I have written previously about efforts by House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ranking Member Howard Berman to tighten the rules regarding the export of nuclear technology. Well, like a moth to the flame, I’ve been drawn back into that fold. I have written a piece which has been published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in which I take the arguments made against the bill by both the U.S. nuclear industry and the Department of State to task. The context of my piece is that the very same contentions were put forward by both State and industry back when a far more significant piece of legislation, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, was being considered. In a number of reports done following enactment of the NNPA, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the concerns put forward by each were questionable. I have concluded that dusting off the same arguments now and aiming them at H.R. 1280 is no more viable than when industry and State used them back in the late 1970s.
