ABSTRACT
The fact remains that a considerable amount of nuclear technology has become public knowledge, and the concentration of research and development efforts on nuclear power has brought it much closer to industrial feasibility than any of the other new energy alternatives. It is contrary to the nature of science and technology to think that a handful of countries can retain a monopoly over an important technology for very long. Any attempt to eliminate all possibility of more countries developing nuclear weapons would mean doing away with a major sector of the nuclear industry. This is not only impractical but also clearly unacceptable to many countries that are concerned about energy supply. The tendency of the US to insist, in a rather legalistic way, on universality of treatment through the application of a comprehensive set of policies to all countries—and then to shift the orientation of those policies abruptly—has caused considerable confusion about the real motivations of US.
