Hi Javier,



Thank you for writing about this.



The end of the Cold War brought about a global and unprecedented opportunity to create a new nuclear weapons paradigm, an opportunity that was mostly wasted.



Except for the success of the (American proposed and Russian accepted) Megatons to Megawatts programme which turned rusty old atomic weapons from the 1950's, 60's and 70's into valuable nuclear power plant fuels. (Yes, it was costly, but the alternative was unimaginable)



However, so much more could have been done and not only with regards to weapons grade fissiles, but in regards to the several thousand tons of so-called 'spent fuel' sitting in storage (most of it sitting in earthquake-prone Japan) where it must be kept cooled and secure for up to 20,000 years, in the case of certain types of spent fuel.



The Megatons to Megawatts programme which ended recently, did so successfully and with astonishingly little fanfare considering the scale and success of that internationally acclaimed programme.



An incredible opportunity to morph the uber-successful Megatons to Megawatts programme into Phase II (removing more rusty 'newer' bombs from the 1980's and 1990's, which have since become unstable) and to process all of the world's 'spent fuel' into usable nuclear reactor fuel, was missed.



'Heartbreaking' doesn't begin to describe it.



I applaud President Obama's ultimately successful Iran policy, which culminated in agreement between Iran and the U.S. in regards to Iranian weapons-grade capabilities being diminished to the point where it's no longer a concern.



Powerful forces in American and elsewhere attempted to prevent President Obama from concluding such an agreement with Iran, for the sake of political gain.



Whatever our agreements/disagreements with Mr. Obama, he deserves full credit and our respect for navigating the Iran accord to an ultimately successful conclusion.



In a world of competing interests -- and yes, many of those 'interests' make for 'sexier' newspaper copy than Megatons to Megawatts II, surely at the top of our competing interests file should be lowering the threat of blowing ourselves off the planet, and in the case of spent fuels sitting in tsunami/earthquake zones, potentially poisoning ourselves off the planet.



The French are the world experts at reprocessing spent fuels and weapons grade uranium into usable nuclear power plant fuels, with Russia closing the gap in such technologies.



The need exists, the technology exists, the funding could be found just as it was for Megatons to Megawatts, all we need is an international leader of very high stature, Javier, and an internatonal team of experts to lead us towards a new, broader, and wider Megatons to Megawatts II programme that can solve two problems at once -- old nuclear weapons retirement and reprocessing and spent nuclear power plant fuel reprocessing.



As always, very best regards, JBS