The Indo-US Nuclear Pact and the Hoax of Nuclear Power
The Indo-US Nuclear Pact and the Hoax of Nuclear Power - By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
India’s Nuclear History: A Brief Outline
Choosing the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal - By Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana
Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India - By Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana
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The Indo-US Nuclear Pact and the Hoax of Nuclear Power
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
THE INDO-US NUCLEAR PACT
Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954 sets conditions on nuclear agreements with other countries. The present “123 agreement” makes an exception for India. This tells the world that India’s readiness to co-operate has finally satisfied the US. It is now worthy of being sold nuclear fuel, reactors, and technology, even though it does not sign the non-proliferation treaty.
The agreement allows 18 out of the 22 existing reactors and a fast breeder reactor under construction to remain outside the purview of International Atomic Energy Agency inspection. So, India’s nuclear weapons programme can continue. Even the penalty, according to the Hyde Act, of the return of all material and technology supplied, in the event of non-compliance with IAEA safeguards or a new test explosion, of which much has been made by the parliamentary Left, has an escape valve. In violation of the aims of the Hyde Act, the “123 agreement” provides that the US government can exercise its discretion to arrange for such supplies to continue from countries like France, Britain and Russia. In any case, activation of the penalty is to entail compensation. The US is happy because the upcoming new facility for reprocessing spent fuel (this is the point at which the plutonium required for the bomb is separated) will be open to IAEA inspection.
Why does the US suddenly find that it can live with the Indian bomb? There are several reasons.
The USA’s honeymoon with China seems over. In spite of the penetration of US finance capital into the huge Chinese market, Chinese trade and monetary policy is hurting the US. In the 11 months ending in November, 2006, the US had a trade deficit of $214 billion with China [2], and China refuses to reduce this deficit by revaluing its currency for fear that cheap foreign agricultural products will invade and destabilise its rural economy and further disturb its already restive peasants. Military exhibitionism over Taiwan is at a new high. The US notes the military build-up of China’s PLA and the upgrading of its western Pacific strike capabilities. The US recently upgraded its own China war contingency plan from CONPLAN (concept status) to OPLAN (resource assignment status, O is for Operations) [3], the Pacific Command OPLAN 5077-04.
The Indian bomb threatens neighbouring countries, most notably Pakistan and China, but the US is still far beyond the range of Indian missiles. So, without having to tolerate any imminent danger to its own security, the US, stung by the Talibani metamorphosis of Pakistan, sees the new pro reform, pro globalisation, pro US India as its future beach head against a possibly hostile China and a possible China-Russia-Central Asia axis (on the lines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation), as well as a fast developing ally of Israel against Palestine, Iran and Taliban-type fundamentalism. The American Jewish Committee openly supported the proposed deal. India has Observer status at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, and the US would like also to wean it away from such alliances.
The Indian nuclear programme is self-reliant and actually unstoppable without military intervention. As it is going to continue anyway, so, apart from good business policy, it is sound military and diplomatic strategy to exercise a degree of control over the supply line of fuel. Once India becomes dependent on this supply line for nuclear power, whose importance in the energy sector is also being enhanced, a threat to choke this line will add to the pressure on India to toe the US line, especially in emergencies.
India has opened her markets to US capital. From $ 11 million [4] in 1991, US FDI in India has soared to $ 5 billion [5] in 2005-06, a 450 times increase in 15 years. US capital wants its government to reward India, of course, in a manner which will increase her dependence on the US. A list of US companies which were lined up by the US India Business Council to lobby the US Congress to approve of the “123 agreement” includes General Electric, Ford Motors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Aerospace Industries Association.
The deal wraps India more tightly in the embrace of US finance-capital and its strategic-military geopolitics.
The supporters of the deal are foretelling doom for the country if the deal falls through, because, we are told, as fossil fuels run out, nuclear energy becomes the alternative, and the nuclear programme requires import of fuel (uranium), the US being ready to export just what is needed.
Let us analyse these theses in some detail.
NUCLEAR POWER: HOW LONG WILL RESERVES LAST?
Uranium resources will run out in the same time frame as fossil fuels. The 70,000 t of Uranium reserves will be finished in 30 years (The South Asian, April 16, 2006).
The Jadugoda mines of Singbhum, Jharkhand, have supplied uranium, U, from 1967 (the annual rate of production was 239 t in 2002) and are now practically depleted [6]. New mines are being opened up in the area. But the total output from the area is insufficient and reserves are being opened up in other areas.
Let us take a look at some of the new reserves [6].
The Domiasiat project of West Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, has a lifetime of 22 years, producing uranium at the rate of 160-200 t per year.
The Lambapur-Peddagattu project of Nalgonda, Andhra Pradesh, will produce uranium at the rate of 131 t per year for 20-25 years.
Actually, the reserves are less [7] than 70,000 t—- 61,000 t, the Reasonably Assured Resources6 (RAR) being 54,470 t.
Our coal reserves [8] are 38 billion t, with a total thermal energy potential of 21,151 GWYr. At present, coal constitutes [9] 51% of the primary energy sources. In 2002-03, total energy consumption [8] was 428 GWYr, expected to grow at about 4.4% annually, if a GDP growth of about 5% is combined with an energy elasticity of growth of 0.9. So, in the 50 years from 2002-3, the total energy consumption will be about 75,000 GWYr. A little energy use (compound growth) calculation shows that coal, at 51% usage, will last another 38 years or so.
India’s oil and gas reserves [8] are 12 billion t, with a total thermal energy potential of 16,204 GWYr. At present, hydrocarbons constitute [9] 45% of the primary energy sources. At this rate of usage, hydrocarbons will last another 36 years or so.
Taking U reserves [8] to be 61,000 t, the thermal energy potential is 913 GWYr for the current technology, using Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, PHWR. Even if nuclear energy replaces just oil and gas (that is, provides 45% of the total energy requirement, in place of the present [9] 4%), U will last less than 5 years even at 2002-03 rates of energy consumption.
So, nuclear fuel reserves, as processed by the technology in current use, will not last even as long as fossil fuels.
In resonance with US pronouncements, India’s Atomic Energy establishment is promoting the Fast Breeder Reactor FBR, which, besides supplying power, creates new fuel (notably Plutonium, Pu, used in the bomb) while using up Uranium, U. A 500 MW prototype PFBR is coming up in Kalpakkam. According to Kakodkar [8], Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, FBR use will stretch the thermal energy available from India’s U reserves to 117,308 GWYr, corresponding to about 75 years of use.
