The recent episode of an oppressive smog that blanketed Southeast Asia highlights an entirely new kind of problem in contemporary international relations, namely, the complexity of transnational governance when traditional remedies--from bombs and missiles at one extreme, to diplomatic démarches and summits on the more polite end--are of no use at all.

Designing and running nuclear power requires an entirely different mode of planning and assessment than possible with conventional risk analysis. There is little indication that the existing organisational culture of the Department of Atomic Energy permits such “over-the-horizon” creative thinking as is required.

This paper argues that the limit of conventional non-proliferation policy analysis is marked by the inability to come to terms with the ambivalence of nuclear power.