Encouraging the further adoption of nuclear power is against our security interests. The scientific understanding and technology needed to generate nuclear power is the same as that needed to create nuclear weapons, and it is all too easy for rogue states to pretend they are only interested in peaceful uses while secretly pursuing military applications. This is the route India and Israel have followed, and that Iran may well be following at present. The process of enriching uranium to make it into fuel for nuclear power stations can be a step towards further enriching it to make nuclear weapons. Used fuel from nuclear power stations can be separated out to recover any usable elements such as uranium and plutonium through a method called reprocessing. Plutonium is a by-product of the nuclear fuel cycle and can also be used to make nuclear weapons1.  Even if the intentions of foreign governments are good, widespread nuclear power plants are at risk of terrorism, in both the developed and developing world. If a 9/11-style bomb was flown into a nuclear power plant, the potential disaster would be catastrophic. And the more nuclear material is transported around the world, the easier it will be for terrorists to get hold of some in order to make their own nuclear weapons. An atomic bomb might one day be within the reach of some international terrorist groups, but even today a simple "dirty bomb" (in which highly-radioactive materials is blasted over an urban area using conventional explosives) could be deadly to many thousands of people. Encouraging the spread of nuclear technology enables the spread of nuclear weapons.  1 'Reactor-grade and Weapons-grade plutonium in nuclear explosives', US Department of Energy Publication, January 1997,