Arms Control Wonk: Nuclear Pact Renewal for Taiwan (and other nuke stuff)

Arms Control Wonk had an excellent post last week on the US effort to get Taiwan to sign onto the non-proliferation treaty....

A few people in Washington are pumping up the forthcoming renewal of the U.S. bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with Taiwan as an impending shot in the arm for the no-enrichment/no-reprocessing “gold standard” they want to see implemented by the U.S. in all future 123 agreements following the conclusion of the U.S.-UAE agreement in 2009.

Nowhere in the world does the U.S. government have as much leverage over a foreign country’s  nuclear activities as it does in Taiwan. Taiwan therefore does not serve as a model for global application of the “gold standard,” regardless of what some pundits had to say in this piece that Elaine Grossman published a couple of days ago. I saw the article just after returning to Europe from Chicago yesterday. (By coincidence, it would appear that Elaine reported it out while I was grocery-shopping and dining here in Elaine’s hometown of Cleveland last week.)

If the U.S.-Taiwan agreement isn’t renewed, it will expire in 2014. I’m highly confident, however, that it will be renewed, and that Taiwan will continue to embrace a policy of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without enriching uranium or reprocessing its not-insignificant inventory of spent power-reactor fuel.

But Taiwan’s resolve not to enrich or reprocess has nothing to do with the “gold standard” and nearly everything to do with U.S. leverage over Taiwan’s security arrangements (a somewhat watered-down argument might also be made for the UAE).

The bottom line is that any forthcoming decision by Taiwan and the U.S. to adopt the language of the UAE 123 agreement on reprocessing or enrichment in a new 123 agreement will more or less reiterate a very firm bilateral understanding reached long ago by Taiwan and the U.S. that Taiwan will not enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel. For over 40 years, the U.S. has been rigorously enforcing that understanding.

Taiwan’s current 123 agreement–as the U.S. government e-mail traffic referred to in Elaine’s article correctly suggests–does not categorically exclude reprocessing and enrichment by Taiwan. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been party to a bilateral 123 agreement with Taiwan (which says the U.S. has prior consent rights over the “alteration” of nuclear material by Taiwan), to a trilateral safeguards agreement with Taiwan and the IAEA (Infcirc/158), and to a bilateral safeguards agreement. This 1980 U.S. government non-paper spells out that U.S. rights over Taiwan’s nuclear activities are indeed so extensive that the U.S. could instruct the German government that any nuclear items supplied to Taiwan by a German exporter would be subject to U.S. “control rights,” which included U.S. “fallback safeguards rights” if deemed necessary.  Beyond this, I’m told that there is a bilateral understanding–which may not be public–that enrichment and reprocessing by Taiwan are categorically off the table.

During the 1970s, the U.S. confirmed that Taiwan had been involved on several occasions in undeclared and unreported nuclear R and D activities. Whenever that happened–the last case I know about was in the mid-1990s, when Taiwan processed some uranium- and thorium-bearing sands–officials from U.S. DOE and State arrived quickly on the scene and were rubbernecking around installations on Taiwan, including locations which Taiwan never declared to the IAEA under Taiwan’s IAEA safeguards agreements. The impression I have from people who have been close to U.S. “safeguards visits” in Taiwan on such occasions is that the U.S. has access to Taiwan’s nuclear program close to what UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors had in Iraq beginning in 1991. From the perspective of routine international nuclear diplomacy, U.S.-Taiwan relations in this area are clearly not routine.

Taiwan’s civilian nuclear program was launched decades ago by the KMT leadership under circumstances which, to put it mildly, didn’t exactly encourage political participation by Taiwan’s indigenous population. Since 2000, when the DPP won a national election and took power for the first time, the KMT’s legacy has threatened Taiwan’s nuclear power program and, in the wake of Fukushima, might ultimately prove fatal to it. The DPP has adopted an antinuclear plank in its platform, and since the accident in Japan, DPP politicians have been fanning the flames. So it isn’t a surprise that right now, Taiwan government officials want to quickly and without fanfare close on the terms of a new 123 agreement with the U.S. Given Taiwan’s historical dependence upon technology, equipment, and nuclear fuel from the U.S., the absence of a new bilateral agreement in 2014 w0uld halt Taiwan’s nuclear program in its tracks.

