A second New York Times article, published a few weeks later, described a report sent to the Congress by the Defense Department, warning that increased production and use of plutonium, and increased international shipments of radioactive materials, will increase the risks of theft, diversion, and terrorist acts.57 The article explains quaintly, “The United States produces plutonium only at military installations for use in weapons. France and other countries, however, are exploring the feasibility of breeder reactors to produce plutonium commercially to fuel other reactors or for weapons.” In other words, commercial production of plutonium has not yet begun, or so anyone would infer who did not know better.
The article informs us that “International agreements and American law govern the security provisions enforced when plutonium is moved.” Well, this is something one would never learn from reading the British press. In nothing is a more sublime autonomy displayed than in the United Kingdom’s dealings in plutonium. The bomb plant at Sellafield was created in the first instance in defiance of American attempts to control nuclear proliferation, and nothing that has happened subsequently indicates any second thoughts. Either international standards mean nothing at all or they mean it is acceptable to ship nuclear wastes across the world to be dumped into British and European waters — which is to say, they mean nothing at all. Their single function seems to be to baffle the Yankees, and that they do very well.
It is worth noting how plutonium and radioactive materials are weapons intrinsically, as the London Times editorialist understood in 1976. We cannot close our borders against plutonium because it is plutonium, and liable to punish us brutally if we make the attempt. Our sovereignty is overridden by allies under cover of our own poor journalism. Is this the expression of the will of our people? Are they so eager to expedite this disastrous commerce that they would knowingly accept its risks? Of course not.
Except, perhaps, for that numerous new breed of moralist thrown up by this sad age, which will reprove me for criticizing Britain — unheard-of cheek. But we are talking about the world, after all, which history has placed in our most unworthy hands.
The final, visceral loyalty of American “intellectuals” to Europe is racism. The refusal to see the dimensions of phenomena like Sellafield, the refusal to call them by the hard names that fit them, is racism. If you think the Third World is hungry now, wait till the sea is dead.
Of course the United States has been smirched by history. But in the larger scheme, the United States is an invention, like Constantinople, which, if life could be imagined going on, would drift and evolve into other shapes and things in the way of species, clouds, and continents. If I could dream that the world would live so long that our books were lost and our name forgotten, I could feel we had been a good and successful civilization, after all. We give countries kinds of reality they do not have. They do not define the natures or the obligations of the human beings who live in them. Our country allows and encourages us to know nothing. But if we are ignorant, the fault is ours. Increasingly it encourages us, through its educational institutions, press, and popular culture, to consider ourselves knaves and fools. But if we act like fools, the fault is ours.
The recent decline in national self-esteem has led many Americans to invest their emotions offshore, in what they take to be a favorable climate, among solvent institutions. In imagination they have escaped ruin, growing rich as their neighbors grew poor. These people do not want to hear bad news.
But there is a real world, that is really dying, and we had better think about that. My greatest hope, which is a very slender one, is that we will at last find the courage to make ourselves rational and morally autonomous adults, secure enough in the faith that life is good and to be preserved, to recognize the grosser forms of evil and name them and confront them. Who will do it for us? E. P. Thompson? Greenpeace? The Duke of Edinburgh? The Washington Post? We have to walk away from this road show, consult with our souls, and find the courage, in ourselves, to see, and perceive, and hear, and understand.
Selected Bibliography
“£700m nuclear deal with Japan near signing,” Pearce Wright, The (London) Times, October 23, 1976, p. 4.
“Fear that nuclear power plans could threaten freedom,” Pearce Wright, The (London) Times, October 28, 1976, p. 4.
“Fears about effect of nuclear power plans,” The (London) Times, October 28, 1976, p. 14.
“The Plutonium Problems,” editorial, The (London) Times, October 28, 1976, p. 17.
“Mr. Benn rules out need for quick decision over fast nuclear reactor programme,” The (London) Times, December 14, 1976, p. 4.
“France bans sale of atom fuel plants,” The (London) Times, December 17, 1976, p. 5.
“Government survey of nuclear waste needs,” Pearce Wright, The (London) Times, December 17, 1976, p. 2.
“Windscale to check deaths records,” Michael Morris, The Guardian, July 14, 1977, p. 5.
“Nuclear Fuels answers storage query,” Malcolm Pithers, The Guardian, July 15, 1977, p. 3.
“Tip of A-waste iceberg,” Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, July 26, 1977, p. 2.
“Terrorist peril in nuclear waste,” The Guardian, July 27, 1977, p. 3.
“Another tough customer for British reactors,” New Statesman, March 18, 1983, p. 5.
“A new kind of nuclear victim,” Rob Edwards, New Statesman, July 22, 1983, p. 8.
“Wasting the ocean,” Rob Edwards, New Statesman, July 22, 1983, p. 6.
“Angry Whitehall stays silent on nuclear waste dumping plans,” Paul Brown, The Guardian, September 2, 1983, p. 22.
“‘Awkward questions’ about nuclear waste dumping,” Rob Edwards, New Statesman, September 2, 1983, p. 4.