What's Farsi for "Nein Danke"?

I'm against pretty much all the nuclear industry - weapons, energy the whole lot. I just don't think we have the right to go on producing poisons that will last millennia after our deaths, or that it can ever be right. It's not essentially a spiritual point of view, or a personal philosophical point of view - it's a pragmatic acceptance that creating elements, not seen before on Earth, that have the power to kill for hundreds of centuries is likely to be a bad idea.

That said, I don't really see that the "West" has come up with any reasons good enough to stop Iran from developing nuclear technology. If the rest of the world was retreating from nuclear energy and nuclear weapons there would be a clear global moral argument against any new development. Also there would be fewer atomic scientists, less atomic material, less nuclear expertise and technology to "go astray".

In fact the opposite is the case - the "west" and other countries in the favour of the "west" are gung-ho for new nuclear energy developments. It is increasingly seen as a solution for avoiding global warming, and for assisting in energy security (i.e. dealing with all the oil running out, and what's left mostly being owned by people who don't like us). Now if you were a country whose whole economy depended on fossil fuel exports and you had already passed your own peak oil production point wouldn't you want to join this new energy bandwagon before it was too late?

In terms of nuclear weapons, the "west" similarly shows no sign of retreat. The US military pushes for the development of "tactical" nuclear weapons, atomic bunker busters et al. The UK government gets ready to spend billions on a new nuclear weapons system to replace Trident. Meanwhile countries like Israel, India and Pakistan are allowed nuclear weapons without censure. Iran looks on and sees that while a country without any evidence of WMD (Iraq) is invaded and turned into a pit of chaos, a country that clearly does have WMD (North Korea) is pussyfooted around. Doesn't this indicate that you bloody well better actually have WMD if you want to avoid the USA coming a shit kicking?

So we have an opportunity to stop Nuclear madness here and now, stop nuclear development in the first world and export the moral argument (and the supporting details on peak uranium). Simultaneously we restrict the number of people who possibly could create nuclear industries, and the technology to allow us to do so. Our Atomic scientists will have plenty of exciting work left to do, working out how to make all the crap 50 years of nuclear activity have generated safer for the unborn generations who will share the planet with it.