This post discusses how the US killed the KMT's nuke weapon program in the 1970s.

Also, this appeared in my inbox last week....

Staunch Public Opposition Won’t Drive Taiwan from its Nuclear Path

LONDON, UK (GlobalData), 24 July 2012 - Despite facing hostility from the public and figures within its own government, Taiwan will continue plans to increase its nuclear power capacity over the next few years, says a new report by energy experts GlobalData.

According to the report*, Taiwan is set to boost its nuclear capacity from 5,190 Megawatts (MW) in 2011 to 7,790 MW by the end of 2015, following the introduction of the controversial Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant located in the north of the country. Units 1 and 2 are set to be operational by 2014 and 2015, respectively.

The plant’s planned construction has been met with discord from a large section of the country’s population and has already been delayed for political reasons. There have also been several public protests, the most recent of which occurred two weeks ago at the Ho-Hai-Yan Gongliao Rock Festival – only three kilometres from the provocative site.

Despite such adverse sentiment across the country, a growing demand for electricity and a need to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets has prompted the Taiwanese government to push on with the Lungmen plant construction.

Power consumption in Taiwan is expected to increase at an Annual Average Growth Rate (AAGR) of 2.3% from 2012 to 2025, and as a massive 99% of the country’s energy requirements are met by imports, an increase in nuclear power can reduced national energy expenditure.

In 2005, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) expressed its plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 170m metric tons annually by 2025, and as about 62% of Taiwan’s carbon dioxide emissions are a result of energy production, switching to more environmentally friendly methods of power generation such as nuclear power could help the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The total installed capacity of Taiwan is 48,092 MW, generating around 245 billion kWh of electricity per year as of 2010.

Finally, Daren Township in Taitung was officially declared one of two candidate locations for a nuke waste dump. Because no place is so beautiful that it can't use some nuclear waste! Daren has less than 4,000 inhabitants..... below is pic of document.... the other site is in Kinmen. Daren is located south of Taitung city, where Hwys 9 and 26 split.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

China-Taiwan-Iran Nuke Parts Connection

As I blogged about earlier, the shipment of nuke tech was Chinese in origin, through Taiwan to Iran. AP has the call:

A Taiwanese company agreed to a request from a firm in China to procure sensitive components with nuclear uses, then shipped them to Iran, the firm's head said Friday. Such transactions violate U.N. sanctions imposed on the Middle Eastern nation.

The admission by Steven Lin of Hsinchu-based Heli-Ocean Technology Co. Ltd. comes amid an international effort led by the United States to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. While Lin said he didn't know whether the parts -- a vital component in the production of weapons-grade uranium -- were eventually used by Iran militarily, he did acknowledge that they have nuclear applications.

The Chinese selling nuke tech to Iran through Taiwan? Isn't this an argument for making Taiwan a formal member of international organizations?

Could US Middle Eastern obsessionpolicy be any dumber? Hard to see how. The Bush Administration wrecks the budget and the military on the shoals of Afghanistan and Iraq and tosses away our moral stature on torture and murder in Guantanomo and in the rendition program. The Obama Administration comes in and not much changes. And for what? Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. Afghanistan is merely the act of sending good American boys to die to make Central Asia safe for Chinese expansion. And the Chinese ship nuke parts to Iran, a red flag for the Americans. Surely by now Beijing has grasped that maybe they can get the US to engage in the ultimate folly of attacking Iran, simply by the low-cost policy of keeping that nation's nuke program going. At least they keep the US obsessively focused on Iran.