India has the world’s highest Thorium, Th, reserves, 2,25,000 t, according to Kakodkar. Th itself is not fissile, but, on exposure to fast neutrons, from machines or from fissile material like Pu or U235, gives U233, which is fissile. Kakodkar claims that the Th reserves are equivalent to a total thermal energy of 4,31,950 GWYr, certainly enough, says the establishment, to go into the next century.
What about the FBR? Is it the answer to our problem?
The FBR is too costly and too unsafe, as we shall shortly see.
NUCLEAR POWER: COSTS
In June 2006, M.V.Ramana and Suchitra J.Y. published [10] a comparison between the Kaiga I,II (operational) and Kaiga III, IV (under construction) nuclear reactors, on the one hand, and the Raichur Thermal Power Station RTPS VII, all of these being power plants of Karnataka, of similar size and age. Bare electricity generation costs were compared, without adding costs for interest payment, transmission or distribution, for various values of the real discount rate (= value of capital minus rate of inflation). For any discount rate higher than about 4%, thermal power was cheaper, although the coal source was assumed to be 1400 km away and nuclear waste disposal costs were not considered in spite of counting costs for environmentally sound methods of fly ash (from coal) disposal. A different study by NPCIL, Mumbai, found thermal power was cheaper for a discount rate above 6.7%. It may be mentioned that realistic rates are higher than 4%: for example, the January 2, 2007 prime lending rate of State Bank of India was 11.5%, and the January 6, 2007 WPI inflation rate 6%.
The dependence on discount rate arises because nuclear power has a much higher capital cost (Rs 2727 crs for Kaiga I,II, Rs 1816 crs for Kaiga III,IV, against Rs 491 crs for RTPS VII).
The Atomic Energy establishment claims [11] that the PFBR requires Rs3500 crs investment, and will supply electricity @ Rs 3.22 per unit (KWhr) to the power grid. Still, thermal power is cheaper. The NTPC renovated a 20 year old thermal plant [12] of the Orissa SEB near Talcher to give power to the grid at Rs1.30 per unit.
Further, people cannot believe the DAE and the AEC. The Kaiga I,II plants were to start production in 1994 with an investment of Rs 730.72 crs. Production actually started in1999, with the cost having overrun to Rs 2896 crs. In the case of the Narora reactors, the Comptroller & Auditor General of India CAG found a cost overrun of 188% in 1988. The CAG observed that there had already been 95% and 82% cost revision in 1982 and !985, respectively, the whole indicative of unrealistic cost estimates and over-optimistic time schedules [13].
World experience with FBR plants is that capacity utilisation tends to dip. In that case, even a Rs 3000 cr plant may have to charge. Rs 5-10 per unit [14]. The last US FBR went on line in 1980. If this is taken as a standard, a 500 MW FBR in India will require Rs 22,000 cr investment Taking the last Japanese FBR (1994) as standard, the required investment will be Rs 45,000 cr. Such capital costs will entail unit prices [14] of electricity, anywhere from Rs 9 to Rs 50.
The use of India’s Th reserves is also problematic. If Pu is used as a fast neutron source, we are back to the question of depletion of U resources. If accelerators are used to supply fast neutrons, the cost will rise steeply.
NUCLEAR POWER: SAFETY
From the major disasters in Chernobyl (Russia) and Three Mile Island (US) to the perennial problems of the disposal of nuclear waste (which remains harmfully radioactive for centuries) and the ambient radioactivity around reactors and U mines, the basically unsafe nature of nuclear power operations is always in evidence.
What is covered up by the nuclear lobby of big capital and its tame scientists is that there is no safe dose of radiation, no threshold of safety. Cell mutation can be a one event affair. An energetic particle hits one cell and, if you are unlucky, there is a mutation and that’s it — you are on the way to malignant malaise.
Low dose (<10cGy) radiation effects have been well studied [15]. Even if an irradiated cell does not become malignant, an instability develops in the corresponding gene. Subsequent contact with chemical mutants and carcinogens, additional doses of radiation, tumour promoters, oncogenic viruses, and combinations of these factors can push the body towards malignancy or other abnormalities like neonatal defects, years after the exposure . Tobacco and even caffeine can act as such promoting factors.
Another dangerous finding is that it is not only irradiated cells which are affected. Other cells are affected by their interaction with the irradiated ones leading to a genomic instability. Especially vulnerable are the progeny of the irradiated cells, possibly due to DNA strand breakage effects.
While we debate over the radiation from reactors, mines and wastes, all over the world radio-scientists are worried today even about diagnostic help from radiation, such is the threat perceived from low dose radiation.
Every step of the nuclear power cycle from mine to reactor, and thence to waste dump, deals with highly radioactive material. A little human or machine error, the like of which is remediable in, say, thermal or hydel power plants without much damage, will, in a nuclear facility, lead to dangerous leaks and spills of radioactivity.
In a country like ours where life is cheap and good health for the poor a non-marketable commodity, safety standards are low and haphazard, and we must accept this as the status quo and talk about it, not about any ideal copybook safety which may only be reacheable in an ideal copybook welfare state.
The tailings (liquid waste) from the Jadugoda U mines are kept in 3 storage dams, called "tailing ponds", within 1.5 km of seven villages, one of which starts 40 m away, although the Atomic Energy Act lays down 5 km as the lowest permissible distance to human habitation [16]. For over 20 years these villagers have lived with high rates of cancer, stillbirths, and congenital defects in children. Even Jadugoda railway station has seen containers sitting on the public platform, leaking waste.
Waste disposal from nuclear reactors poses similar problems. The difficulty is that these wastes remain radioactive over years and decades and even centuries in some cases. If you think the problem is a minor one, ask yourself whether you will accept residential accommodation 40 metres from a nuclear waste dump.
On December 24, 2006, a pipe leading to a tailing pond at Jadugoda started leaking into a creek from which villagers even draw drinking water. A sludge formed on the surface and aquatic life started to die. The leak continued for nine hours because the Uranium Corporation of India UCIL had no alarm mechanism and only shut off the flow after the villagers informed them of the leak. The UCIL learnt nothing from the earlier1986 leak of radioactive water to the villages after a dam burst.
The creek runs into the Subarnarekha, a major river of Jharkhand, and so habitations on its banks were put in jeopardy even hundreds of kilometres downstream.
The same problem of quick magnification of the effect of a small error into a major hazard overhangs the running of reactors. The DAE has never admitted to any incidents of this kind. Suspicious occurrences [10] include a fire at Narora (1993), collapse of the protective containment at Kaiga (1994), the sudden power surge at Kakrapar reactor (2004}. On January 5, 2005, the Tamil daily Dinakaran reported a radioactive leak at the Kalpakkam nuclear plant. The DAE admitted nothing. Earlier a tsunami had hit the plant, to what effect nobody knows. A tsunami also hit the Koodankulam nuclear plant under construction. The DAE remain tight-lipped.
