"If tensions over the nation’s nuclear plans escalate into a military confrontation, a conflict would trigger a new global economic crisis"

Everyone knows what is meant by "oil wars" but it would be completely inapt to describe a conflict to prevent someone from turning the dual use technology associated with civilian nuclear power to military purposes.

The term "oil wars" focuses attention on the root cause of conflict that jingoistic political rhetoric usually glosses over, and it is therefore a valuable addition to our lexicon.

There is a trend in the nuclear industry to cultivate emerging economies as the their most fertile market. If, as the nuclear industry hopes, they are successful at building an additional 1500 or so nuclear reactors around the world, it is reasonable to conclude that the Iran scenario would be repeated with varying outcomes. As the disincentives fail and as more nations acquire nuclear weapons capability, regional political impetus would propel ever more nations to seek that military capability.

I think we need a word or term to define these confrontations that might be fought to prevent nuclear war. Since the threat is rooted in the commercial drive to profit from exporting and building nuclear reactors, perhaps something like "reactor wars" would be appropriate.


Also,

I'm all for policies that capture the external costs of fossil fuels, and I particularly like the model Denmark gives us where a stiff energy tax is collected and distributed back to consumers to ensure that the desired effect - reduction of fossil fuel use - is accomplished without undue negative impact on consumers. But when you have a situation like Iran and it pushes up the price global costs of energy in the way it has then you have to ask, "when you tally the benefits and costs of nuclear power, how do you quantify the total economic impact of this problem with Iran?"

If we were to successfully quantify the total costs associated with Irans nuclear "program ... for civilian purposes" would it be appropriate to proportionally assign that cost to the global nuclear fleet so that when a new plant is built and we are discussing the costs, there would be a "reactor wars" line item in the tally?