US-India nuke deal: 1.. 2 ..3..go *ITS DONE*

[BanglaBhoot]

Frail deal built on wordplay

Stagecraft & Statecraft |

Brahma Chellaney

The Asian Age – July 29,

While the Indian foreign minister has claimed "all concerns of India have been reflected and adequately addressed" in the just-concluded bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act (AEC), Washington has asserted that the accord safeguards US interests "from a variety of different perspectives." In public comments and background briefings, the two governments have zealously sought to put their own spin. The true picture would be known once they unwrap the still-secret text. New Delhi in particular appears anxious to soften public opinion at home before releasing the fine print.

Two important points, however, have already been admitted by both sides - that the so-called 123 agreement expressly states that nuclear cooperation would be governed by "national laws" of the two parties; and that its text is within the parameters set by the India-specific, conditions-laden Hyde Act. As US undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns has bragged, "We're very satisfied because we know the agreement is well within the bounds of the Hyde Act."
In fact, US officials have gone to the extent of saying that the concessions they made in the fine print are more in the form of semantic guile than in substance, designed to help India address critics at home and seal the accord. The Washington Times, close to the White House, has quoted administration and congressional sources as saying that "some language is deliberately vague to help both sides save face" and that the text was "deliberately written in a way that can be interpreted differently by the two sides."

In other words, both sides can claim success, while in reality the cooperation would be conditioned by the Hyde Act, euphemistically referred to in the text as the applicability of "national laws." That is exactly what this columnist had warned in a two-part article last May 14-15 - that if the 123 agreement were to be in consonance with the Hyde Act and yet not rub salt on Indian wounds, there was only one way out: semantic subterfuge in the fine print. The reluctance to release the text more than a week after the agreement was concluded is a sign that there have been only semantic compromises on key issues. And US officials are saying so.

For India, this represents a major climbdown: having told Parliament that the Hyde Act contained provisions that were either "prescriptive" in ways incompatible with the July 18, 2005 joint statement or "extraneous" to engagement "between friends," New Delhi has come round to accepting cooperation with the US on the basis of the onerous and grating conditions in the US legislation. Indeed, in defining India's bottom line in Parliament last August 17, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had admitted, "We have concerns over both the House and Senate versions of the Bill."

However, once the US legislative process was completed without meeting most of the PM's benchmarks, New Delhi readily entered the next stage - negotiations over a 123 agreement - by pretending that Dr Singh's assurances to Parliament could be addressed in that process. That was just a charade to buy political space, given that India's deal-related commitments by then had already been expanded and turned into immutable legal obligations through US domestic law.

New Delhi was aware that even if the 123 agreement did not incorporate the controversial conditions of the Hyde Act, it would hardly free India from their obligations. America has always maintained that because such a bilateral agreement is a requirement not under international law but under US law, it cannot supersede American law. Washington has only reinforced its legal position by incorporating in the 123-agreement text the primacy of "national laws."

New Delhi indeed knows from its bitter Tarapur experience that a 123 agreement has little sanctity in international law. The earlier Indo-US 123 accord, signed in 1963, was abandoned by Washington in 1978 - four years after the first Indian nuclear test - simply by enacting a new domestic law that retroactively overrode the bilateral pact. That broke with impunity a guarantee to supply "timely" fuel "as needed" for the US-built Tarapur plant.

Now, New Delhi claims it has secured assured fuel supply in the new 123 agreement, and that in the event of any disruption, the US would find an alternative source. But US officials are already disputing that. The Washington Times has quoted officials as saying "the language does not commit them to do anything specific. Rather, if there is an interruption because of technical or logistical difficulties, they will try to do what is appropriate." That is in line with the Hyde Act which says assured fuel supply covers only disruption due to "market failures or similar reasons," not sanctions arising from India's non-compliance with US-imposed conditions.
More broadly, it should not be forgotten that only after India has complied with all the Hyde Act's preconditions that the US Congress would take up the final deal for approval.

And although the Hyde Act provides for an up-or-down vote on a joint resolution - a practice that does not permit any amendment - the legislation's own explanatory statement reserves the right for Congress to "pass a joint resolution of approval with conditions" by giving up "the expedited procedures offered by Sections 123 and 130 of the AEA." That is exactly what happened with the US nuclear deal with China, when Congress attached three conditions to its 1985 joint resolution of approval, resulting in a nearly 13-year hold.