A survey in habitations around the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, RAPS, at Rawatbhata, near Kota, showed increased incidence [10] of solid tumours (cancers), still births, congenital deformities, and spontaneous abortions.
The whole matter of overseeing the safety of nuclear plants has become a farce because the relevant authority, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, has on its safety committee [10] DAE technical personnel to the extent of 95%. So, the DAE is in the enviable position of being asked to oversee its own operations.
Finally, let us consider the FBR reactor. This will use molten sodium as the coolant. Here, the sodium is a new hazard, as it burns in contact with air or water. Also, if, for some reason, sodium is heated , it starts to evaporate, the reactor core starts heating up, and unless control rods are pushed in time, there is fuel meltdown and a small nuclear explosion [18]. The German FBR reactor was completed but never opened because of this fear [14]. The Japanese Monju reactor was shut down within a year because of a secondary sodium loop fire. 11 large (>100 MW-thermal) FBR plants were set up worldwide. Of these 6 are now shut. Two more are to be shut in the near future .
Pu based FBR reactors require reprocessing plants for extracting Pu from the spent fuel. These plants are great polluters, apart from being costly. There are two such plants in Britain and France, and the EU has been clamouring for their closure. Also, Pu is 30,000 times more radioactive than U235 [18] and the fuel fabrication (for example, fabrication of mixed oxide fuels MOX) requires great precautions and the cost rises. In this scenario enter India’s nuclear overlords with their plans for FBR reactors as an alternative to fossil fuels!
Thorium-based nuclear plants, including FBRs, exhibit all these problems of an intrinsic lack of safety. More-over Th, especially in powdered form, tends to catch fire in air, and, also, has as a decay product the radioactive gas Thoron which escapes into the ambient air.
To counter these charges of nuclear energy being essentially unsafe, the political managers of big capital from Bush to our Indian overlords have come up with a laughable claim: nuclear energy, they declare, is “clean.” What they mean by this is that a thermal plant produces as waste gases which pollute the atmosphere, but a nuclear plant does not. What they are sweeping under the carpet is the fact that a nuclear plant produces as waste solids which remain radioactive and pollute the lithosphere for decades and even centuries.
More-over both thermal and nuclear plants produce electricity and whether the transportation and manufacturing sectors will use this electricity in ways which will release greenhouse gases or not has nothing to do with the thermal or nuclear nature of production of the electricity. Electricity produced by a nuclear plant can just as well be used to extract and refine oil for private cars with their polluting emissions (instead of powering electric motor driven tram cars for public use and electric battery driven automobiles), or drive reactions in chemical plants producing harmful gases (instead of using “green chemistry” routes with water as solvent and non-production of any noxious waste or by-product).
WHICH WAY TO TURN?
If fossil fuels are running out fast and nuclear fuels, too, will not last long, and, more-over, nuclear power is too unsafe and no less a polluter, which way do we go?
India has hydel power reserves [7] of 150,000 MW, only 17% of which has been put to use (another 5% is being harnessed). Hydel power poses serious problems arising from the necessity of dams, drowning land, and displacing people. Still, here one can identify people who are to be affected and fight for resettlement. But, what do we do in the case of nuclear power, where one has to fight against the risk of fatality? What compensates lingering death and disease sweeping through a community?
Wind power, small (<25 MW) hydropower, urban and industrial waste based power, and solar photovoltaic power reserves add up to about 200 GW. Apart from these there is the potential for solar water heating over a 140 million square m collector area, 12 million biogas plants, 120 million improved biomass cooking stoves.
So, the present (2007) estimates of the reserves of hydel and non-conventional renewable sources [7] almost catch up with the 428 GW power actually consumed in 2002-03.
But, of course, energy consumption will increase. What about the growth of renewable sources?
Small hydel projects have a growth potential commensurate with liberation of community initiative.
India is the world's fourth largest repository of wind power. Wind power technology is advancing and so will growth.
India has, in most parts, 300 sunny days a year and catches 4-7 kWh/sq m solar energy daily [7]. The 140 million sq m collector area estimated at present for photovoltaic power receives, therefore, more than 2 GW power from the sun. As technology advances rapidly in this field, the PV yield will rise and collector area will also increase.
Bio-fuels are coming of age. The central government has announced tax benefits for jatropha plantations for bio-diesel production, and some state governments are giving land at a discount.
So, non-conventional energy is a viable alternative and will give high returns on investment, which has been meagre to date. A smaller investment than required for nuclear power will create greater energy potential.
In the last decade 5340 MW of wind power capacity [19] has been installed in India compared to 3580 MW of nuclear power in fifty years, although nuclear power has attracted much more government finance. In 2002-03 DAE was allocated [10] Rs 3351.69 crs and the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (solar, wind, small hydro and biomass) was allocated Rs 473.56 crs.
Only 9220 MW (7.3%) of non-conventional energy reserves [7] have been used so far, and, if the sector is to be prioritised, a lot of investment and construction will be needed soon. Still, building up sufficient capacity from its present neglected status will take time. But, here, too, the case of nuclear energy is hardly better. Even aggressive FBR development will allow a build-up of nuclear capacity which will not be able to supply more than 20% of the total energy requirement [18] even in the middle of the next century.
Unit costs of non-conventional energy are still high, but technology advance is bringing down these costs every day, especially for solar power. Of course, the costs are no longer high if they are compared with the FBR scenario. Off-shore there is a vast source of wind power, only the expense of harnessing it is high. But it has been estimated that this expense is at par with FBR costs.
REFERENCES
1. Sandeep Pandey, The Japan Times, August 15, 2007.
2. Richard McGregor and Eoin Callan, FT.com, January 10, 2007.
3. US Economy Today, August 12, 2007.
4. Economywatch.com, FDI in India. and US.
5. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, December 2006.
6.WISE/NIRP Nuclear Monitor, Oct 24, 2003.
7. KPMG IN INDIA, Indian Energy Outlook 2007.
8.Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Energy in India for the coming decades, March, 2005, DAE internet insert.
9. Planning Commission of India, 2006.
10.M.V.Ramana and Suchitra J.Y., Infochange News & Features, June 2006.
11.India Post, 30.4.2007.
12.Investment World, June 25, 2000.
