This paper argues that Canada must develop domestic uranium enrichment capabilities, both as domestic energy and environment policy and as the cornerstone of foreign policy, in response to the collapse of the American-led post-WWII international order. The bulk of Canada’s domestic energy demand can and should be met with nuclear power reactors; these can be tuned to meet the highly variable daily demand only if they run on enriched fuel. Security-wise, we fully concur with Prime Minister Carney, that Pax Americana has ended. This fact carries profound implications that we have scarcely begun to appreciate. An immediate upshot is that Canada’s continued acceptance of U.S. nuclear leadership out of step with the times, ill-advised and potentially dangerous.
We must acknowledge up front that the recommendations here, if followed, would likely put Canada at odds with U.S. anti-proliferation policy. Canada, in spite of having been “present at the creation” of the atomic bomb and the peaceful development of nuclear energy, has historically taken a passive role in developing international anti-proliferation policy. Our passive stance served us only as long as the U.S. was willing to be the ultimate guarantor of western security. Unfortunately, the U.S. seems no longer interested in playing this role. Canada’s passivity should end, and Canada must take a firm grip on the reins of our own nuclear destiny.
- Strategic Nuclear Independence Canada should enrich uranium domestically using Canadian-controlled technology to enhance national and energy security. Enriched uranium enables load-following reactors for space heating (Canada’s largest energy demand), compact ship-based reactors to enforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, radioisotope production for medicine and industry, and advanced neutron beam research.
- Geopolitical Reality The U.S. nuclear umbrella has disappeared, evidenced by America’s ambivalence toward its commitment to NATO Article 5, permissive stance toward Russian aggression in Ukraine, unprovoked economic sanctions on allies including and especially Canada, abandonment of domestic and international rule-of-law, and withdrawal from global climate commitments. Canada and other countries that share our values and commitment to the rule of law can no longer rely on America to provide responsible leadership. This includes nuclear anti-proliferation policy, under which Canada has abstained from enrichment.
- Anti-Proliferation Regime Failure Canada’s acceptance of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and IAEA-based non-proliferation framework, through which Canada is effectively blocked from acquiring from foreign sources the technological means to separate uranium isotopes, was a trade-off for U.S. security protection—the nuclear umbrella—on which Canada can no longer rely. These organizations, focusing solely on civilian activities, failed to prevent, let alone foresee, any of the proliferation that occurred since their inception. By their very charters, they are disconnected from the reality of nuclear security. They can be more accurately viewed as instruments of American nuclear trade protectionism disguised as security policy. We need not necessarily withdraw from these organizations so much as simply acknowledge what they are and what they are not.
- Economic and Defence Benefits of Enrichment Possessing the capability to enrich uranium in Canada would open unprecedented domestic economic and employment opportunities, allow Canada to resume its world-leading nuclear R&D, and enable Canadian companies to compete in European nuclear fuel markets currently dominated by Russia. Enrichment should also be viewed as a matter of Canadian sovereignty. Enrichment facilities in Canada should be government-owned and -operated.
- Implementation Strategy Canada should prioritize civilian nuclear R&D, build enrichment facilities as national security infrastructure, construct at least one, although preferably a series, of new high-flux research reactors at Chalk River and at other sites across the country, and develop nuclear-powered icebreakers for Arctic operations—regardless of opposition from traditional allies who no longer have our best interests at heart. The employment opportunities this would involve, which would not depend on foreign materials or partners, would represent a significant driver of domestic economic growth and security.
Strategic Nuclear Independence: Canada’s Path to Energy and National Security
Canada must develop domestic uranium enrichment capabilities using Canadian-controlled technology to enhance both national and energy security. This strategic imperative extends far beyond simple energy policy—it represents a fundamental requirement for Canadian sovereignty in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment. Enriched uranium enables a comprehensive suite of capabilities that are essential for Canada’s future: load-following reactors for electric space heating, compact ship-based reactors to ensure effective patrolling of our Arctic, medical and industrial isotope production, and advanced neutron beam research. These capabilities collectively position Canada as a technologically independent nation capable of meeting its own critical needs without reliance on potentially hostile foreign powers.
