Saturday, November 18, 2006
India and Pakistan get their ‘nuclear deals’
One of the first things the new US Senate has done is to approve ‘overwhelmingly’ the US-India nuclear agreement allowing India access to American nuclear technology. Pakistan had objected to the deal because the US was not being even-handed between India and Pakistan. On Thursday General Ehsanul Haq, chairman joint chiefs of staff, said that ‘the United States should extend civilian nuclear cooperation beyond India and include Pakistan’, arguing that the economic growth it would spur would help defeat extremism and terrorism.
The Bush administration has expressed the opinion that its agreement with India cannot be replicated with Pakistan: it sees India as a strategic ally who deserves the deal, despite the fact that, in the eyes of many Americans, it has long undermined the regime of restraints set up by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But Pakistan, an ally in the war against terrorism, apparently does not deserve to get a similar deal. Like India, it has gone on to build additional nuclear power plants despite the NPT ban, but unlike India it cannot be trusted because it has secretly proliferated via Dr AQ Khan.
According to the latest reports, Pakistan has decided to go ahead and sign more nuclear power plants with China after Chashma-1 and Chashma-2, although General Haq admits that the ‘Chinese help to Pakistan on nuclear energy might not be able to fill all our requirements’. The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, is due in Islamabad next week. He is expected to unveil an ‘extensive nuclear cooperation plan with Pakistan’ and sign up for six additional power stations which could be double the size of the earlier Chashma types, which were 300 MW each. This may not please Washington and President Bush might even complain about this when he meets his Chinese counterpart at the APEC summit this week.
If the US has overcome its reservations in regard to India’s non-membership of the NPT club, its discrimination against Pakistan is bound to fail in achieving its objectives. Pakistan does not have any moral choices. Its plans for building more dams for cheap electricity have been scuttled by its southern province, Sindh, and its efforts to get an Iranian gas pipeline to run its power plants has been opposed by the US which used its nuclear deal with India as a persuasion to diminish the latter’s enthusiasm for the pipeline. In simple survival terms, Pakistan has to increase its national power generation capacity from the present installed capacity of 19,540 MW to 162,590 MW by the year 2030.
At present, Pakistan has two nuclear power plants with a cumulative net capacity of 425 MW, whereas a third reactor of 300 MW capacity is to come on line shortly. The country’s first nuclear power plant (KANUPP) of 125 MW capacity, was established at Karachi but has already completed its ‘design life’. The second plant, Chashma-1 — of 300 MW output — was built by China and started commercial operations in 2000. Chashma-2, to come on line in 2007, will add another 300MW to the national grid. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) wants to install another 10 to 12 nuclear power plants to achieve its target of generating total 8,800 MW.
There have been concerns about nuclear plants both in India and Pakistan. It appears that despite all the frightening things that environmental scientists say about these plants dotting the countryside, the two states have no choice but to ensure their high growth rate future by allowing their construction. Hydroelectricity, too, is rejected by conscientious environmentalists because of the damage the dams do to human habitat. But new revelations about the effect of hydrocarbons on global warming have now reduced these arguments to absurdity. The question boils down to this: should we save the earth or save our people from dying of starvation?
But the distinguished nuclear scientist, Zia Mian, has been drawing Pakistan’s attention to the negative aspects of the Chashma series of nuclear plants. He says Chashma-2, on the banks of the Indus River, about 30 miles from Mianwali, will create problems. Spending a billion dollars each for 300 MW plants is not financially feasible since it adds expensive electricity to the national grid. Already WAPDA is protesting at the high rates it has to buy the Chashma power at — higher even than the rates it gets from the IPPs in the private sector. Compared to any hydroelectric project, the cost of nuclear electricity is forbidding: it is more than twice the cost incurred per MW by Ghazi Barotha, for instance, opened by President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.
The other arguments against the Chinese type of power stations relate to the location of the Chashma 1 and 2. The site is supposed to be located on a fault-line and is under threat from earthquakes. But there is a clash of views on this point. The government insists that the plants are seismically tested and are safe. The other objection is worrisome too. Says Zia Mian: ‘Chashma-1 and Chashma-2 plants are based on a Chinese prototype reactor that was built in 1990. Owing to serious design problems, China decided not to build any more for itself. Instead, it first sold one copy, and now a second, to Pakistan. The original Chinese reactor (at Qinshan) suffered an accident in 1998. The reactor had to be shut down for a year. China could not fix the problem, and had to contact a US company to do the repair work’.
