ABSTRACT
When security and arms control analysts list what has helped keep nuclear weapons technologies from spreading further than they already have, energy economics is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Yet large civilian nuclear energy programmes can – and have – brought states quite a way towards developing nuclear weapons; 2 and it has been market economics, more than any other force, that has kept most states from starting or completing these programmes. Since the early 1950s, every major government in the Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East and Europe has been drawn to atomic power’s allure only to have market realities prevent most of their nuclear investment plans from being fully realized.