Space Heating and Load-Following Nuclear Power
Space heating represents Canada’s single largest energy demand. It is currently met predominantly through fossil fuel combustion. Without adequate energy for space heating during our harsh winters, Canada would literally cease to exist as a modern advanced country. Nuclear power reactors fueled with enriched uranium possess the unique capability to throttle reactor power output, enabling nuclear-powered electric generators that can load-follow—adjusting power output to match real-time demand fluctuations.
Natural uranium-fueled reactors (such as CANDU), while excellent for baseload power generation, cannot efficiently modulate their output to match the variable daily and seasonal heating demands that characterize Canadian energy consumption patterns. Only enriched uranium fuel allows for the precise control of fission rates necessary to make nuclear power from the electrical grid practical for residential, commercial, and industrial heating applications.
The strategic implications of this capability cannot be overstated. By developing domestic enriched uranium fuel production, Canada could transition to meeting its largest energy demand sector with a low-footprint non emitting source instead of fossil fuel. In Ontario, most space heating is done using natural gas imported from the U.S.; hence Ontario is particularly vulnerable to adverse political decisions in the U.S. that affect trade. Only nuclear can achieve this transition while maintaining the reliability and flexibility that Canadian winters demand. This transition would simultaneously address climate commitments and energy security concerns, creating a truly sustainable foundation for Canadian energy independence.
Maritime Nuclear Propulsion and Arctic Sovereignty
Canada’s responsibilities as a three-ocean nation, combined with the imperative to enforce Arctic sovereignty in the face of increasing international competition for Arctic resources and shipping routes, against actual (Russia) and likely (America) adversaries, demand modern maritime capabilities beyond what Canada currently possesses. Enriched uranium fuel makes possible compact ship-based reactors that can fit within vessel hulls while providing the sustained power necessary for Arctic operations. Nuclear propulsion enables ships to operate independently for extended periods without refueling, a capability that is essential for effective patrol and supply operations in Canada’s vast maritime, especially Arctic, territories. Nuclear-powered icebreakers and patrol vessels would enable Canada to maintain a meaningful presence in Arctic waters year-round, supporting both sovereignty enforcement and the resupply of new Arctic water-access bases that are essential for Canadian territorial defence.
The development of nuclear-powered maritime capabilities would also position Canada to reduce its dependence on foreign naval technologies and support systems. Currently, three-quarters of Canada’s defense spending flows to the United States. Nuclear-powered vessels designed and built in Canada would represent a significant shift toward domestic defense industrial capacity, creating high-value employment opportunities while enhancing national security.
Medical Isotope Production and Healthcare Security
Canada’s potential leadership in medical isotope production represents both a humanitarian opportunity and a strategic advantage. Enriched uranium is essential for the bulk, efficient production of medical isotopes like molybdenum-99, which are critical for diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment. Current global supply chains for medical isotopes are fragile and dominated by aging reactor facilities in other countries, creating supply security risks for Canadian healthcare. Producing Mo-99 in CANDUs, while a welcome development, cannot produce this vital material in the bulk necessary to sustain widespread availability.
Domestic enrichment capability would enable Canada to resume mass production of medical and industrial isotopes, ensuring reliable supply for Canadian healthcare and industrial needs while re-establishing Canada as a major supplier of diagnostic isotopes to international markets as well as expanding Canada’s offerings to the international market for myriad other fission product isotopes. This capability would be particularly valuable given the ongoing consolidation of global medical isotope production and the vulnerability of current supply chains due to geopolitical disruption.
The economic implications extend beyond healthcare. Canada could enter the Russia-dominated markets for fission product isotopes, many of whose applications expand significantly with their availability. This would create new revenue streams while reducing global dependence on Russian nuclear materials, contributing to international energy security while also serving other Canadian economic interests.
Advanced Nuclear Research and Technological Leadership
Enriched uranium fuel is essential for high-flux research reactors that enable advanced materials science, fundamental physics research, and nuclear technology development. The construction of new high-flux research reactors at Chalk River and other sites across Canada would enable the resurrection of the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre, restoring Canada’s world-leading position in neutron beam research.