Analysts in Beijing must laugh themselves to sleep every night at how cataclysmically, world-historically stupid American Middle Eastern policy is.
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Daily Links

• Mutant Frog finds tale of colonial Taiwanese urged by Japanese government to sell gold for war effort.
• Dan Bloom says watch out for Y2k/YCI computer glitch in Taiwan
• WSJ gives a US perspective on the beef issue.
• Hong Kong leader threatens to use PRC troops on demonstrators. DPP should use that in their campaign stuff.
  

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Saturday Strays

On this bitterly cold day, some light reading....

WorldNetDaily has a report on the Taiwan-Iran nuclear parts pipeline. WND is part of the right-wing noise machine, so take with grain of salt:

British MI6 intelligence agency investigators have discovered Iran has set up a new smuggling network in Taiwan to obtain specialized equipment used for the production of nuclear weapons, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Insiders report Iran has established companies to buy the equipment on the world markets and then smuggle it into Tehran.

The purchases have involved pressure transducers, which are used to produce weapons-grade uranium, and Secret Intelligence Service officers have established that nuclear scientists from Tehran have held meetings in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, to buy the units.

The equipment is stored by the companies in a high-security area on the island.

The companies are fronted by local Chinese businessmen, and MI6 officers believe some of them have worked in China's own nuclear industry before moving to Taiwan. The intelligence officers have also traced bank accounts held by the businessmen to banks in the Cayman Islands.

That last paragraph reads as if it is Chinese, not Taiwanese, businessmen who are involved in this project, using Taiwan as a conduit.

CSIS has a short five page commentary from an anonymous writer for the Freeman Report, on cross-strait prospects. Aside from its propagandistic first paragraph, it's a fairly reasonable review, especially for a CSIS paper, of the options and probable outcomes:

At some point, Beijing may perceive its military advantage to be so overwhelming that it cannot conceive of the U.S. actually being willing to intervene militarily to prevent reunification. At this point, it is likely to begin applying pressure on Taiwan to start political talks. To further dissuade the U.S. against intervention, Beijing will characterize its pressure on Taiwan as “peaceful” in nature, i.e., it does not intend to use force but simply wants Taiwan to agree to start talks.

It is interesting that we keep reading about "falling tensions" in the Taiwan Strait but at the same time, everyone is speculating about how long Beijing will wait before it begins serious military pressure on Taiwan. The cross-strait relationship is not one of falling tensions, merely one of tensions interrupted -- as well as tensions displaced to other areas around China's borders.

The Wilson Center has a bunch of Taiwan related stuff up now. First is an excellent piece on Taiwan's economy in the global economic storm. The second is a dialogue involving four commentators on ethnicity and politics in Taiwan, including Melissa Brown and Stephen Goldstein. A description of the latter:

According to Goldstein, a number of factors influence the discussion of identity and cross-Strait relations in Taiwan. Older supporters of independence are dying off. At the same time, neither advocates of independence nor those of unification have the majority, and maintaining the status quo has become the dominant theme in managing the relationship with the mainland. The balance of opinion in Taiwan therefore lies predominantly with the pragmatists. Goldstein explained that young Taiwanese are attracted to the mainland as a vibrant, “happening” place. While there may be new understandings about what it means to be Taiwanese, this attraction to the mainland suggests that there will be little support for de jure independence in the near future.

That's been my perception too.

Finally, today's Taipei Times with an interview with DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen. A slice:

LT: What are the DPP’s mid and long-term objectives and plans, in terms of party development?

Tsai: The DPP has made significant progress over the last few years, but that is not to say that there are not some areas in which we can improve as a party. We need to build more trust among the public and make them believe that they can really hand the reins of the country back to us.

I don’t think it right to discuss too far into the future. Having said that, there are three things I would like the DPP to achieve before 2012. First, I would like to see us win at least three posts in the 2010 special municipality elections.

