blain....
Joey,
Where have I said that there is a link between a "warhead" and the deal?
This is what you said.
If India tests (which it will as the new technology infusion will lead to design refinement)
The issue is a simple one and an obvious one at that too. Once the floodgates of NSG open, then technology as well as equipment will start flowing in. Personnel who are working with technologies on the civilian nuclear program will go back and forth into the military program and there is no stopping of that. International observers or IAEC cannot baby sit each and every one of Indian nuclear sites. This means that potential for siphoning knowledge and material exists
The issue is not that simple other than it is misleading how your putting it up, What Technology can you explain me?
The FBR will be Indian build with IAEA safeguards, It wont be a GNEP FBR nor will be the one build by the US. So it comes down to LWR's.
We are already building Russian VVER's, arent you or the world scared 1000MW building technology flowing freely?
It is beyond by total understand how and what technology would help Indias nuke programme through this deal both technically and logically, The only and only thing this deal does to India is gets India NSG approval for more fuel = more LWR's = better market for GE et al. Infact it was always the other concern around that allowing IAEA to peek a boo in our FBR facilities would cause massive leak in IPR, the reason Brazil has crated a screen around its reprocessing facility, You need to understand Thorium research has been stopped by the world, You need to understand the dynamics and history of nuclear power to know this, India and a handful other countries has been sustaining thorium research and thus it is of our cocnern told by scientists repeatedly of IPR leak not the other way around.
Also lets not kid ourselves and others here that all India is getting is uranium. The NSG exports various materials and excess including plutonium and uranium. The bottom line is that there is not sure shot way of avoiding infusion of technology and material into the Indian weapons program. Your claim about NSA is just that....what else are they going to say, "we are anxiously waiting to siphon off technology"??
You havent explained what technology yet, I want to correct something which seems the basic formation of the paragraph, I'm asking you to explain what technology infusion? how and where?
U-233 contaminated with U-232 is not a weapons threat It is known as spiked up fuel I have said this before very shortly. So there was never any issue with any sort of Civilian deal but was issue with Reprocessing the spent fuel as it would produce highly enriched Plutonium, Even if we will recieve un-spiked up fuel you see there is no question of taking it to other reactors, you can do a bit of study on the same.
U-232 and Th-228 are highly radioactive, but neither are neutron emitters. (it would be useful if they were!) Rather, they both decay quickly along the same decay chain as thorium but far faster. One of the decay products is thallium-208 which emits a strong and penetrating gamma ray during its decay. The strong gamma emitted by Th-208 makes U-232-contaminated uranium pretty worthless for nuclear weapons, which is basically the main reason U-233 has never been used in operational nuclear weapons. The U-232 contamination disadvantages U-233 as a fuel in solid-core reactors, but has little effect on fluid-fueled reactors that don't require fuel fabrication. LWR is fluid-fuelled Reactor as the name suggests which are what we building aka VVER's and which is what China is buying from GE/Westinghouse 1000MW ones.
Now coming to why there was a cloud sorrounding Reprocessing issue,
Plutonium is classified according to the percentage of the contaminant plutonium-240 that it contains: Super grade 2-3%; Military grade less than 7%; Fuel grade 7-18%; Reactor grade 18% or more.
MANAGEMENT OF SUPER-GRADE PLUTONIUM IN SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/752902-3Tgs1l/webviewable/752902.pdf
The Department of Energy (DOE) owns some 57 MT of
spent nuclear fuel that contains approximately 260 kg of
super-grade plutonium, i.e., material comprised of at least
99% 239Pu. This fuel, from the blanket regions of two of
DOE’s demonstration and test reactors used in the liquid
metal fast reactor program, is not considered to be “self-
protecting” by any aclmowledged standard. The mass of
the spent fuel is somewhat equally divided, 22.4 MT of
Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-11) blanket fiel
and 34.2 MT of Fermi-1 blanket fuel. The plutonium
distribution is however, very asymmetric with 250 kg in
the EBR-11 fuel elements and only 8 kg in the Fermi-1
fuel.
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States
The Japanese civilian nuclear power program is producing accumulations not only of reactor-grade plutonium but also of supergrade plutonium, which would be especially suited for the miniaturization of warheads and thus for MIRV type ICBMs.
Most estimates indicate that, even utilizing reactor-grade plutonium, only four kilograms would be needed to make a relatively simple pure fission weapon with a maximum probable yield of 20 kilotons. Supergrade plutonium is especially suited for the miniaturization of warheads. Since it is a more reliable explosive than grades with less purity, involving less danger of premature detonation, the other components of the warhead could be small and light.
Hanford N Reactor
"N Reactor initially produced weapons-grade plutonium from 1964 to 1965. From 1966 to 1973 it produced nine percent fuel-grade plutonium-240 for AEC's breeder reactor program, and from 1974 until 1984 it produced 12 percent fuel-grade plutonium-240.