This research capability, provided it is fully Canadian-owned and -controlled, is foundational to maintaining Canada’s status as a Tier-1 Nuclear Country and ensuring continued Canadian leadership in nuclear technology development. Advanced neutron beam research supports innovations in materials science, medicine, energy technology, and fundamental scientific research—all areas where Canadian expertise could drive both domestic technological advancement and international competitiveness.
The employment opportunities created by a comprehensive domestic nuclear research and development program would represent a significant driver of economic growth that does not depend on foreign materials or partners. Unlike many other high-technology sectors, nuclear technology development can be pursued largely within Canadian borders using Canadian resources, creating genuine economic sovereignty alongside technological independence.
Canada’s voluntary abstinence from enrichment was predicated on reliable American global leadership and security guarantees that no longer exist. In today’s circumstances, it would be imprudent to base Canadian national security on the hope that reliable American leadership will return. Strategic nuclear independence through domestic enrichment capability represents not just an opportunity for Canadian advancement, but a necessity for Canadian survival in an increasingly challenging and unpredictable world.
Geopolitical Reality: Canada’s Strategic Imperative in a Post-American World
The United States has abandoned its global leadership role, fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape upon which Canada’s nuclear and security policies were built. This abdication of American leadership is evidenced across multiple domains. This new geopolitical reality demands that Canada reassess its strategic position and develop independent capabilities that were previously unnecessary under American protection. The end of Pax Americana is not merely a temporary political shift but a fundamental transformation that requires Canada to chart an independent course in nuclear policy and energy security—a position Canada should, perhaps, have taken at the outset.
The End of American Security Guarantees
The exit of America as a security guarantor and its emergence as a destabilizing force has become undeniable. The current U.S. administration’s explicit threats to annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal represent perhaps the most shocking manifestation of America’s abandonment of its role as protector of the international order. These threats, backed tacitly by America’s nuclear arsenal, demonstrate that the nuclear umbrella has not merely disappeared—it appears to have been transformed into a weapon potentially aimed at America’s own former allies.
America’s permissive response to Russian aggression in Ukraine provides a sobering harbinger of what Canada and like-minded countries may expect in future crises. Despite solemn commitments under the Budapest Memorandum to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the U.S. has consistently withheld and in some cases has actually suspended the decisive military support necessary to enable Ukraine to defend itself, let alone end Russian aggression. Support for Ukraine has sufficed only to keep the war going, not to defeat the aggressor. America’s refusal to live up to its security commitments to Ukraine now spans four consecutive presidential administrations, demonstrating that American unreliability on western security transcends partisan politics and represents a fundamental and systemic shift in American strategic priorities.
The implications for NATO are equally troubling. The current administration’s suggestions that it might not invoke Article 5 in response to aggression along NATO’s eastern flank, combined with similar doubts about defending Taiwan against potential Chinese attack, signal a broader American withdrawal from collective security commitments. These developments force allies to confront the uncomfortable reality that they are now without what was once a reliable bulwark against aggression.
For Canada, this means that the foundational reality underlying our nuclear policy—that American security protection made it worth it for Canada to subsume Canadian nuclear sovereignty under American leadership and to allow the U.S. to effectively dictate Canadian research and development policy even in strictly civilian areas—has proven to have been a costly mistake. The U.S. has demonstrated its willingness to withhold critical air defense capability from Ukraine while civilians faced daily bombardment; how much more easily could America deny Canada nuclear fuel or technology, or natural gas for home heating? America, by terminating shipments of high-enriched uranium in 2016 already effectively shut down Canada’s bulk production of vital medical isotopes—materials on which the Western Hemisphere, indeed America itself, depends for millions of medical procedures annually—and ended a half-century of groundbreaking Canadian nuclear R&D. Canadian industrial development and national security can no longer be predicated on American reliability.