13. The South Asian, April 16, 2006, quoting a 2003 article by MV Ramana.
14. Arjun Makhijani, The Hindu, April 25, 2001.
15. Kedar N Prasad, William C Cole, Gerald M Hasse, Experimental Biology and Medicine, 229, 378-382, 2004.
16. Sunita Dubey in Siliconeer Magazine, reprinted by The South Asian, April 1, 2007.
17. S.P. Udayakumar, SACCER, in The South Asian, September 3, 2005.
18. M.V.Ramana, The Hindu, May 28, 2001.
19. Sandeep Pandey, The South Asian, May 13, 2007, reprinted from The Indian Express.
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India’s Nuclear History: A Brief Outline. Source: Peace Now, , a publication of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace
1947: India Gains independence from Britain.
1948: Indian government passes the Atomic Energy Act, the beginning of its nuclear programme.
1955: Canada agrees to supply India a powerful 40-MW research reactor, CIR (Canadian-Indian Reactor), under the Colombo Plan to be used by India for peaceful purposes only. With British assistance, construction begins on India’s first reactor, the 1-MW pool type research reactor, Apsara.
1956, March: The US agrees to supply heavy water for CIR, now known as CIRUS. August: The Apasara becomes India’s first operational reactor.
1960, July: CIRUS starts operating.
1962: India predicts 20 - 25 GW electricity from nuclear reactors by 1987.
1968: In the wake of explosive nuclear test by China in October, Indian government led by Lal Bahadur Shastri, pushed by the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and some others, shifts from the policy of “No Bomb Ever” to “No Bomb Now”. Also resolves to work towards Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE).
1969: India predicts 43.5 GW electricity from nuclear power plants by 2000.
1972: India starts work on a pilot-scale Fast Breeder Test Reactor, to become operational by 1976. But delayed till October 1985.
1974, May 18: India carries out its first nuclear explosion in Pokhran, Rajasthan. Calls it PNE or peaceful nuclear explosion.
1975: The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is formed to tackle diversion of nuclear resources meant to be used for peaceful purposes for weapons development in response to Pokhran explosion by India.
1987: India’s nuclear-generated electricity production capacity reaches 950 MW (as against the earlier prediction of 20,000 - 25,000 MW made in 1962.)
1996: India rejects the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
1998, May 11 & 13: India carries out 5 more nuclear explosions, after the first one in 1974. Openly calls these tests as nuclear weapon tests.
1998, May 28 & 30: Pakistan follows suit with 6 tests. Claims to have squared the account with India.
2000: India’s nuclear-generated electricity capacity is 2.7 GW (as against earlier predicted 43.5 GW made in 1969.) For the first time India’s Fast Breeder Test Reactor operates continuously for 53 days. Bill Clinton visits India. The first US President in 22 years. 2001, September: The US lifts sanctions on India and Pakistan imposed in the wake of May 1998.
2004, October: India begins construction of its first industrial-scale breeder reactor - the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor.
2006: The DAE predicts India would produce 20 GW of nuclear energy by 2020 and more than 200 GW by 2052. On December 18, the US President Bush signs the Hyde Act, a major step in the direction of reintegrating India with global nuclear market.
2007: India’s current electricity generation capacity is about 4 GW out of total electricity generation capacity of about 140 GW, just about 3%.
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Choosing the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal
By Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana. January 2008. This article appeared in Peace Now, , a publication of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace
The fate of the nuclear deal between India and the United States still remains uncertain. The agreement would allow India access to international markets in nuclear fuels and technology, despite India remaining outside the Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime and developing and testing nuclear weapons. The nuclear deal is part of a broader set of agreements between the two countries, centering on increased military cooperation and high tech trade.
The current charge against the deal, and the government that has negotiated it, has been led by the left parties, chiefly the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (Click here, here, and here for an overview of pro-nuclear power policies of the CPIM in Bengal - ed.). While their opposition has been cast as primarily due to their antipathy to the United States, in reality it is also part of a larger contest about the way India develops and the particular form globalization has taken.
But the deal has also drawn opposition from India’s neighbors, who fear the prospect of an enlarged nuclear arsenal and closer military ties to a nuclear armed superpower. Pakistan, for its part, has signaled that it would respond in kind to a more ambitious Indian nuclear weapons program. Thus, the deal will further fuel an arms race between nuclear armed neighbors that have fought multiple wars.
A natural opponent to the deal is China, which has been identified as a key reason to offer this deal to India. To quote Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment: “If the United States is serious about advancing its geopolitical objectives in Asia, it would almost by definition help New Delhi develop strategic capabilities such that India’s nuclear weaponry and associated delivery systems could deter against the growing and utterly more capable nuclear forces Beijing is likely to possess by 2025.” In the context of the deal between the United States, which long has ignored its NPT nuclear disarmament obligations, and India, which has acquired nuclear weapons while refusing to join the NPT, such thinking only serves to legitimize the ultimate weapons of mass destruction.
In the United States an array of corporate interests led by the nuclear industry and arms makers are supporting the deal. They see the possibilities not only for nuclear trade but for big ticket weapons sales, as well as selling other goods and services to India’s elite, only a fraction of the population but a huge new market nonetheless. This emerging economic order, which systemically generates huge disparities of wealth both within and among nations, is itself a source of conflict. The answer envisioned by the military elites is to throw ever more sophisticated levels of high tech violence at these conflicts. Foreign policy pundits and officials in both countries extol the benefits of increased military cooperation, with the more enthusiastic on the U.S. side envisioning India as a junior partner for the U.S. military agenda in Asia. In the aftermath of wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the prospect of U.S. military action in Asia is hardly remote.
Despite the future oriented rhetoric the deal has been wrapped in, what is most striking about it is its backward looking character. Nuclear power was the technology of the future in the 1950’s. Half a century later, the promise of energy “too cheap to meter” remains an unfulfilled dream, the fundamental problems of catastrophic risk and long lasting highly radioactive waste still unsolved. With nuclear power construction grinding to a halt in wealthier countries, the industry has turned its sights to Asia, trying to sell its technology as a climate friendly solution to the continent’s burgeoning energy demand.