"Beginning in 1981 during a shortage of weapons-grade plutonium and an excess of fuel-grade plutonium, DOE began to blend fuel-grade plutonium from N reactor with super-grade plutonium (`3% PU-240) from SRS to make weapons-grade plutonium. All N-Reactor-produced fuel-grade plutonium, except for the amount supplied to and used by the Fast Flux Test Facility (an experimental reactor at Hanford) was considered excess and available for blending. The blending of fuel-grade and super-grade plutonium was performed in F Canyon at SRS. By 1990, all available fuel-grade plutonium had been blended.
The reason they (US) was hell bent on taking our whole FBR programme under safeguards and there was so much fuss regarding reprocessing, which would also cause massive IPR leaks, we were pretty much straight cut before and after the deal that FBR under civilian will be under safeguards and millitary noit, again the question arises, It was not in our pretogative but in US own prerogative to engage us, We already have what we want to.
We already can reprocess the Uranium in the required level we want to, a dedicated reprocessing plant by us is a ice in the cake which will let US by go through its law that they are not committing fuel which will buildup our plutonium, as well as what we do with mil graded FBR's is not what we will do with imported fuel.
The FBR programme was taken care of by Indias commitment to make a seperate FBR facility from where enriched plutonium wont be diverted in mililtary.
It seems like your really not versed with what is going to happen.
Indian weapons program is nowhere close to being in a state where it would not take advantage of the windfall which comes by way of this deal. So lets not be ridiculous and claim otherwise. Those who are against the deal have some very credible and factual issues with this deal.
Your free to provide the points by those who are against this deal, and show me the technological infusions et al. Actually it is the opposite thing around I'm least concerned about Indian weapons programme but more about the FBR programme and the seperation issue dealing with that. I'd like to know correctly what and how Indians weapons programme will be taking advantage of this deal.
The only thing making peoples against this deal is the problem of the peoples who cannot really take a change in US law which is going to happen through a presidents prerogative and sets of law which has been formulated to go around US law regarding the same. But then again its not in Indias prerogative, the reason I quoted kirk sorensen.
Atoms for War?
U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India's Nuclear Arsenal
By Ashley J. Tellis
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/atomsforwarfinal4.pdf
India’s capacity to produce a huge nuclear arsenal is not affected by prospective U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. A few facts underscore this conclusion clearly. India is widely acknowledged to possess reserves of 78,000 metric tons of uranium (MTU). The forthcoming Carnegie study concludes that the total inventory of natural uranium required to sustain all the reactors associated with the current power program (both those operational and those under construction) and the weapons program over the entire notional lifetime of these plants runs into some 14,640-14,790 MTU—or, in other words, requirements that are well within even the most conservative valuations of India’s reasonably assured uranium reserves. If the eight reactors that India has retained outside of safeguards were to allocate 1/4 of their cores for the production of weapons-grade materials—the most realistic possibility for the technical reasons discussed at length in the forthcoming report—the total amount of natural uranium required to run these facilities for the remaining duration of their notional lives would be somewhere between 19,965-29,124 MTU. If this total is added to the entire natural uranium fuel load required to run India’s two research reactors dedicated to the production of weapons-grade plutonium over their entire life cycle—some 938-1088 MTU—the total amount of natural uranium required by India’s dedicated weapons reactors and all its unsafeguarded PHWRs does not exceed 20,903-30,212 MTU over the remaining lifetime of these facilities.
Operating India’s eight unsafeguarded PHWRs in this way would bequeath New Delhi with some 12,135-13,370 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which is sufficient to produce between 2,023-2,228 nuclear weapons over and above those already existing in the Indian arsenal.
I'm merely quoting these sound making guys here,
Gary Milhollin now admits the potential of the PHWRs and the nature of any IAEA inspection regime in a SNW (as opposed to a NNWS)
Myth #2: India’s agreement to allow 14 of its 22 power reactors to be inspected is a “gain for nonproliferation.”
Fact: Inspecting these reactors will not limit India’s nuclear weapon production in any way. The other eight reactors, which will be barred from inspection, will make more plutonium for weapons than India will ever need. Thus, the offer to inspect the fourteen is merely symbolic. Among the eight reactors off limits to inspectors will be India’s fast breeder reactors, which will generate plutonium particularly suited to bomb-making.In addition, the inspections themselves will waste resources. The International Atomic Energy Agency has a limited number of inspectors and is already having trouble meeting its responsibilities. To send inspectors to India on a fool’s errand will mean that they won’t be going to places like Iran, where something may really be amiss. Unless the Agency’s budget is increased to meet the new burden in India, the inspections there will produce a net loss for the world’s non-proliferation effort.
Myth #3: India has made other new commitments that will help stop proliferation.
Fact: India made only one new promise under the deal, which is to adhere to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol. The protocol allows for more extensive inspections, but is irrelevant to India because the purpose is to unmask hidden nuclear weapon activities. India, however, has a known nuclear weapon program, so there is nothing to unmask. India’s other promises were either already required or reflected existing Indian policy. India’s promise to improve its export control laws was already required by UN Security Council Resolution 1540; India’s promise to “work toward” a cut off of fissile material production for weapons was made long before the deal; India’s decision to voluntarily refrain from testing also preceded the agreement; so did India’s decision not to export enrichment or reprocessing technology.
Some part of the above is factually incorrect, I'm asking you to see the bold marks only.