But before the final Indo-US deal can go before Congress, it has to secure approval from the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board and the 45-state Nuclear Suppliers' Group. Even in the best-case scenario, with all the remaining hurdles being crossed, the US will perpetually hang the threat of re-imposition of civil nuclear sanctions to enforce India's compliance with the Hyde Act's post-implementation conditions.

New Delhi is itching to enter into a new 123 agreement without resolving the outstanding issues from the earlier 123 accord. The Tarapur spent fuel has been accumulating for 36 years. Washington has neither compensated New Delhi for the large costs it continues to incur to store the highly radioactive spent fuel nor allowed India to reprocess it by accepting that IAEA safeguards can be effectively applied at the PREFRE facility specially built for this purpose.

While the PM had pledged to secure the removal of "restrictions on all aspects of cooperation," including "reprocessing spent fuel," the US, under the new 123 accord, has conceded only a theoretical right to India to reprocess, with the practical right to be worked out in negotiations with the US in the future. India would build a new reprocessing facility with safeguards involving US participation. This not only prolongs the Tarapur imbroglio but also raises a larger question: why acquiesce to the US having a political say on reprocessing when the issue of safeguards involves only the IAEA?

Take another issue - a perpetual nuclear test ban on India. Through the means of a domestic law, America today seeks to implicitly bind India to an international pact whose ratification the US Senate rejected in 1999 - the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Such a test ban, as both sides have admitted, cannot be, and has not been, diluted by the 123 agreement. Even the US "right to return" remains untouched. However, as the Washington Times puts it, "to help New Delhi save face domestically, the administration agreed to consult with the Indian government before taking any action in response to a test, officials said. The Indians presented that language as a major US concession, but US officials said consultations do not mean much in practice."

New Delhi should be fully cognisant of what it is getting into. It would be effectively embracing CTBT-plus obligations that no nation has done. Although the PM had pledged that India is "not prepared to go beyond a unilateral voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing," the Hyde Act seeks to enforce a tight, irrevocable test prohibition against India by actually going beyond the existing provisions of US law, which empower the President to continue exports on strategic grounds despite a test. By decreeing that the waiver for India will automatically terminate with any Indian test, the Hyde Act itself admits that it goes "beyond Section 129" of AEC.

Besides seeking "full and immediate use of US rights to demand the return of all nuclear-related items … if India were to test," the Act goes beyond even the CTBT by specifying in technical terms what is prohibited for India. In the CTBT negotiations, the US had successfully opposed an Article I definition of a "nuclear explosion" to leave open loopholes for "permissible activities" of the type it carries out at its Nevada test site. While refusing to accede to the CTBT itself, the US would be enforcing CTBT-plus obligations on India. Once India has imported power reactors worth billions of dollars, the Hyde Act will effectively bear it down.

Against this background, the debate on the 123 agreement needs to be conducted in a sober, realistic way, not through spin and hoopla. By papering over fundamental differences, the deal could engender serious Indo-US discord in the years ahead. That danger is already manifest from the conflicting analysis of the still-secret 123 agreement by official briefers. One US congressional official is quoted as saying, "The way the Indians are reading it is not correct from the administration's point of view."

Too often in its independent history, India has rushed to believe what it wanted to believe, only to cry betrayal later.

http://www.asianage.com/presentation/columnisthome/brahma-chellaney.aspx

------------------------------------------------------------

US Congress skeptical of India nuclear accord

AFP, Washington

The New Nation - July 29, 2007

Key US legislators looked skeptically at a landmark nuclear pact between the United States and India amid speculation that the terms could exceed what lawmakers would accept

President George W. Bush said he looked forward to working with the Democratic-controlled Congress to implement the civilian nuclear deal, saying it marked "another step" in deepening ties with India, which he called "a vital world leader." But Edward Markey, co-chairman of the House of Representatives Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation, vowed that Congress would cast a careful eye on the fine print

"I can only surmise that it includes provisions they fear will raise the hackles of Congress," said Markey. "Of course the administration will argue that they aren't breaking the law, but I think that folks up on the (Capitol) Hill have become increasingly skeptical of the administration's legal arguments," he said.

Markey was among 23 House lawmakers who sent a leter to Bush this week reminding him that "any inconsistencies" between the agreement and US laws "will call congressional approval deeply into doubt"

http://nation.ittefaq.com/new/get.php?d=07/07/29/w/n_vruu

 

[Contrarian]

N-deal to trigger sweeping enrichment of the campus


New Delhi, July 28:This is one fallout of the Indo-US nuclear deal that has not hit the headlines so far. Foreseeing a spurt in demand for nuclear scientists in India, the government is working on a wide-ranging policy to introduce nuclear sciences courses in universities.