However, nuclear power cannot play a significant role in solving the energy needs of the vast majority of India’s population, much less do so in a way that offers any net environmental gains. Nuclear plants today generate only three percent of India’s electricity and less than one percent of its total energy needs. Even under the most optimistic scenarios nuclear power will only be able to double or triple its contribution by the middle of this century. Investing the immense capital needed to construct nuclear plants in energy efficiency measures offers far larger payoffs for reductions of carbon emissions. Nuclear power, the most expensive form of centralized electricity generation, is an inefficient way to deliver energy to India’s vast unserved rural population. The single most pressing “security” issue of the 21st century will be assuring the essentials of a healthy, dignified life for the billions of people who are left out of a global economy focused on delivering mass consumption items to urban middle classes, luxuries to wealthy elites, and weapons to enforce this inequitable status quo. In the rising global awareness of both global warming and limits on oil supplies, there is an opportunity for a different path of both technology development and trade. This path would stress decentralized energy strategies and technologies, first to serve the basic needs of unserved populations, moving as quickly as possible to the use of renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels. This approach to energy development has other positive consequences as well, e.g. improving public health by reducing open fuel burning for cooking and heat, slowing deforestation where wood is used for fuel, and creating large numbers of jobs broadly distributed geographically and in skill levels, from technology development through manufacturing to widely distributed work installing equipment for decentralized energy generation and use. Mass production of renewable energy generation technologies will both reduce their cost and encourage further innovation, providing growing opportunities for reducing energy consumption in the United States, where opportunities for conservation gains are abundant.
Several virtuous, mutually reinforcing cycles can be created in this way: improving energy access, providing employment, and generally broadening the economic potential of areas left out of the current mode of corporate globalization, reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption in the United States, reducing as a consequence the need for access to foreign oil and gas that is a significant factor driving an aggressive U.S. foreign policy world-wide. This kind of approach, furthermore, can more easily be achieved incrementally, with constantly improving decentralized energy technologies being deployed a household, a village, a city at a time, without the kind of massive, one shot capital costs that commit entire regions to a narrow set of technologies and generating facilities for decades at a time.
This is what the 21st century could look like. In contrast, the U.S. India nuclear deal would build another set of institutional ties binding us to the power structures, both technical and political, of the last century, strengthening those who profit from centralized control of energy resources, a society that generates and tolerates great disparities in wealth, and a global weapons trade that further concentrates wealth while raising the risk of catastrophic wars from the local to the global. Nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and this nuclear deal are all bad risks for ordinary people everywhere, risks that humanity can no longer afford. It is time to invest in a different future.
Andrew Lichterman is a lawyer and policy analyst for the Oakland, California based Western States Legal Foundation.
M.V. Ramana is a physicist and Senior Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore.
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Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India
By Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana. January 2006. This article appeared in Arms Control Association
President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a joint statement on July 18, 2005, laying the grounds for the resumption of full U.S. and international nuclear aid to India. Such international support was key to India developing its nuclear infrastructure and capabilities and was essentially stopped after India’s 1974 nuclear weapons test. India’s subsequent refusal to give up its nuclear weapons and sign the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept it largely outside the system of regulated transfer, trade, and monitoring of nuclear technology that has been developed over the last three decades.
The July agreement requires the United States to amend its own laws and policies on nuclear technology transfer and to work for changes in international controls on the supply of nuclear fuel and technology so as to allow “full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India.” In exchange, India’s government would identify and separate civilian nuclear facilities and programs from its nuclear weapons complex and volunteer these civilian facilities for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection and safeguarding. Yet, as they consider the deal and ways to transform its broad framework into legal realities, political elites in each country have ignored some crucial issues.
Policy analysts in the United States have debated the wisdom of the deal.[1] This debate has been rather narrow, confined to proliferation policy experts and a few interested members of Congress, and largely focused on the lack of specific details with regard to the deal, the order of the various steps to be taken by the respective governments, and the potential consequences for U.S. nonproliferation policy.[2] The larger policy context of a long-standing effort to co-opt India as a U.S. client and so sustain and strengthen U.S. power, especially with regard to China, has gone unchallenged. There is also little recognition of how the agreement could allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal.
The deal has incited a wider and more intense debate in India on questions of national security, sovereignty, development, and democracy. Some would like to see as few constraints as possible on increasing the future capacity of India’s nuclear weapons complex, and others question the extent to which nuclear energy can help meet India’s energy needs. Despite the many claims that the social, economic, and political well-being of the people of India will be enhanced by this deal, there has been little attention paid to the issue of whether India needs nuclear weapons at all, the costly failures of the Indian nuclear energy enterprise, and the possible harm for the people of India from a continued expansion of the nuclear complex.
Misplaced U.S. Goals
The nuclear deal has to be seen in the context of efforts over the last 50 years to incorporate India into U.S. strategy in Asia. After the Chinese revolution, the United States came quickly to believe that newly independent India was the only potential regional power that could compete with China for dominance in Southeast Asia. Despite repeated U.S. efforts to use economic and military aid to promote this policy, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, refused to have his country play this role. He said that a free India would not be a pawn for great powers, and warned that this kind of alliance building by great powers was bad for international relations and could lead to war.[3]
Still, U.S. hostility toward Communist China led to some extraordinary ideas about nuclear cooperation. In the wake of China’s first nuclear weapons test in 1964, senior officials in the Department of State and the Pentagon considered the possibilities of “providing nuclear weapons under U.S. custody” to India and preparing Indian forces to use them. At the same time, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was considering helping India with “peaceful nuclear explosions,” which would involve the use of U.S. nuclear devices under U.S. control being exploded in India.[4] These plans were dropped amid growing fears of the consequences of proliferation for U.S. military and diplomatic power, and the United States turned instead to preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.
The end of the Cold War prompted a rethinking of strategic possibilities and a now infamous 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance prepared for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, which declared that “[o] ur first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy.” It noted, “We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”[5] In other words, the geopolitical order was to be frozen as it then was, with the United States assured of maintaining its relative superiority in the different regions of the world. A key concern was China.
The first dramatic change in Indo-U.S. relations came during a March 2000 visit by President Bill Clinton to India, less than two years after India’s 1998 nuclear tests. The governing coalition then was dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose views are strongly anti-Communist, aggressively pro-nuclear weapons, and opposed to the more traditional strategy of nonalignment. The joint statement issued by the two leaders declared that “ India and the United States will be partners in peace, with a common interest in and complementary responsibility for ensuring regional and international security. We will engage in regular consultations on and work together for strategic stability in Asia and beyond.”
Further developing the idea of the United States and India as strategic partners in managing regional and international security, the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership,” signed in January 2004, announced that the United States would help India with its civilian space programs, high-technology trade, missile defense efforts, and civilian nuclear activities. The subsequent nuclear deal is but one of the building blocks promised in this larger arrangement. The purpose of the 2004 accord was made clear by a U.S. official who said the “goal is to help India become a major world power in the 21st century.… We understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement.”[6] These implications became clearer with the U.S.-India Defense Relationship Agreement of June 28, 2005. The thinking behind this agreement was explained by Robert Blackwill, who served in the first George W. Bush administration as U.S. ambassador to India and then as deputy national security adviser for strategic planning. In a rhetorical question, Blackwill asked, “Why should the U.S. want to check India’s missile capability in ways that could lead to China’s permanent nuclear dominance over democratic India?”[7] Less than a month later, the nuclear deal was announced.