Pakistan has been pushed into a corner and its plight is not very different from India’s. Given its geography it could have solved the problem by building dams; and it could have prospected for more gas in Balochistan. But both these possibilities are blocked by bad nationalist politics. The nuclear plants were banned under the NPT, but after India’s deal with the US, this one door is now open. Let us therefore hope that, once the ‘nuclear club’ has overcome its dismay at the US deal with India, there might be a wider range of nuclear technology to choose from for Pakistan. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\11\18\story_18-11-2006_pg3_1
India and Pakistan get their ‘nuclear deals’
One of the first things the new US Senate has done is to approve ‘overwhelmingly’ the US-India nuclear agreement allowing India access to American nuclear technology. Pakistan had objected to the deal because the US was not being even-handed between India and Pakistan. On Thursday General Ehsanul Haq, chairman joint chiefs of staff, said that ‘the United States should extend civilian nuclear cooperation beyond India and include Pakistan’, arguing that the economic growth it would spur would help defeat extremism and terrorism.
The Bush administration has expressed the opinion that its agreement with India cannot be replicated with Pakistan: it sees India as a strategic ally who deserves the deal, despite the fact that, in the eyes of many Americans, it has long undermined the regime of restraints set up by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But Pakistan, an ally in the war against terrorism, apparently does not deserve to get a similar deal. Like India, it has gone on to build additional nuclear power plants despite the NPT ban, but unlike India it cannot be trusted because it has secretly proliferated via Dr AQ Khan.
According to the latest reports, Pakistan has decided to go ahead and sign more nuclear power plants with China after Chashma-1 and Chashma-2, although General Haq admits that the ‘Chinese help to Pakistan on nuclear energy might not be able to fill all our requirements’. The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, is due in Islamabad next week. He is expected to unveil an ‘extensive nuclear cooperation plan with Pakistan’ and sign up for six additional power stations which could be double the size of the earlier Chashma types, which were 300 MW each. This may not please Washington and President Bush might even complain about this when he meets his Chinese counterpart at the APEC summit this week.
If the US has overcome its reservations in regard to India’s non-membership of the NPT club, its discrimination against Pakistan is bound to fail in achieving its objectives. Pakistan does not have any moral choices. Its plans for building more dams for cheap electricity have been scuttled by its southern province, Sindh, and its efforts to get an Iranian gas pipeline to run its power plants has been opposed by the US which used its nuclear deal with India as a persuasion to diminish the latter’s enthusiasm for the pipeline. In simple survival terms, Pakistan has to increase its national power generation capacity from the present installed capacity of 19,540 MW to 162,590 MW by the year 2030.
At present, Pakistan has two nuclear power plants with a cumulative net capacity of 425 MW, whereas a third reactor of 300 MW capacity is to come on line shortly. The country’s first nuclear power plant (KANUPP) of 125 MW capacity, was established at Karachi but has already completed its ‘design life’. The second plant, Chashma-1 — of 300 MW output — was built by China and started commercial operations in 2000. Chashma-2, to come on line in 2007, will add another 300MW to the national grid. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) wants to install another 10 to 12 nuclear power plants to achieve its target of generating total 8,800 MW.
There have been concerns about nuclear plants both in India and Pakistan. It appears that despite all the frightening things that environmental scientists say about these plants dotting the countryside, the two states have no choice but to ensure their high growth rate future by allowing their construction. Hydroelectricity, too, is rejected by conscientious environmentalists because of the damage the dams do to human habitat. But new revelations about the effect of hydrocarbons on global warming have now reduced these arguments to absurdity. The question boils down to this: should we save the earth or save our people from dying of starvation?
But the distinguished nuclear scientist, Zia Mian, has been drawing Pakistan’s attention to the negative aspects of the Chashma series of nuclear plants. He says Chashma-2, on the banks of the Indus River, about 30 miles from Mianwali, will create problems. Spending a billion dollars each for 300 MW plants is not financially feasible since it adds expensive electricity to the national grid. Already WAPDA is protesting at the high rates it has to buy the Chashma power at — higher even than the rates it gets from the IPPs in the private sector. Compared to any hydroelectric project, the cost of nuclear electricity is forbidding: it is more than twice the cost incurred per MW by Ghazi Barotha, for instance, opened by President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.
The other arguments against the Chinese type of power stations relate to the location of the Chashma 1 and 2. The site is supposed to be located on a fault-line and is under threat from earthquakes. But there is a clash of views on this point. The government insists that the plants are seismically tested and are safe. The other objection is worrisome too. Says Zia Mian: ‘Chashma-1 and Chashma-2 plants are based on a Chinese prototype reactor that was built in 1990. Owing to serious design problems, China decided not to build any more for itself. Instead, it first sold one copy, and now a second, to Pakistan. The original Chinese reactor (at Qinshan) suffered an accident in 1998. The reactor had to be shut down for a year. China could not fix the problem, and had to contact a US company to do the repair work’.
Pakistan has been pushed into a corner and its plight is not very different from India’s. Given its geography it could have solved the problem by building dams; and it could have prospected for more gas in Balochistan. But both these possibilities are blocked by bad nationalist politics. The nuclear plants were banned under the NPT, but after India’s deal with the US, this one door is now open. Let us therefore hope that, once the ‘nuclear club’ has overcome its dismay at the US deal with India, there might be a wider range of nuclear technology to choose from for Pakistan. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\11\18\story_18-11-2006_pg3_1
