{"id":2543,"date":"2007-12-31T17:34:10","date_gmt":"2007-12-31T17:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2007-12-31T17:34:10","modified_gmt":"2007-12-31T17:34:10","slug":"seventh-post-in-the-nuclear-policy-series-the-glittering-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2543","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Post in the Nuclear Policy Series: The Glittering Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blogfriend <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theglitteringeye.com\/\"><strong>Dave Schuler<\/strong> <\/a>brings in the important economic and scientific limiting factors to the discussion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>&#8220;World production of U<sub>3<\/sub>O<sub>8<\/sub> is <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uic.com.au\/nip41.htm\"><strong>roughly 47,000 tonnes<\/strong><\/a><strong>. The <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uxc.com\/review\/uxc_Prices.aspx\"><strong>spot price of uranium<\/strong><\/a><strong> is about $90\/lb. Conseqently, the total world production of natural uranium (the yellowcake we&#8217;ve heard so much about) is about $10 billion annually, much of which comes from Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan with lesser amount produced in Niger, Russia, the U.S., and other countries.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Since the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapons development program is much on people&#8217;s minds, let&#8217;s use Iran as an example.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Annual Iranian oil revenues, the government&#8217;s main source of revenue, are <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.doe.gov\/cabs\/OPEC_Revenues\/OPEC.html\"><strong>roughly $50 billion annually<\/strong><\/a><strong>. BTW, there have been some signs that, despite the rising price of oil, the Iranian government&#8217;s revenues from oil are <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/12\/25\/AR2006122500486.html\"><strong>actually falling due to decreasing production<\/strong><\/a><strong> (for various reasons). Add to this the draw on the treasury created by the profligate policy of subsidizing gasoline which, while creating a certain amount of political peace, has the unfortunate secondary effect of increasing the use of gasoline in the country and decreasing the amount of the government&#8217;s revenues available for spending on nuclear development programs, whether peaceful or weapons development.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/theglitteringeye.com\/?p=3377\">the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogfriend Dave Schuler brings in the important economic and scientific limiting factors to the discussion: &#8220;World production of U3O8 is roughly 47,000 tonnes. The spot price of uranium is about $90\/lb. Conseqently, the total world production of natural uranium (the yellowcake we&#8217;ve heard so much about) is about $10 billion annually, much of which comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,107,304,362,99,270,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-arms-control","category-defense","category-deterrence","category-glittering-eye","category-national-security","category-nuclear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}