Recruiting India may help reduce the immediate costs to the United States of exercising its military, political, and economic power to limit the growth of China as a possible rival. More generally, the United States sees Asia as central to global politics after the demise of the Soviet Union, and it needs strong regional clients there. The search for allies and friends is all the more important at a time when the United States was criticized because of its invasion and occupation of Iraq. On all these counts, India is seen as a major prize, and support for its military buildup and its nuclear complex seems to be the price the Bush administration is willing to pay.
This goal is, it seems, to be pursued regardless of how it will spur the spiral of distrust, political tension, and dangerous, costly, and wasteful military preparedness between the United States and China, between China and India, and between India and Pakistan. This last dynamic is already coming into view, as Pakistan has demanded from the United States (and been refused) the same deal as is being offered to India, and China wants any exemptions for international nuclear cooperation and trade to be offered not only to India but to be open to others, i.e., its ally, Pakistan.[8] In all these countries, containing about one in three people on the planet, many of whom are very poor, this will amount to a tragic distortion of values and priorities.
An Errant Debate in India
Although the nuclear deal has incited a limited policy debate in the United States, it has become a key concern in Indian domestic politics and has elicited three broad positions. First, there are the nuclear hawks who oppose the deal. They see the nuclear energy and nuclear weapons programs as one more or less integrated complex. They see the deal, particularly the proposed separation of civilian and nuclear facilities, as imposing constraints that would make more difficult the creation of a large nuclear arsenal, which they believe is essential for India to be a “great power.” The clearest expression of this view has come from former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and others in the BJP.
Vajpayee has argued that “[s]eparating the civilian from the military would be very difficult, if not impossible.… It will also deny us any flexibility in determining the size of our nuclear deterrent.” The “flexibility” he desires is the ability to use what may be classified as civilian facilities to increase the pace at which the nuclear weapons program could grow, as well as its eventual size. Similar sentiments have also been voiced by some retired officials from the nuclear complex.
The second position is that of Singh and many other leaders of the Congress Party, which heads the coalition currently governing India. They see the deal as offering recognition of India as a nuclear-weapon state, pointing out that the joint statement says India will have “the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the United States.” More practically, they see it as a way to sustain and expand the nuclear energy program while not restricting the building of what they describe as a “minimum” nuclear weapons arsenal. Even though Indian nuclear strategists and policymakers have never defined the term “minimum,” it is used to suggest that India is being restrained in its nuclear ambitions. At the same time, it is made clear that the minimum could increase, depending on circumstances.
Singh explained to the Indian parliament on July 29, 2005, that the deal offers a way whereby “our indigenous nuclear power program based on domestic resources and national technological capabilities would continue to grow,” with the expected international supply of nuclear fuel, technology, and reactors serving to “enhance nuclear power production rapidly.” At the same time, he made it clear that “there is nothing in the joint statement that amounts to limiting or inhibiting our strategic nuclear weapons program.” As an assurance that India would have the final say in implementing the deal, the prime minister announced that, “before voluntarily placing our civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards, we will ensure that all restrictions on India have been lifted.”
A different source of opposition to the deal comes from India’s left-wing parties, which otherwise support the Congress-led government. These parties have traditionally supported the nuclear energy program, but they opposed the 1998 nuclear weapons test and have pressed for India to play a larger role in global disarmament efforts and to do more to reduce nuclear dangers in the region. Their greatest concern is that the deal ties India too closely to U.S. policies. India’s Communist Party leader, Prabodh Panda, said in parliament that the recently concluded agreements with Washington served to reduce India to a “junior partner of the U.S. in fulfilling its global ambitions.” As the first sign of India surrendering its traditional nonalignment and role in representing the Third World, they cite the Indian government’s surprising vote for a U.S.-led resolution against Iran at the September 2005 IAEA Board of Governors meeting, something key U.S. lawmakers and officials had made clear was tied to the nuclear deal.[9]
These positions, which have by and large dominated the debate so far, have many flaws. The first is their shared belief in the success of India’s nuclear energy program and the need to continue with and expand this effort. This fails to recognize that the deal, in fact, marks U.S. acceptance of a long-standing Indian demand for lifting international restrictions on nuclear cooperation and that this demand is itself testament to the failures of the Department of Atomic Energy.
The second problem is the belief shared by the hawks and the government that nuclear weapons are a source of security. They ignore the essential moral, legal, and criminal questions of what it means to have and be prepared to use nuclear weapons. The only difference between these two camps is on the character and number of the nuclear weapons to which they aspire and how many people in how many cities they are prepared to threaten to kill. The left-wing parties are more ambiguous; they support disarmament but have not called for India unilaterally to give up its nuclear weapons arsenal and ambitions. Some of them even feel Indian nuclear weapons may be needed to hedge against a more belligerent U.S. exercise of power and influence.
Standing outside the political parties is a broad network of social movements in India that have become an increasingly important element in its political life. The most prominent of these, the National Alliance of Peoples Movements, an umbrella group of several hundred organizations and campaigns that support the rights of the poor, women, minorities, farmers, and workers, has come out against the deal because they see it as having been concluded without any public debate; as strengthening an unaccountable, dangerous, and costly Indian nuclear energy and nuclear weapons program; and as undermining important nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament goals.[10]
Nuclear Energy Failures
On the Indian side, a primary motivation for the deal has been the history of failure of its Department of Atomic Energy to produce large quantities of nuclear electricity. In 1962, Homi Bhabha, the founder of India’s nuclear program, predicted that by 1987 nuclear energy would constitute 20,000-25,000 megawatts of installed electricity-generation capacity.[11] His successor as head of the Department of Atomic Energy, Vikram Sarabhai, predicted that by 2000 there would be 43,500 megawatts of nuclear power. [12] Neither of these predictions came true.
Despite more than 50 years of generous funding, nuclear power currently amounts to only 3,300 megawatts, barely 3 percent of India’s installed electricity capacity. Indian nuclear capacity is expected to rise by more than 50 percent over the next few years, largely because of two 1,000-megawatt reactors purchased from the Soviet Union in a 1988 deal and now being built by Russia. Even if more such deals were to be made in the future, it is by no means clear that India’s nuclear establishment will be able to keep its promises, let alone contribute a significant fraction of projected electricity demand.
