Under cover of night, a fleet of nondescript freighters sets sail protected by a naval escort. The only cargo aboard each vessel is a mysterious cylindrical capsule some 3 metres across and 12 metres long. Ordinarily, there would be nothing unusual about shipping goods from the US around the world, but these 500-tonne containers are no ordinary freight. The ships are carrying a new generation of self-contained nuclear power plants destined for countries such as Libya, Namibia and Indonesia - nations that the US government would not normally trust with the custody of nuclear material.rnSo far this scenario is fiction, but the US-sponsored plan to make it happen, dubbed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), is real enough. For the past two years, the US has been promoting GNEP as a way of meeting the developing world's burgeoning appetite for energy. Nuclear power, the Bush administration claims, is the best option for cutting these countries' dependence on fossil fuels - and thus their carbon emissions - while maintaining a secure baseload electricity supply.
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