businesses that profit from the status quo.
The Hankyoreh editorial says in part:
We certainly hope the summit achieves the hoped-for outcome. But there are doubts that it will – in addition to concerns that the meeting will end up bolstering both the existing arrangements among the nuclear powers – and the nuclear threat itself. That is because the summit takes the established interests of the five major nuclear powers for granted.
This problem cannot be resolved when America maintains the contradictory approach of guarding its own nuclear interests while clamoring to ban nuclear development or capabilities elsewhere.
This is no way to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. This is not unrelated to the fact that India, Pakistan and Israel now possess nuclear weapons, while North Korean and Iran have launched their own nuclear efforts. There is a clear limit to how a strategy of preventing proliferation and terrorism can succeed, while those who espouse such hopes continue to safeguard their own nuclear capabilities.
There are also questions about whether the first summit to be held in Seoul since the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear accident properly reflects the fundamental doubts the disaster has raised about the capacity of human beings to manage nuclear power. The 200 or so attendees at the summit all have their own vested interests and collectively have been referred to by critics as a “nuclear power mafia.
It appears that the Seoul summit is to be used as an opportunity to usher in a “nuclear power renaissance.
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