The places we win will form the foundation of our bid for victory in 2012, and I would like at least one in the north and north central areas. Second, the party needs to produce a comprehensive and complete set of political ideas and policies, to show what we stand for.

We want to present ourselves to the public again, but they are going to be asking us where we want to take the country. They will be asking us what we have, policy wise, to offer as an alternative to President Ma Ying-jeou’s policies. We cannot rely on the superstars within the party, or hope that the KMT are going to slip up, if we want to win the election. It is imperative that we can provide some kind of vision of how we want to see Taiwan develop, if we are going to win the people’s trust.

Don't forget, the DPP is rallying on Sunday ahead of PRC negotiator Chen Yun-lin's visit. Go here for more information.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

US Nuke Deployments to Taiwan

The FAS blog has a great piece on US nuclear weapons deployments to Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia in the '50s, '60s and '70s....

Nuclear weapons also were deployed to Taiwan. As mentioned above, the Matador cruise missile was already present on the island when the Taiwan Strait crisis erupted. The nuclear bombs arrived in January 1960 and stayed for a decade and a half until July 1974. Together with nuclear bombs for tactical fighter wings deployed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, Kusan Air Base in South Korea and Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, the nuclear bombs in Taiwan probably were intended for use against targets in China and North Korea.

The deployment to Taiwan was not without its problems: After a series of inspections of nuclear weapons facilities in the Far East, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1970 sharply criticized the U.S. policy that guided the forward deployment as well as the agreements and understandings with the host country about the deployment, use, or withdrawal of these weapons. “One example: …the ranking United States Army officer in [Taiwan] testified he was not aware whether or not nuclear weapons were located on Taiwan.”

After the weapons were withdrawn from Taiwan in July 1974, the three other fighter wings in the Philippines, Okinawa and South Korea continued to be tasked under the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan), the latter as a Quick Reaction Alert strike force. At that time the SIOP included four major attack options, two of which were against China, and three of 11 new Selected Attack Options directed by NUWEP-74 aimed at virtually all elements of Chinese military and industrial facilities.

It's incredible, the things that went on here. The post also contains an extensive discussion of the shift of the US nuclear posture to China in the early 1990s.

[Taiwan]

No Blast in the Past: How the US killed Taiwan's Nuclear Program

Here's a link I stumbled across today, with discussion and documents, telling the story of how the US snuffed out Taiwan nuclear weapons program in the 1970s.

However much more needs to be learned, these documents provide a telling picture of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy at work. In particular, they offer an interesting contrast to the U.S.'s planning earlier in the 1960s to impede, even "take out," the PRC's emerging nuclear capability. Although President Kennedy had been interested in using force against Chinese nuclear facilities, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, concluded that military force was too risky. Johnson and his advisers would also find that that economic embargoes were unavailing when an adversary was determined to mobilize the resources needed to create a nuclear deterrent. By contrast, Taiwan was generally responsive to U.S. pressures, although Washington would have to exert them repeatedly. What made Taiwan responsive, of course, was not only that it was a U.S. ally, it was a relatively dependent one. Not surprisingly, Washington had substantially greater capability to discourage the nuclear ambitions of a dependent ally than it had to check those of a strong adversary.

A significant advantage that Washington had in its dealing with Taipei on nuclear issues was that the ROC was relatively transparent both to U.S. and international authorities. Both foreign government officials, e.g., West German diplomats, and elements of the ROC elite were willing to pass on significant intelligence about Taiwan's nuclear plans Important clandestine sources increased the degree of transparency. One such source was the alleged Central Intelligence Agency agent, Col. Chang Hsien-yi, a key INER official, who became famous after he fled Taiwan in 1987. Whether Chang provided intelligence information relevant to the controversies of the early 1970s remains to be seen

The ROC eventually promised to give up nuclear weapons because it didn't want to kill other Chinese.

[Taiwan] [China] [US] [nuclear nonproliferation]