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As of now, only IIT-Kanpur has a programme in Nuclear Engineering and Technology which, on an average, awards barely 10 M.Tech degrees and just one PhD each year. But those working in the area of nuclear sciences in various organizations of the Department of Atomic Energy are mostly science and engineering graduates who have been trained for specific jobs.

While such an arrangement has worked with reasonable satisfaction till now, top experts in the field say there is a need being felt at the highest levels that the country needs better qualified nuclear scientists.

“I can tell you that probably in the next six months there is going to be a fairly important policy announcement in this regard,” Prof Bikash Sinha, director, Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, told The Sunday Express.

“We can produce quality nuclear scientists not just for our own country but for the rest of the world too. For that our output has to increase,” says Prof C N R Rao, chairman of Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), and president of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore.

Dr R R Puri, Dean, Homi Bhabha National Institute, says once the demand for people qualified in nuclear sciences grows, the universities will be forced to set up courses in those subjects. Anyway, Sinha, also a member of SAC-PM, says the scientific community and the government are “alive to the problem.”

“The issue has been discussed at the SAC-PM also. It has been realized that traditional training has to go through a metamorphosis when we are expecting an unprecedented increase in demand for people in nuclear research and applied areas like power generation,” he says.

As the country starts to depend more on nuclear power to meet its increasing energy requirements, Sinha says, “We are looking at doubling, tripling, even quadrupling our manpower in these areas...We have to start modern courses on nuclear sciences at the universities and institutes like the IITs. There is already a tremendous amount of effort going on to start such courses.”

Some progress in this direction was made with the establishment of the Homi Bhabha National Institute in 2005, a deemed university which groups 10 high-end research institutes under a single research-driven framework.

The institute started a few courses in September 2006 and is looking forward to setting up a campus in Mumbai soon, says Puri, its dean.

“For nuclear scientists, the main place of employment is the Department of Atomic Energy. Till now the demand was more or less being met. But as the demand grows, the universities will start such courses whether someone tells them to or not,” he says.

According to Puri, some universities in the United States, like the Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, even have nuclear reactors inside their campuses.

But even in that country, there is a shortfall of nuclear engineers, says C N R Rao. “The number of people having nuclear know-how has decreased all over the world. Its not just India, but the entire world is going to be short of good nuclear scientists as nuclear reactors once again gain legitimacy. Therein lies a good opportunity for the Indian scientists.”

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/207465.html

 

[Neo]

Sunday, July 29, 2007

US Congress skeptical of India nuclear accord​

WASHINGTON: Key US legislators looked skeptically at a landmark nuclear pact between the United States and India amid speculation that the terms could exceed what lawmakers would accept.

President George W Bush said he looked forward to working with the Democratic-controlled Congress to implement the civilian nuclear deal, saying it marked “another step” in deepening ties with India, which he called “a vital world leader.”

But Edward Markey, co-chairman of the House of Representatives Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation, vowed that Congress would cast a careful eye on the fine print. “I can only surmise that it includes provisions they fear will raise the hackles of Congress,” said Markey.

“Of course the administration will argue that they aren’t breaking the law, but I think that folks up on the (Capitol) Hill have become increasingly skeptical of the administration’s legal arguments,” he said.

Markey was among 23 House lawmakers who sent a letter to Bush this week reminding him that “any inconsistencies” between the agreement and US laws “will call congressional approval deeply into doubt.”

Congress in December approved landmark legislation allowing US exports of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India for the first time in 30 years, a move intended to reverse sanctions on the Asian giant for its nuclear tests.

But the new operating agreement goes one step further, allowing India to reprocess spent fuel under safeguards by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the US pointman in the talks to frame the pact.

That right to reprocess spent US-sourced nuclear fuel has been given only to Japan and the European Union so far, and US lawmakers had expressed skepticism over safeguards needed to deter India from possibly diverting any nuclear material to its military weapons program. Burns said that India had to first establish a new national nuclear reprocessing facility under strict safeguards and then the two countries would agree on a set of arrangements and procedures for such activity.