Economic Weaponization and Rule of Law Erosion
America’s imposition of economic sanctions on its allies, through tariffs with dubious legal justification, represents a fundamental departure from the principles of international law and free trade that characterized Pax Americana. These sanctions against Canada and other close allies demonstrate America’s willingness to weaponize economic relationships for political leverage, undermining the stable commercial environment that has facilitated international cooperation for decades.
The integrity of American institutions has similarly deteriorated. Actions such as firing senior officials at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve, and manipulating economic data, raise serious concerns about the reliability of information upon which not only America but also Canada and the rest of the world have come to depend. When combined with gerrymandering electoral boundaries, delayed compliance with Supreme Court orders, and the treatment of legally present foreigners as criminals, these developments paint a picture of systemic institutional breakdown.
This erosion of rule of law has profound implications for nuclear cooperation and treaty compliance. If America cannot maintain consistent adherence to its own legal and constitutional principles domestically, its commitment to international agreements becomes similarly suspect. The anti-proliferation regime that Canada accepted was predicated on American leadership that embodied rule-of-law principles. Without that foundation, the regime loses its legitimacy along with any hope of ever being effective.
The reversal of established public health policies, including the appointment of vaccine opponents to critical health positions, further demonstrates the extent to which ideological considerations now override scientific expertise and institutional continuity in American governance. This pattern of decision-making based on partisan loyalty rather than expert analysis extends to nuclear policy, where America’s positions continue to serve narrow commercial and political interests rather than genuine security concerns.
The Failure of American Global Leadership
America’s withdrawal from global climate commitments exemplifies its broader abandonment of leadership on issues requiring international cooperation and long-term thinking. This withdrawal signals not just policy disagreement but a fundamental rejection of the multilateral approach that defined the post-WWII order. When the architect and guarantor of international cooperation abandons its own creation, other nations must either accept global governance collapse or step forward to fill the leadership vacuum.
The consequences of American abdication extend far beyond climate policy. From hard power commitments like NATO Article 5 to soft power institutions like USAID, the State Department’s Human Rights Bureau, and Radio Free Europe, America has systematically reduced its engagement with the international order that it created. This withdrawal has weakened international agreements and norms across the spectrum of global governance, creating opportunities for aggressive powers while leaving responsible nations more vulnerable.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine under cover of nuclear threats, while America and its NATO allies responded with escalation management designed to avoid confrontation rather than helping Ukraine defeat Russia and expel its forces, provides a clear demonstration of how American weakness facilitates aggression. The failure to invoke the UN Responsibility to Protect, despite clear evidence of war crimes and genocide, makes institutional frameworks of international law appear hollow and meaningless.
This pattern of American behaviour has forced other nations to seriously consider acquiring nuclear capabilities as a hedge against future abandonment. When the supposed leader of the free world demonstrates unreliability, its allies must develop independent means of ensuring their own security. For Canada, this means that continued abstinence from uranium enrichment represents not prudent non-proliferation policy but a dangerous decision to substitute hope, that an unreliable partner will become reliable again, in place of hard-headed but necessary self-reliance.
Canada’s Strategic Response to Post-American Realities
The end of Pax Americana creates both dangers and opportunities for Canada. While the loss of American protection increases security risks, it also liberates Canada from constraints that served American rather than Canadian interests. The anti-proliferation regime that blocked Canada from acquiring enrichment capabilities appeared to be more about protecting American nuclear trade dominance than preventing weapons proliferation. With American reliability in question, these constraints become impediments to Canadian security rather than contributions to global stability.
Canada must understand that hope is not a strategy. While it is understandable to wish for a return to reliable American leadership, prudence demands planning for a world in which such leadership no longer exists. America’s abandonment of the international order it created spans multiple administrations and appears to represent a permanent shift in American priorities rather than a temporary aberration under one president.
Acquiring or developing domestic uranium enrichment capability represents Canada’s most viable response to post-American geopolitical realities. Nuclear energy provides the foundation for energy independence that can ensure Canadian sovereignty regardless of American policy. Nuclear-powered icebreakers can enforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty without requiring American permission or support. Load-following nuclear reactors can meet Canada’s enormous heating demands without dependence on fossil fuel imports that could be disrupted by hostile American decisions. Bulk radioisotope production can serve both humanitarian needs and commercial opportunities without relying on supply chains controlled by potentially or actually adversarial nations.
