Application to all nuclear explosive devices Sample Clauses

Application to all nuclear explosive devices. An issue which has bedevilled other nuclear free zone proposals, including the Treaty of Tlatelolco, is whether the prohibitions must apply only to nuclear weapons. Should parties to a zone treaty be free to develop, possess and use a nuclear explosive for peaceful applications, albeit with some constraints? The Treaty of Tlatelolco reserves to parties the right “to carry out explosions of nuclear devices for peaceful purposes — including explosions which involve devices similar to those used for nuclear weapons.”20 The manufacture of a nuclear explosive device requires access to the same techniques and material whether its intended use is military or civilian. Possession of a device by a state which claims only peaceful designs may, nevertheless, cause the same apprehensions among its neighbours as if it had acknowledged its military application, with a consequential impulse towards nuclear proliferation throughout the region concerned. Nevertheless, some states insist that the distinction can be maintained, and have refused to surrender the right to manu­ facture or acquire allegedly peaceful devices. India in fact tested a device under just this cover in 1974. The SPNFZ Treaty resolves the question in favour of a comprehensive prohibition on all nuclear explosive devices. That term is used throughout. That is one of the reasons why the Treaty creates a “nuclear free zone”, rather than a “nuclear-weapon-free zone”. A nuclear explosive device was defined to mean: any nuclear weapon or other explosive device capable of releasing nuclear energy, irrespective of the purpose for which it could be used. The term includes such a weapon or device in unassembled and partly assembled forms, but does not include the means of transport or delivery of such a weapon or device if separable from and not an indivisible part of it.