Power Plays

Christopher Hubbard offers a comprehensive exploration of the effects on national/state security policy and discourse of the production, storage, transportation, safeguarding, export and use of enriched uranium, and by extension, plutonium. Hubbard looks closely at a wide range of interlinked geo-political, security and technical issues as well as challenges for national and global governance in the dual fields of nuclear power generation and the proliferation of nuclear weapons materials and technologies.

This book contributes to a new understanding of one of the most serious security implications inherent in the current rapid growth in nuclear power generation. Furthermore, it examines the chances for success of these efforts, as well as the costs of failing to account safely for the latent dangers to Homeland Security posed by the diversion beyond the nuclear fuel cycle, and subsequent misuse, of enriched uranium and plutonium.

Extremely well written, this book contains a wealth of technical information but is not over-reliant on technical jargon or complexities.

...reflects on the forty years of nuclear history since the NPT and argues that the world must have a rules-based nuclear order and one in which enriched uranium and plutonium can be guaranteed by international cooperation to the growing number of countries that are turning to nuclear power. Herein lies an important response to climate change, terrorism and weapons proliferation. Wayne Reynolds, Newcastle University, Australia