Everyone's Invited

In a seeming minor story with major implications, Egypt this week announced that it was implementing a nuclear power/weapons strategy to feed growing electrical demand both domestically and internationally. Egypt plans to build three nuclear power stations by 2020 with a total capacity of 1,800 megawatts. Egypt has taken pains to declare, like Iran, that its motivations are entirely peaceful.

Can you hear the collective Israeli and American groan sweeping the world like an atomic blastwave? Not another one of these uppity Muslim states looking for nuclear power/weapons. Can't these people realize that they have enough oil in the ground and so they don't need nuclear power/weapons like we do? Besides we're responsible nuclear states, something they could never be.

But aren't Iran and Egypt the best placed to realize that demand is growing at the same time as the oil age is ending?

Iran knows very well how much new oil discoveries they are making and how much longer their oil will last. They also want to keep their people happy and nothing placates people better than cheap energy. How pissed off will the burgeoning youth of the Middle East react when they're told that they can't listen to their Ipods anymore? How pissed off would we be?

On the other hand, Egypt knows that the Aswan Dam will only produce so much electricity. Building more monstrous dams is out due to the destruction it causes and the immense costs involved. Like Iran they have to provide for their youthful population and have no desire to risk lawlessness; don't expect Hosni Mubarak's Emergency Law, a quarter century old, to disappear anytime soon.

So they both have decided to embrace the new international saviour, nuclear power/weapons. I have deliberately placed these two technologies together in this article because they are inseparable. Power and destruction both flow from the heart of the atom. As much as you claim your atoms are for peace, they can be easily used for war. Just ask South Korea.

And finally both Iran and Egypt are intimately aware of how nuclear power/weapons lead to prestige and power. The United States, Britain, France, Russia and China (amongst many others) aren't in a hurry to disarm as they are obliged to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact they are actually upgrading their arsenals. So the best that Iran and Egypt can do is try and catch up vainly while the world piles up the arsenal that will inevitably remove humanity and the rest of this wondrous creation from history.