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Nuclear
Hypocrisy and Hot Air Proliferation
Kaushik Kapistalam
Washington
insiders know that very often, following the
policy pronouncements and actions of US Government
agencies and bureaucrats can be more entertaining
than sitcoms. International relations followers in
Washington get to watch the funniest show of them
all – the shenanigans of the non-proliferation
bureaucrats and their think-tank buddies. The
current US non-proliferation tap dance around
Pakistan and China’s wholesale subversion of
international regimes is just one part of the
farce. Indeed, thanks to Chinese and Pakistani
profligacy, terrorists might be closer to gaining
access to an atomic device than ever before.
However, for citizens of rising powers like India,
this charade affects their lives in more
fundamental ways than a theoretical possibility of
a terrorist nuke.
Human
Development
For all of India’s recent
achievements, there is still a long way to go
before most Indians reach a reasonable standard of
living. Every year, the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) comes out with a report that
quantifies the Human Development in the nations
around the world with a “Human Development
Index”. In 2003, India ranked 127th
out of 175 nations, which were surveyed. Western
commentary would normally pounce upon that and
talk about the various casteism/backwardness
related bromides that are normally used to
describe India but that is missing the point.
Unlike many nations in the lower rung of Human
development, India is actually endeavoring to
improve the lot of its people by using many
indigenous methods. One idea is to leverage
India’s human capital and expertise in
high-technology areas to improve the common
man’s lot. The Indian space program, which
focuses on agriculture and disaster avoidance, is
a good example.
Two of
the critical factors used by the UNDP to measure
human development are “traditional fuel
consumption” and “electricity consumption per
capita.” This just underlines the fact that for
a nation like India to improve its lot, access to
clean energy sources is paramount. While nations
can argue about the correlation between fossil
fuel use and global warming, the fact remains that
if nations of the size of India use up fossil fuel
at a rate comparable to what the Western nations
did during their transformation into
industrialized states, the world’s environment
could be irreversibly damaged for posterity. That
is just a theoretical danger, given that India
does not have access to that level of conventional
energy sources in any case. Indian coal resources
are likely to last only a few more decades at the
most, while its oil resources are even smaller.
Hydroelectric projects are always controversial in
a densely populated nation like India with the
costs of moving people overwhelming potential
energy benefits in all but a few cases. Geothermal
and wind power remain a pipedream and inherently
cannot handle the capacity required for India’s
energy needs. The only plausible energy solution
for India, therefore, lies in leveraging nuclear
power.
India’s
Energy Needs
Indian
experts estimate that in order to maintain a
reasonable rate of growth, India needs to generate
a minimum of 20,000 MWe of nuclear power by the
year 2020. Currently Indian reactors produce
around 3,000 MWe while operating at an 82%
capacity level. Indian nuclear experts surmise
that this 20,000 MWe capacity needs to be achieved
through a mix of Light Water Reactors (LWRs),
Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) and a
small number of Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs).
While India does possess significant expertise in
building and operating PHWRs, given the uranium
and thorium resources of the country, further
Indian nuclear power generation has inevitably to
take place through the use of Fast Breeder
Reactors and thorium reactors, which can tap the
full energy potential in nuclear fuel materials
through the use of recycling technologies. In
these areas, as well as LWR technology, India
needs technical collaboration with nations, which
have advanced in nuclear reactor technology to
avoid reinventing the wheel.
Western
nuclear reactor collaboration with India is not
based on charity, but enlightened self-interest.
As the cliché goes, necessity is the mother of
invention. Statistics indicate that except for
Japan, Western nations are spending less and less
on civilian nuclear power research. This is
logical because these nations have reached high
energy consumption levels and there is waning
interest in nuclear power production. For
instance, France gets 78% of its electricity from
nuclear sources.
The most obvious thing to do therefore is
for Western nations to collaborate with up and
comers like India to make advances in nuclear
energy which could benefit everyone. Indian
participation in the global nuclear research
endeavor can indeed speed up the search for the
nuclear Holy Grail - a cheap and accessible
“Closed Fuel Cycle” that re-uses nuclear fuel
without leaving back dangerous radioactive waste.
Unfortunately, there is one major impediment to
this co-operation – the cabal of international
non-proliferation ayatollahs.
The
London Club
Under
American leadership, nations that can manufacture
nuclear reactors are members of a cartel called
the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The NSG is also
called the London club. In 1992, NSG members
agreed to require that all recipient states of
nuclear reactor technology and fuel sales must
have all of their nuclear facilities under
“full-scope” IAEA safeguards. Although the NSG
was formed with an intent to prevent the spread of
nuclear weapons by controlling access to civilian
nuclear technology with a special focus on the so
called “dual-use” items, it has been a de
facto technology denial regime which has
selectively applied rules to suit the political
and diplomatic needs of the prevailing nuclear
powers.
For
instance, with American non-proliferation
ayatollahs leading the way, the NSG is currently
wooing China to join its ranks. Even as China
agreed to join the cartel, it signed deals to
provide nuclear reactors to nuclear rogue
Pakistan, a sale that would be prohibited under
the NSG. The American ayatollahs however, winked
at this move by using a so-called “grandfather''
clause that allows countries to complete work
under contracts in place at the time they join the
NSG. At the same time, the non-proliferation hawks
are blocking a proposed Russian sale of additional
VVER-1000 LWR reactors to India, similar to the
ones being built at Koodankulam using logic
similar to the Chinese justification of the
Pakistan deal. Russia (then USSR) had signed a
1988 protocol with India that predates the 1992
NSG agreement to require full-scope safeguards.
