March 17, 2008 ☼ energy ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ India ☼ non-proliferation ☼ nuclear ☼ proliferation ☼ Security ☼ United States
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Praful Bidwai offers honest, rational arguments against the India-US nuclear deal.
Many of the deal’s opponents are also mistaken in arguing that it’ll reduce/cap India’s nuclear arsenal/fissile material production. India will only subject 14 of its 22 operating/planned power reactors to inspections. The rest can annually yield 200kg of plutonium—enough for 40 bombs, in addition to the existing 100-150, and way beyond the professed “minimum deterrent”.
India can also stockpile unlimited amounts of weapons-grade material in its military-nuclear and other unsafeguarded facilities, including the “Dhruva” and prototype fast-breeder reactors. Besides, India can dedicate scarce domestic uranium exclusively to weapons. Again, India can live with the Hyde Act’s constraints. They’re a small price to pay if you want your weapons normalized and expanded, while resuming global nuclear commerce.
The honest, rational, argument against the deal is that it legitimizes nuclear weapons (India’s and the US’), weakens the global non-proliferation norm, unfairly favours India because it’s Washington’s friend, consolidates an unhealthy, unequal India-US relationship, and promotes the wrong kind of energy.
The deal will admit India into the global nuclear club—on the side of those who run a system that India long condemned as atomic apartheid. Once it joins the club, India will bid goodbye to its commitment, reiterated in the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme, to fight for global nuclear disarmament. You don’t join an exclusive club, and then demand its dissolution! The deal will detract from a principled commitment to a peaceful, equitable world order free of the scourge of nuclear weapons. [Mint]Those who feel that a deal that favours India—fairly or otherwise—is good for India should therefore rally in support of the deal. The time-tested dictum that India’s national interest is the opposite of what Mr Bidwai advocates holds true.
Mr Bidwai is not the only anti-nuclear activist arriving at the conclusion that the deal allows India to hone its nuclear deterrent and expand nuclear power. Here’s M V Ramana in IEEE Spectrum:
What’s more, the agreement is likely to increase—not decrease—India’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons and material. By importing uranium, India will be able to channel its native supply toward military purposes.
There is also the possibility that those nuclear reactors not subject to IAEA inspection will be converted to military ends. Any power reactor not under safeguards can be used to make weapons-grade plutonium by limiting the time the fuel is irradiated. This prevents the build-up of higher isotopes of plutonium, which are undesirable in a weapon. When a typical heavy-water reactor is operated normally, fuel remains inside the reactor seven times as long as when it is producing weapons-grade plutonium. Heavy-water reactors are particularly suited to making bomb-grade material, because new fuel is continuously added (and old fuel continuously removed); this type of reactor could produce the same amount of electricity every year but would use seven times as much fuel to do so. In theory, a 220-MW heavy-water reactor, run at 60 to 80 percent capacity, could produce 150 to 200 kg per year of weapons-grade plutonium. [IEEE Spectrum]Elements of the BJP who continue to reflexively oppose the India-US nuclear deal need to explain the public why they are on the same side as the likes of Mr Bidwai.
(Mr Bidwai’s piece, by the way, contains many of the usual canards. He’s entitled to them)
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