Most important, enhancing Canadian nuclear capabilities through adopting domestic enrichment capability would position Canada as a technological equal rather than a dependent client in international relations. The “uranium equalizer” concept recognizes that nuclear technology represents the ultimate guarantee of national independence in a world where traditional security guarantees have become meaningless. By developing enrichment capabilities, Canada would gain both the practical benefits of nuclear technology and the strategic independence necessary to navigate an increasingly difficult world.
The Failure of the International Anti-Proliferation Framework: A Canadian Perspective
Canada’s acceptance of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and IAEA-based non-proliferation framework was premised on a fundamental bargain: in exchange for U.S. security protection under the nuclear umbrella, Canada would abstain from developing uranium enrichment capabilities. This trade-off, while significantly disadvantaging Canada, nonetheless made strategic sense during the height of Pax Americana, when American leadership provided global stability and credible security guarantees. However, with America having abandoned the post-WWII international order that America itself established, this framework has not only become obsolete but actively harmful to Canadian interests.
Historical Context and the Original Nuclear Bargain
The current anti-proliferation regime emerged from the specific geopolitical circumstances of the Cold War era. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, announced by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, established what Global Affairs Canada describes as a “three-part bargain”: non-nuclear states would commit not to acquire weapons, the five nuclear-weapon states would pursue disarmament negotiations, and all parties would facilitate peaceful nuclear cooperation under IAEA safeguards.
However, this bargain was compromised from its inception. A serious extant border dispute between China, a nuclear-armed dictatorship, and India, a non-nuclear-armed nascent democracy, led to India refusing to accede to the NPT at the very moment it was announced. Shortly after the NPT was signed, the Soviet Union and China nearly came to nuclear blows over their own border dispute in the Far East. The Soviet Union’s pattern of aggression—invading Hungary in 1956, placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, and occupying Czechoslovakia in August 1968, just fifty days after Johnson’s NPT announcement—demonstrated that at least one of the nuclear-weapon states had no intention of honouring its commitment as an NPT weapons state. The NPT effectively prevented potential victims of aggression from acquiring the means to defend themselves, while nuclear-armed aggressors faced no meaningful constraints.
The 1994 Budapest Memorandum exemplifies this unfair and dangerous imbalance between NPT weapons and non-weapons states. Ukraine voluntarily renounced its substantial nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from the USSR’s successor Russia, as well as the U.S., and the U.K. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and launched the brutal full-scale war in 2022—obviously violating its 1994 guarantee to Ukraine, not to mention the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Helsinki Final Agreement, and of course the NPT itself—the U.S. and U.K. then failed to honour their own commitments to guarantee Ukraine’s borders. The IAEA, perversely, had assisted Russia in ensuring Ukraine’s fissile material was unavailable for Ukraine’s defence, effectively facilitating Russia’s aggression. This further illustrates the IAEA’s disconnection from strategic security reality.
Anti-Proliferation Case Study: Megatons to Megawatts
The U.S.-Russia High Enriched Uranium Agreement, better known as Megatons to Megawatts (M2M), signed in 1993, saw uranium from formerly Soviet nuclear warheads downblended to reactor-grade fissile levels, then over the next decades “destroyed”—i.e., consumed in power reactors generating electricity for U.S. grids. M2M was praised for having facilitated disarmament. The Budapest Memorandum a year later was closely linked to M2M. However, these agreements, individually and together, subordinated Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign democracy to the goal of achieving as fast a rate of disarmament as possible.
And indeed, M2M proved a stunning success, as long as “rate of disarmament” is judged the most important criterion. But is it the most important? The result of M2M is that the world today has tens of thousands fewer nuclear weapons than in 1993. Is the world safer?