The
ayatollahs’ `scapegoating’ of India was
further illustrated when a nuclear trade journal
quoted US bureaucrats talking about the US
discovery of plutonium in air samples taken deep
inside Pakistan. Ignoring the obvious possibility
of China or North Korea being the source of the
plutonium, American ayatollahs concluded that the
plutonium was vented during India’s 1998 nuclear
tests and was carried over the air to Pakistan.
The ayatollahs even argued that this could be
deemed a technical violation of the Partial
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which India signed in
1963. In effect, they wanted to punish India for a
proliferation case discovered in Pakistan. It now
turns out that the ayatollahs were forced to eat
crow after the Pakistan-North Korea links were
revealed recently.
India
and Proliferation
The whole basis of the nuclear rector technology denial
regime was the so called "proliferation
implications" of civilian nuclear technology
transfers to nations like India. That is one
theory that the non-proliferation ayatollahs would
rather not let facts stand in the way of. In
reality, India has a stellar record when it comes
to preventing proliferation. In a 1998 paper,
American nuclear experts Christopher Paine and
Matthew McKinzie illustrated using a Venn diagram
that India was the only nation of all the nuclear
powers not to have had any co-operation with other
states in developing its weapons program. John
Ritch, former U.S. ambassador to UN organizations
in Vienna and current head of the World Nuclear
Association said that India was "irrelevant
to the proliferation concern, having already
acquired the relevant capabilities.”
Dr. R.Chidambaram, former Chairman of India’s Atomic
Energy Commission recently came out with a new
parameter called Stockpile Increase Significance
Coefficient (SISC). Dr. Chidamabram defined it as
a measure of the significance of a unit increase
in the number of nuclear weapons with a country
(including weapon-intended fissionable material as
part of the stockpile). Based on the SISC, one can
easily discern that the proliferation concern from
a nation goes down exponentially, as its
fissionable material stockpile increases beyond a
particular level. This only applies for nations,
which built their weapons, program indigenously.
For nations that acquire their weapons or related
technology clandestinely, the proliferation
concern could increase with time, as they have to
look outside for nuclear materials development and
equipment servicing capabilities. This explains
why India, with its indigenous weapons development
and not-insignificant stockpile, ceases to be a
major proliferation concern while Pakistan does
not.
Indeed, India’s expertise in developing PHWR technology
over three decades have been so extensive that the
Indian PHWRs were referred to in a recent IAEA
document as INDU, rather than CANDU, as they are
known elsewhere. In January 2003 the CANDU Owners
Group (COG) declared the Indian made Kakrapar
Atomic Power Station (KAPS) the best performing
PHWR of its class in the world. In terms of safety
too, India’s record is stellar. There has been
only one case of export violation concerning a
private Indian company, which was duly punished by
the Indian government.
Indeed, India’s record is similar to that
of the major industrialized nations where private
organizations may break export laws for profit,
but the governments guard sensitive technologies
vigorously. Besides, it is quite rich for the
non-proliferation ayatollahs - of nations that
allowed Pakistan’s A.Q.Khan to buy nuclear
enrichment and weapons components from private
companies under their noses - to cast aspersions
on India without factual basis. WNA’s John Ritch
puts the matter to rest when he recently said that
India has an "impeccable'' record of
controlling its nuclear technology.
Tilting
at India’s Nuclear Windmills
In the
ultimate analysis, the non-proliferation hawks
have only a track record of decades of failed
efforts to show for their policies. It would be
one thing if these actions actually prevented the
spread of nuclear weapons, but as we all know now,
Pakistan and China were busy trading nuclear
weapons technology to other nations while the
ayatollahs were busy conducting seminars and
typing up treaties that weren’t worth the paper
they were written on. Even when Pakistan was
exposed with clear evidence of state involvement
in proliferation and Chinese nuclear warhead plans
were found in Libya, the ayatollahs found ways to
let them go unpunished in return for promises of
good behavior. Whether it is for strategic ties,
Islamic solidarity or plain lucre, Pakistan’s
nuclear trade with a variety of nations, some of
whom still remain unidentified as per chief US
non-proliferation czar John Bolton, proved that
its nukes were not simply aimed at India, putting
to rest the main rationale for non-proliferation
ayatollahs’ targeting of India.
Given
all this, it is astonishing that the
non-proliferation ayatollahs, both serving as well
those in the think-tank community, still operate
with supposed credibility. These people have been
proven wrong time and again; about relying on
promises made and broken by China, the supposed
proliferation threat from India and the theory
that Pakistan’s nukes were simply “India’s
problem.” Many of these ayatollahs, with a
background in “Oriental Studies”, have ideas
for India’s reasons for pursuing nuclear
technology straight from the British colonialists
of the 19th century. Despite the very
obvious evidence of India’s crying need for
nuclear energy and the indigenous Indian nuclear
technology advancements, these “experts”
continue to propagate a theory that India’s
nuclear program is aimed at building weapons to
gain “international prestige” and therefore
India is a threat.
Ultimately,
given India’s rising economy and associated
clout, Western nuclear firms are bound to find
ways to supply nuclear reactor technology to
India, just like the current race to supply
reactors to China. India is also unlikely to ever
give up its nuclear weapons, no matter what the
ayatollahs believe. The only certainty is that
history will judge the nuclear colonialism of the
Western non-proliferation ayatollahs harshly just
like those of the Western colonialists of the past
few centuries.
This piece first appeared on the website of the Observer
Research Foundation, www.orfonline.org
and has been reproduced here with their
permission.
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