Another of the Department of Atomic Energy’s failures has been in ensuring sufficient supplies of uranium to fuel its nuclear reactors. As an Indian official stated in an interview with the BBC, “The truth is we were desperate. We have nuclear fuel to last only till the end of 2006. If this agreement had not come through, we might have as well closed down our nuclear reactors and by extension our nuclear program.”[13] This is not a new crisis; the former head of the atomic energy regulatory board has reported that “uranium shortage” has been “a major problem…for some time.”[14]
India has been unable to import uranium for its unsafeguarded nuclear reactors because of the rules of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the countries that manage international nuclear trade with a view to preventing proliferation. Apart from two very old imported U.S. reactors, India relies on natural uranium-fueled nuclear reactors, which are based on the two Canadian-designed and -built pressurized heavy-water reactors it acquired in the 1960s. The total electric capacity of these reactors is 2,990 megawatts. At 75 percent capacity, these require nearly 400 tons of uranium every year. The plutonium production reactors, CIRUS and Dhruva, which are earmarked for nuclear weapons purposes, consume perhaps another 30-35 tons annually. We estimate that current uranium production within India is less than 300 tons of uranium a year, well short of the fuel requirements.
The Department of Atomic Energy has been able to continue to operate its reactors by using uranium stockpiled from when its nuclear capacity and thus its fuel needs were much smaller. Our estimates are that, without the nuclear deal, this stockpile would be exhausted by 2007. The department’s desperate efforts to open new uranium mines in the country have met with stiff resistance, primarily because of the health impacts of uranium mining and milling on the communities around existing mines.[15]
For decades, the department has offered the potential shortage of domestic uranium as justification for a plutonium-fueled fast-breeder reactor program, which has involved costly and hazardous reprocessing facilities to recover plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Its efforts to build a breeder, however, have not made much progress: the Fast Breeder Test Reactor started functioning in 1985 and has been plagued with problems while the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is not expected to be completed until 2010 if all goes accordingly to plan. Poor economics and safety and engineering problems have effectively killed such breeder reactor programs in the United States, France, and Germany, but India may choose to try to follow the example of Japan and proceed with its program, ignoring both the costs and risks of reprocessing and the many problems with breeder reactors.
The dismal state of India’s nuclear energy complex, despite 50 years of determined government support and funding, may offer the clearest proof yet of one of the basic assumptions underlying the NPT. The treaty recognized that developing countries would need a great deal of help if they were to establish nuclear energy for peaceful purposes successfully. That is why Article IV of the treaty calls for a trade-off: providing non-nuclear-weapon states with access to international cooperation with nuclear energy in return for a demonstrated commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. In refusing to sign the NPT and in developing nuclear weapons, India had until now sacrificed the benefits of this international support. Now, through the nuclear deal, the United States has promised India all the help it needs for its civilian nuclear program, all without signing the treaty or even accepting any limits on its nuclear arsenal.
How Many Bombs Are Too Many?
In particular, the deal promises to allow India access to the international uranium market. If the deal goes through, New Delhi will be able to purchase the uranium it needs to fuel those reactors it chooses to put under IAEA safeguards. This will free up its domestic uranium for its nuclear weapons program and other military uses and would allow a significant and rapid expansion in India’s nuclear arsenal. India is believed to have a stockpile of perhaps 40-50 nuclear weapons, with fissile materials stocks for as many more, and plans that reportedly involve an arsenal of 300-400 weapons within a decade.[16] Realizing these plans will require the production of much larger quantities of fissile material and at much higher rates than India has achieved so far. Such production of fissile materials specifically for nuclear weapons is not constrained by the deal.
India could use its newly unallocated domestic uranium to meet its fissile material needs in several ways. It could choose to build a large plutonium-production reactor to add to CIRUS and Dhruva, its two weapons-grade plutonium-production reactors at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay. CIRUS and Dhruva could continue to produce about 25-35 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year. Another Dhruva-sized production reactor could yield an additional several bombs worth of such plutonium each year.
Another way in which India could increase its fissile material stockpile is to expand its small-scale centrifuge enrichment program and make highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons. So far, it is only believed to have enriched its domestic uranium to make fuel for the nuclear submarine that has been under development since the 1970s and has recently completed testing of its nuclear reactor.[17] India could make HEU both for weapons and enriched fuel for its submarine if it no longer needs to rely on domestic uranium to fuel its power reactors.
There is also the possibility, as hinted at by some hawkish critics, that India’s nuclear power reactors may become part of the weapons complex. For instance, if kept out of safeguards and with sufficient uranium supplies on hand, power reactors could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium by limiting the time the fuel is irradiated. Run this way, a typical 220-megawatt pressurized heavy-water reactor could produce 150-200 kilograms per year of weapons-grade plutonium when operated at 60-80 percent capacity. This could mean as much as an eightfold increase in the existing rate of plutonium production. The penalty to be paid in terms of the increased and less efficient use of uranium would be covered by access to imported uranium to be used in other power reactors. There would no longer be a trade-off between uranium for electricity generation and weapons plutonium production.
Neither does the deal constrain how India uses the weapons-useable materials produced so far. A major source of such weapons-useable material is the plutonium in the spent fuel of the unsafeguarded Indian power reactors. Over the years, some 9,000 kilograms of reactor-grade plutonium may have been produced in these reactors, though a large fraction of this plutonium is probably still not separated from the spent fuel. Even though it has a slightly different mix of the plutonium isotopes from the weapons-grade plutonium normally used for weapons, reactor-grade plutonium can be used to make a nuclear explosive.[18] The United States conducted a nuclear test in 1962 using plutonium that was not of weapons grade, and one of India’s May 1998 nuclear tests is reported to have involved such material.[19] An estimated 8 kilograms of such plutonium is needed to make a simple nuclear weapon. If this spent fuel is not put under safeguards as part of the deal, India would have enough plutonium from this source alone for an arsenal of approximately 1,100 weapons, larger than that of all the nuclear-weapon states except the United States and Russia.
Finally, the fast-breeder reactor under construction also will be a source of plutonium. The Department of Atomic Energy has always resisted placing the breeder program under international safeguards and is doing so again when asked to do so as part of the deal. Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, has said that the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor will not be under safeguards because it is a research and development program and “any research and development programme, we are not going to put under safeguards.” He has also pointed out that “only that which is clearly of no national security significance, only that part will be civilian.”[20] The department’s resistance to safeguards on the breeder program begs the question as to whether this is or ever was intended only for civilian purposes.
Why Nuclear Electricity?
Both Indian and U.S. supporters of the deal claim that the growth of nuclear energy generation capacity in India is a practical and even a necessary way to maintain India’s current rate of economic growth. The evidence suggests otherwise.
