Victor Gilinsky has been a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission since its creation in 1975, having worked previously on international nuclear matters at the Atomic Energy Commission and the Rand Corporation. He is a contributor to the forthcoming Nuclear Policies: Fuel Without the Bomb. This article is adapted from remarks presented at the Atomic Industrial Forum/British Nuclear Forum International Conference on the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, held in London in September 1978.
Europe and the United States have parted company on the question of reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power reactors, particularly as it applies to the separation and export of plutonium. The decisions to proceed with the construction of new plants at Windscale in Britain and La Hague in France, designed in large part to provide this service for non-nuclear-weapon countries, run counter to the U.S. conviction that restricting separation and trade in plutonium is essential, at least until more effective controls can be devised.
History, unlike physics, does not allow for controlled experiments, so we may never know how
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