Abraham A. Ribicoff

An unanticipated development in the world nuclear marketplace has suddenly transformed the problem of nuclear proliferation from a potential to an immediate danger. The recent decisions by West Germany and France to sell nuclear fuel facilities to Brazil and Pakistan, respectively, mark the first sharp divergence by major industrial nations from long-established U.S. nonproliferation policy. The cornerstone of this policy has been the general practice of exporting power reactors and low-enriched uranium fuel, neither of which can be applied directly to weapons-making, and of not exporting nuclear fuel plants capable of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium in a form suitable for direct use in atomic bombs.