Russia today continues its brutal criminal invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine’s western supporters, far from “blanketing the country with weapons,” as one observer incorrectly characterizes western aid to Ukraine since February 2022, have constrained military aid—effectively granting Russia sanctuary from which to carry out daily air attacks on Ukrainian civilians. This is directly because of explicit Russian nuclear threats against anyone who came to Ukraine’s aid:
“For those who may be tempted to interfere… from the outside they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”—source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of individual war crimes investigations into Russian conduct in Ukraine have been opened at the International Criminal Court; that number will likely increase as long as Russia continues to occupy Ukrainian territory. To punish Europeans from providing the modest military support they have extended to Ukraine, Russia now carries out sabotage throughout Europe, including attempting to jam navigation on a senior EU official’s airplane. Russian military drones have recently encroached into NATO airspace; NATO did not respond, for fear of Russian escalation. Clearly the world is not safer.
And clearly Ukraine’s loyal adherence to the NPT and all attendant agreements has meant little. Russia, an NPT weapons state and UN Security Council permanent member with a veto, threatens the world with nuclear weapons so that it may conduct a genocide with impunity, and the world is not only cowed, but two other UNSC P5 members—China and the United States—give Russia diplomatic cover to do so. M2M, in spite of having rid the world permanently of 20,000 nuclear weapons, has proved irrelevant in the face of bad-faith actors occupying the uppermost positions at the very centre of global governance.
The HEU agreement is touted as a success for having reduced the numbers of nuclear weapons available for potential misuse by terrorists and rogue states. Yet M2M’s actual achievement is that it simply unburdened Russia—which is both a terrorist and a rogue state—of the expense and bother of having to maintain tens of thousands of superfluous weapons. Russia’s remaining weapons have been more than sufficient to successfully deter the world from fulfilling its legal and moral obligation to protect Ukraine.
The Failure of Civilian-Focused Non-Proliferation
Aside from the irrelevance to world security of nuclear disarmament, the current anti-proliferation approach suffers from a further fundamental conceptual flaw: it treats civilian nuclear activities as not just a direct pathway to but also an incentive for weapons development, despite the fact that not one of the current nine known weapons states developed its weapons from a civilian program.
The “civilian approach” ignores this historical reality, and fails to consider the domestic and international political circumstances that led each of the weapons states to develop weapons. Instead, it assumes that mere possession of fissile materials and enrichment capability constitutes a proliferation risk, regardless of a country’s strategic circumstances or security environment.
This is like asserting that table salt represents a weapons threat because one of its constituent elements, chlorine, was used in poison gas attacks during World War I. By presuming a pathway to weapons proliferation that no proliferant has ever taken or would take, the civilian approach entrusts anti-proliferation to civilian bureaucracies that are mandated to treat any state with a civilian nuclear program as a potential proliferant who will build a bomb if their civilian facilities are not micro-scrutinized and every gram of fissile material accounted for, no matter how adulterated with other isotopes that render it useless as explosive for a weapon.
Such a mandate is absurd, and is based on an ahistorical belief: namely, that only America possesses the technological capability to separate uranium isotopes from one another, or plutonium from other actinides and fission products. That may have been true for several months in and after 1945; it stopped being true when the Soviets acquired the technological details directly from the Manhattan Project.
And the corollary to this ahistorical belief was that civilian power reactors were the best way to furnish potential proliferants with the materials necessary to build a bomb. Assigning anti-proliferation policing to a bureaucracy disconnected from technological and geopolitical realities virtually ensures the bureaucracy will fail to detect actual proliferation—as indeed it has done in case after case. At best, it represents a waste of resources, and produces a false sense of security while doing nothing to address the reason why a proliferant would take the decision to develop a weapon.
All known nuclear weapons countries, including the United States, developed their weapons in secret, manufacturing their own fissile material through efforts that for obvious strategic reasons were undeclared. All known subsequent weapons programs of aspiring or actual proliferants—South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya—were undetected by the very bureaucracy created to stem proliferation. These proliferants acquired sensitive materials and capabilities the same way as the known nine weapons states: either by developing them indigenously, or through illicit back channels involving weapons programs in other countries. The assumption that aspiring proliferants would base weapons development on civilian reactors—the purpose of which is to make electric power, and in which plutonium-239 is hopelessly adulterated with other materials—defies strategic logic, historical precedent, and common sense.
