• read top news

India – us nuclear cooperation agreement: is it about energy?

21 October, 2006

The proposed Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement generated an interesting debate between the proponents and the opponents of the nuclear deal. Delay in the US congressional approval due to concerns raised by those who were opposing the deal has highlighted the influence of the Washington think tanks on policy making processes within the US.

 Some of the negative implications highlighted by the non-proliferationists have recently been proven correct after North Korea’s decision to go nuclear. It may further deter those who were already skeptical about the deal and may put the whole process of approval and subsequent implementation of the nuclear agreement in the backburner.

 There are some who still believe that because both sides have made heavy political investment therefore it is unlikely that President Bush and PM Singh would allow any deal breakers to impede the whole initiative. It is possible that under US pressure India might agree to some of the preconditions being proposed by the Senate for the eventual approval and implementation of the agreement. Unless PM Singh makes some crucial compromises, the concerns highlighted earlier will continue to overshadow the ongoing debate. 

 The Deal is about Energy?          The proponents of the deal argue that the initiative is actually an effort to strengthen India’s ability to expand its civilian nuclear energy’s contribution to India’s large and rapidly growing electricity needs. US Secretary of State Condoleza Rice also argued that; “Civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India will help meet its rising energy needs without increasing its reliance on unstable foreign sources of oil and gas, such as nearby Iran.”

If this is to be true then why should India not place maximum number of its nuclear facilities under the civilian head, thus benefiting most from foreign supplied fuel for its civilian designated facilities? The fact is that India’s nuclear power production is just under 3% of the total electricity power generation. Other sources are coal, oil, gas, wind, etc. The net gain once the nuclear agreement materializes would be increase in nuclear power production to a maximum of 6.7%. It is difficult to understand how this increase of 3.5 - 4% would bring economic and environmental revolution in India. Experts like Edward J Markey, while testifying before the House International Relations Committee said; “In 2005, only 1% of India’s installed electrical capacity was fuelled by oil and only 2.7% by nuclear power….Throughout the next century, Coal will continue to be the major player in India’s electricity sector. India plans to build additional 213 coal plants by 2012. These plants will produce the bulk of India’s electricity. A realistic, safe, and practical plan for partnership between the United States and India would be a Clean-coal cooperative, not a nuclear one.” Another expert on nuclear energy Leonard Weiss agrees and said that an aggressive plan by India of improved energy efficiency could substitute for all the future power output from nuclear reactors currently being planned in India between now and 2020. Based on the above-mentioned facts, it becomes difficult to conclude that the need for nuclear energy is indeed the driving motive behind nuclear initiative, as it would hardly make any difference in India’s growing energy demand.

India does not have Uranium Shortage?         The second contradiction that surfaced more recently in defense of the proposed nuclear agreement is that India does not have uranium shortage for its civilian or military programs. Mr Ashley Tellis, who is one of the architect of the nuclear agreement, in his paper Atoms for War wrote; “India has sufficient reserves to sustain the largest nuclear weapons program that can be envisaged…possesses enough uranium to sustain more than three times its current and planned capacity as far as nuclear power production is concerned…this basic reality will not be altered whether Bush-Singh nuclear cooperation initiative now being reviewed by the US Congress is successfully consummated or not.” He has also termed one other proliferation concern that the US supplied fuel would free up India’s indigenous reserves purely for producing nuclear weapons, as ‘fungibility’ thesis. According to him, India possesses requisite Uranium reserves to build as many weapons as it might realistically desire. The question is, if India is self-sufficient to meet its civilian and military needs then why PM Singh’s government is desperate to have a deal at any cost and risk political backlash from within India, and face international condemnation for undermining global non-proliferation rules.

 In fact, this fallacy of India being self sufficient in uranium reserves has been exposed by 2005-06 Indian Department of Energy report, in which it acknowledges that India has meager reserves of Uranium. India’s leading national magazine ‘Frontline’ in its last Dec-Jan issue also concluded that India’s nuclear program is heading for a crisis, due to uranium shortage in the country.

 It is a well-known fact that contrary to what it propagates, India does not have uranium reserves to meet both its growing civilian needs and its ambitious military program. The proposed nuclear cooperation would enable India to use imported fuel to be used in its civilian facilities for power generation, thus freeing up the indigenous uranium reserves purely for military purpose. According to a former Indian intelligence official, as a result of the nuclear agreement India would be able to build as many as 50 warheads per year.

 Intangible Proliferation Concern.           One of the projected advantages of the nuclear deal is that access to new reactor technology from abroad would give India’s nuclear engineers exposure to new advanced designs that maximize efficiency and output. This could lead to intangible form of proliferation of nuclear technology.

 The advanced nuclear know-how could be misused by the Indian scientists in making qualitative and quantitative improvement in India’s NWs and their delivery systems. The separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities may be possible but it would be difficult to separate scientists working in civil and military facilities. India has a past record in which it received nuclear and space technology for peaceful purposes but misused it for making NWs and their delivery systems. As Gary Milhollin, another expert on nuclear issues while testifying before the Congress stated; “India, in fact, is the first country to develop long range nuclear missile from a civilian space program. India’s Agni missile tested in 1989, was built by using the design of the American ‘Scout’ space rocket. India imported the blue prints from NASA under the cover of peaceful space cooperation.”