The New York Times: Bush Seeks to Ban Some Nations From All Nuclear Technology

In what amounts to a reinterpretation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Mr. Bush now argues that there is a new class of nations that simply cannot be trusted with the technology to produce nuclear material even if the treaty itself makes no such distinction.

This is pretty interesting. The diplomatic tactics at work here are shady, and the scope is too exceptionalist, but this development shows that lightbulbs are going off above some heads on Team Bush. You can't have widespread nuclear power without the widespread possibility of nuclear weapons. Reactors require all sorts of dual-use technology, and they also make great places to hide clandestine enrichment and development facilities.

The problem is that with the breakdown of the cold war balance of power, having some nations go around and tell others that certain energy technologies are off limits is a recipie for trouble. The opportunity here is for some bold peacenik to propose the real solution: a global ban on nuclear power. That's a non-starter, but if you're serious about preventing enemy nations from constructing atomic weapons and you want to make sure other states aren't building stuff on the side which can be sold, the first step to a working enforcement regime is shutting down the cooling towers.

More broadly, it strikes me again that so many of our political conflicts have roots in thermodynamics. I remember being a kid and talking with my chemist father about the possibilities of cold fusion, how there might come a time when everyone would have their own "Personal Sun." That''s a recipie for a kind of utopia, as long as people didn't, say, start using their PS to shoot lasers at one another.

In any event, there's a growing consciousness on the left and right that energy issues are really at the root of a lot of problems we'd like to fix. Maybe the Apollo Alliance will finally get some play.