Nuclear Suppliers Group as Trade Protectionism
The Nuclear Suppliers Group, founded in response to India’s 1974 nuclear test, represents the institutionalization of American nuclear trade protectionism disguised as security policy. The international anti-proliferation regime, consisting mainly of the NSG and IAEA, effectively blocks countries like Canada from acquiring enrichment technology, not because Canada in the early Cold War represented a genuine proliferation risk, but because Canada acquiring enrichment capability perhaps would threaten certain other NSG members’ commercial dominance in nuclear fuel markets. Chief among these “other NSG members” was of course the U.S.; today, it is Russia. That this is the case today underlines the perverse nature of an international regime whose purpose allegedly is to keep the world safe from nuclear weapons.
Canada’s CANDU reactor provides a clear example of this dynamic. The official reason CANDU reactors carry more intensive IAEA safeguards than enriched-fueled reactors is the multiple fuel channels that characterize the design. Multiple fuel channels, the logic goes, provide multiple opportunities to spirit irradiated fuel away for illicit plutonium recovery, again ignoring the fact that this material would be so adulterated as to make it useless. The real reason appears to be because CANDU—on-power refueling, natural-uranium-fueled—represents a commercial threat to the enriched-fueled model that in the early Cold War benefited the American civilian nuclear power reactor industry. It is likely that American nuclear authorities understand that no country would ever “proliferate” from a CANDU program, yet the intensive CANDU safeguards remain as a form of technological and commercial restraint.
Russia’s current dominance of European nuclear fuel markets—supplying nearly 40 percent of EU demand and a tenth of U.S. demand—demonstrates the strategic vulnerability created by the NSG system. Countries that accepted restrictions on their nuclear capabilities in exchange for American security guarantees did so in an era when America, not Russia, dominated the global enrichment market. That era ended during the 1990s with the USEC privatization failure, and those countries now find themselves dependent on fuel from Russia, an aggressive NPT weapons state that is waging unprovoked war on its neighbour under cover of a nuclear threat. This NPT weapons state is now on friendly terms with America, which appears currently disinterested in upholding its own international economic and security order.
Contemporary Geopolitical Reality and Canadian Security
The end of Pax Americana has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus underlying the anti-proliferation regime. The United States has demonstrated its unreliability as a security guarantor through its permissive response to Russian aggression, its threats to withdraw from NATO and other long-standing security commitments, its imposition of economic sanctions on allies including Canada, and its domestic erosion of rule of law.
Most significantly, the current U.S. administration has explicitly threatened to annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal—a direct betrayal of America’s commitments as an NPT weapons state. This represents not just the absence of the nuclear umbrella, but can be viewed as the tacit use of America’s nuclear arsenal to actually threaten its own allies.
In this context, Canada’s continued adherence to anti-proliferation restrictions that were predicated on American security guarantees becomes not just strategically obsolete but potentially dangerous. The NSG and IAEA frameworks, having failed to prevent any significant proliferation while successfully constraining peaceful nuclear development in allied countries, now serve primarily to maintain dependencies that bad-faith nuclear-armed powers today exploit.
Canada must recognize that the international anti-proliferation regime represents a failed experiment in technological control that divorced nuclear policy from strategic geopolitical reality. The organizations and treaties that comprise this regime have not prevented proliferation. Nor has the most successful disarmament effort in history done anything to enhance global security; one could argue it has made the situation worse. At best they are irrelevant to global security, and at worst they have contributed to creating vulnerabilities that aggressive nuclear-armed powers exploit while constraining the defensive and deterrence capabilities of law-abiding nations.
The choice for Canada is clear: continue to honour commitments to organizations that have failed in their stated purposes and were created to serve interests that no longer align with our own, or to develop ourselves the nuclear capabilities necessary to ensure our security and sovereignty in an increasingly dangerous world. National survival and the promotion and protection of Canadian values in the post–Pax Americana order requires the latter course.