According to our estimates, the cost of producing nuclear electricity in India is higher than the non-nuclear alternatives.[21] Construction costs are high, and construction times are long, making the capital cost of a nuclear reactor very high when compared, for example, to coal-based thermal stations. In a country where there are multiple demands on capital for infrastructure projects, including for electricity generation, this makes nuclear power a poor economic choice.
Other considerations that go against nuclear power are the possibility of catastrophic accidents and the problem of nuclear waste. In studying the safety of nuclear reactors and other hazardous technologies, sociologists and organization theorists have come to the pessimistic conclusion that serious accidents are inevitable with such complex high-technology systems. The character of these systems makes accidents a “normal” part of their operation, regardless of the intent of their operators and other authorities. In India, as elsewhere, there have been many small accidents at nuclear facilities. Given its high population density, a nuclear reactor accident in India involving the release of large quantities of radioactive materials could cause tremendous damage. Finally, there remains the problem that no country has resolved: the disposal of large amounts of waste that will remain radioactive for many tens of thousands of years.
The issue that really needs to be discussed but has hardly figured in the debate is whether India needs any nuclear power plants at all. There are many who believe India would be better off giving up this costly and dangerous technology and finding ways to meet the needs of its people that do not threaten their future or their environment.
A 2003 study by the Confederation of Indian Industry found that there is great scope for improving Indian energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product), which is high compared to other countries, and called for increased cooperation with the United States in this area. It has been estimated that Indian industry could save as much as 20-30 percent of its total energy consumption and that nearly 30,000 megawatts, i.e., more than the total planned nuclear capacity by 2020, could be saved through energy conservation programs.[22] This would also be cheaper than building new generating capacity, especially additional nuclear capacity. This study also noted that, in the 1999 Indo-U.S. Joint Statement on Cooperation in Energy and Related Environmental Aspects, India had declared a goal of a 10 percent share for renewable energy by 2012 and a 15 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2008 and was seeking U.S. help to meet these targets.
The real challenge facing India is the growing divide between the energy-intensive pattern of development of its cities, with increasing demands for electricity and petroleum, and the continuing dependence on fuel-wood and animal-dung energy by the majority who live in its many villages. Nuclear energy as a large, centralized, and costly source of electricity will do little for meeting the basic energy needs of rural India because connecting these areas to a central power grid is expensive, involves high transmission losses, and is financially unsustainable. The UN Development Program’s World Energy Assessment in 2000 observed that “past efforts to deliver modern energy to rural areas have often been ineffective and inefficient” and that, “above all, planning for rural energy development should have a decentralized component and should involve rural people—the customers—in planning and decision-making.”[23] By working with the rural poor, it may be possible at last to develop and provide the small-scale, local, sustainable, and affordable energy systems that they need.
Conclusion
If approved by Congress and India’s parliament as well as the NSG, the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal will prove costly and dangerous. It will feed a cascade of mistrust, insecurity, and instability, diverting resources to a fateful military competition that will envelop China, India, Pakistan, and the United States. More broadly, it is difficult to see the deal as anything other than a fundamental rejection of the nonproliferation regime, as it abandons the assumption that access to nuclear fuel and technology must be within the terms of the regime. It undermines the aspirations of the vast majority of nations seeking global and regional nuclear disarmament.
The deal also will create the potential for the rapid buildup of a much larger Indian nuclear arsenal. It will bail out a failing Indian nuclear energy program that has had little regard either for the economics or the environmental and health consequences of its activities. It is also likely to offer little real benefit to India’s poor. It is not often that so much harm may be done to so many by so few.
Zia Mian is a research scientist in the program on science and global security at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and M. V. Ramana is a faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore, India.
ENDNOTES
1. See George Perkovich, “Faulty Promises: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal,” Policy Outlook, September 2005; Fred McGoldrick et al., “The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal: Taking Stock,” Arms Control Today, October 2005; and Wade Boese, “ U.S. Puts Onus on India for Nuclear Ties,” Arms Control Today, December 2005.
2. See “Issues and Questions on July 18 Proposal for Nuclear Cooperation With India” at www.armscontrol.org (Nov. 18, 2005, letter to members of Congress).
3. See Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
4. George Perkovich , India ’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999).
5. “Excerpts From Pentagon’s Plan: Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival,” The New York Times, March 8, 1992.
6. “ U.S. Unveils Plans to Make India ‘Major World Power,’” Agence France Presse, March 26, 2005.
7. Robert Blackwill, “A New Deal for New Delhi,” Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2005.
8. Mark Hibbs, “ China Favors NSG Solution on India That Facilitates Trade With Pakistan,” Nuclear Fuels, November 7, 2005.
9. Wade Boese, “U.S.-Indian Nuclear Prospects Murky,” Arms Control Today, October 2005.
10. Sandeep Pandey, “Condemnation of India-U.S. Nuclear Deal,” Statement by the National Alliance of People’s Movements, October 26, 2005.
11. David Hart, Nuclear Power in India: A Comparative Analysis (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983).
12. Vikram Sarabhai, Science Policy and National Development (Delhi: Macmillan, 1974).
13. Sanjeev Srivastava, “Indian PM Feels Political Heat,” British Broadcasting Corp., July 26, 2005.
14. A.Gopalakrishnan, “Indo-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation: A Nonstarter?” Economic and Political Weekly, July 2, 2005.
15. Xavier Dias, “DAE’s Gambit,” Economic and Political Weekly, August 6, 2005, pp. 3567-3569.
16. See “India’s Nuclear Forces, 2005,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2005, pp. 73-75; David Albright, “India’s Military Plutonium Inventory, End 2004,” Institute for Science and International Security, May 2005.
17. “ATV Project: India Crosses Major Milestone,” The Hindu, November 25, 2005.
18. J. Carson Mark, “Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium,” Science and Global Security, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1993, pp. 111-124.
19. George Perkovich , India ’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999).
20. T. S. Subramaniam, “Identifying a Civilian Nuclear Facility Is India’s Decision,” The Hindu, August 12, 2005.
21. M. V. Ramana et al., “Economics of Nuclear power From Heavy Water Reactors,” Economic and Political Weekly, April 23, 2005, pp. 1763-1773.
22. V. Raghuraman and Sajal Ghosh, “Indo-U.S. Cooperation in Energy-Indian Perspective,” Confederation of Indian Industry, 2003.
23. “Rural Energy in Developing Countries,” in World Energy Assessment: Energy and the Challenge of Sustainability (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and World Energy Council, 2000.)