To put it bluntly the proposed US Global Nuclear Energy Partnership in which India would, generously, be allowed to sit on the “high table” of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group as a means of shifting out of the thrall of the oil economy and into a new nuclear regime based on uranium would impose a new kind of colonialism on the world. Particularly repugnant is the bald-faced attempt to bring India’s fast-breeder reactors. The current prototype at Kalpakkam and future projects, using plutonium as feedstock abinitio before moving on to burning thorium extracted from beach sands would have to be shelved in IAEA safeguard agreements.

Hence the point that India should make in negotiations with the US should be: fine, let us shift out of a oil economy that is threatening to go through the roof, to a nuclear-energy rich economy but let us have both a uranium stream and a thorium stream co-existing in harmony to mutual benefit of those with expertise in one or the other method of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

There is no need to rush into any arrangement that has the effect of capping India’s unique nuclear programme just to meet the deadline of a Bush visit intended to seal deals under the ‘Next Steps in Strategic Partnership’. That framework agreement has serious flaws not just in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy but also in ballistic missile defence. The offer of PATRIOT missiles will prove to be useless in a nuclear scenario in which two of India’s nuclear armed neighbours will continue to retain policies of “first nuclear strike” as State policy.

What is being offered to India, therefore, is nothing but colonialism by other means and having suffered embargoes and restrictive trade practices. The nuclear infrastructure we have created against tremendous odds has a potential, once it gets into the thorium phase, of being able to rid the country of dependence on imported petroleum products and release huge funds for national growth and development. One thing is clear that if the fast breeder reactors are put into any arrangement by which it attracts the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards –Special Protocol – India will for ever be dependent on foreign fuel controlled exclusively by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group. The nuclear “haves” are also currently the veto-holding members of the Security Council. Rest are second class nations of which India with the most developed nuclear technology would be the epitome.

The fact that the US has specifically targeted the fast breeder reactors to be included in the “civilian list” envisaged in the July 18, 2005 agreement (signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush) is nothing but a “shifting of the goalposts”. This is also the considered view of the man on whose advice the Indian Prime Minister signed that document –Anil Kakodar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy. US Ambassador Mulford’s veiled threat that if India did not toe the line could jeopardize the whole deal did tend to raise hackles in India.

Coming so soon in the new evolving relationship with the US this development will test Indian diplomacy to the utmost. The urgency imparted by the impending visit of President Bush to India further complicates matters but it would be in Indian national interests and also in keeping Indo-US relations on track that both countries agree beforehand not to make the issue of separation of Indian nuclear sector into the requisite civilian and military components a central theme of the Bush visit. If the US has its way and Fast Breeder Reactors are put in the civilian list, it will mean that the US has “capped” India’s nuclear weapons programme.

Look at the scenario. Over time, choked off by the IAEA safeguards, Indian nuclear weapons arsenal would become inoperable as the “half-life” nuclear factor takes over creating obsolescence that cannot be remedied by modernization and upgradation because the supply chain would have been broken at the fast breeder stage. The American policy of “roll-back” of nuclear weapons in “undesirable” hands would have begun. It is only a matter of time. India is on the look out for a nuclear powered submarine to make its “minimum nuclear deterrent” foolproof by putting in place a platform that is not easy to detect and, therefore, to destroy. India asserts that the plutonium from Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) is not a very efficient fuel for a nuclear-powered submarine. India will, therefore, be dependent on foreign sources of supply of uranium (because its own sources are finite hence the logic of going the fast breeder route for national self-sufficiency in energy). Americans are unwilling to buy this line and hence their insistence that the Fast Breeder Reactor must be put in the civilian list (and not in the military list as India wants). If this line is agreed to then, the US would have both “capped” and laid the foundations for a future “roll-back” of India’s nuclear weapons arsenal and make redundant the “military list”.

The present generation of policy makers in the South Block will do well to recall that it was under the shadow of technology denials and embargoes since the first Pokharan nuclear test (1972) India has created a self-sustaining nuclear fuel cycle. This has put the nation in an orbit where it could, on its own and without assistance from any outside source, be able to cut the umbilical cord connecting the nation to expensive oilfields which is the goldmine the US is promising us. We can, as things go, get the goldmine all on our own even in the face of total embargo by the Nuclear Supplier’ Group.

The American bait to make India heed their demand is access to American Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) technology. To that end the PATRIOT missile has been offered. These missiles, or any surface-to-air system that depends on interception of the incoming enemy nuclear warhead in the terminal phase (that is, when it is re-entering the atmosphere) will be useless for India. We are a vast country. If we try to save target A in one part of the country, radioactive debris from the enemy warhead intercepted by the PATRIOT missile even as far away as one hundred miles in the exoatmosphere will fall on some other Indian city thus making the ABM “shield” meaningless.

If the US is really keen to befriend India meaningfully it should take New Delhi’s reservations over Pakistani and Chinese nuclear arsenals more seriously. It should offer joint production of the means for Boost Phase Interception (BPI) that will by intercepting enemy missiles the moment they are launched makes their nuclear arsenals redundant. It naturally means peace on the subcontinent gets a better chance. If George Bush is not willing to consider this suggestion (BPI technology) he would be coming to India with nothing but useless pies in the sky which India can well do without.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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