India had given firm assurances that all nuclear material reprocessed would be used “only for peaceful purposes,” Burns said. afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\29\story_29-7-2007_pg4_17

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Let facts speak for themselves

Stagecraft & Statecraft |

Brahma Chellaney

The Asian Age –August 1, 2007

US non-proliferation policy, with its export controls and sanctions approach, was fashioned largely in response to India’s 1974 nuclear test. More than 33 years later, that policy has come full circle, with the United States reaching agreement with India to resume civil nuclear cooperation. Yet, US and Indian official statements on the still-undisclosed text of the so-called 123 agreement have brought out in sharp relief the onerous conditions New Delhi has been made to accept.

The deal’s raison d’être is spot on: a new strategic partnership. Yet, on issues from reprocessing to assured fuel supply, the US has sought to accommodate India’s concerns more through symbolism than policy modification. America, for instance, has kept a veto on Indian reprocessing until such time it can negotiate follow-up "arrangements and procedures" — that too after India has completed a new "state-of-the-art" facility.

On other key issues, including a unilateral test ban on India, the US "right to return" and centrality of the Hyde Act, there hasn’t been a change even in nuance. Even before the fine print has been released, the writing on the wall has become clear.

First is the primacy of the Hyde Act, which defines India-specific terms and conditions over 41 pages.

According to undersecretary Nicholas Burns, "we kept reminding the Indian side, and they were good enough to negotiate on this basis that anything we did had to fall within, and respect, the legal guidelines that Congress had set forth." For his part, national security adviser M.K. Narayanan has conceded: "The PM had always taken the view that if you have a legal problem, we will not try to ask you to break the law, but we should find the language that would meet the obligations of both sides." Semantic lollypops indeed are what India has been left holding.

If anything, the 123 agreement expressly reinforces the Hyde Act by citing the applicability of national laws to govern cooperation.

Contrast that with what Parliament was told last December after the Hyde Act’s enactment: the government has "taken note of certain extraneous and prescriptive provisions in the legislation," and that "there are areas which continue to be a cause for concern, and we will need to discuss them with the US administration before the bilateral cooperation agreement can be finalised."

Second is a permanent test ban on India, with the cooperation arrangements stacked against Indian testing through overt punitive elements.

According to Burns, the proposed cooperation is premised on the US "hope and trust that it won’t be necessary for India to test in the future." India is being dragged through the backdoor into the CTBT, which the US has failed to ratify.

Not only does the Hyde Act go beyond other US laws to remove executive flexibility and require automatic termination of waiver in case of an Indian test, but also New Delhi has itself acquiesced to cooperation on the basis of the test prohibition in the Act’s Section 106. India thus will have no case in international law if the US terminated all cooperation in response to an Indian test. Yet, the Prime Minister is quoted as telling the CWC that, "India retains the right to test, while the US retains the right to react."

Third is the US right to seek the return of all nuclear items and materials if India were to breach any of the prescribed conditions, including the test prohibition and a bar on any entity or individual "under India’s jurisdiction" making an export in violation of NSG or MTCR guidelines.
As Burns has put it, "That right-of-return has been, of course, preserved as it must be under our law, and there has been no change in how we understand the rights of the American President and the American government." By acquiescing to the US "right to return," India is accepting that the supplier is at liberty to lawfully terminate cooperation retroactively.
Fourth is New Delhi’s grudging acceptance that despite America’s July 18, 2005 promise of "full civil nuclear cooperation and trade," India will face a continued embargo on importing equipment and components related to enrichment, reprocessing and heavy-water production, even when such activities are under IAEA inspections and for peaceful purposes.

Burns has cited "major restrictions in American law" to justify such continued sanctions. The Indian fact-sheet released last weekend says the "purpose" of the 123 agreement is to enable "full" cooperation, without admitting that the US reluctance to adjust its laws in that respect defeats the cited purpose.

Not only does the Hyde Act debar transfer to India of any "sensitive" civil nuclear equipment or technology, but also its Section 105(a)(5) directs Washington to "work with members of the NSG, individually and collectively, to further restrict the transfers" of reprocessing, enrichment and heavy-water technologies to India. Yet the Act demands that the target country, India, actively work with the US to prevent the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to third countries.

Fifth is that the American assurance of uninterrupted fuel supply for safeguarded reactors covers only disruption due to market failure or technical or logistical difficulties, but not sanctions arising from India’s non-compliance with the US-prescribed non-proliferation conditions.

So, despite fuel assurances having been written into the 123-agreement text, Burns has made it clear that "none of that contradicts or conflicts with the legal right of any American President" to terminate supply or invoke the right to demand the return of stockpiled fuel if India, in "the worst-case hypothetical event in the future," breached the stipulated non-proliferation conditions.

It would actually defeat the very objective of the Hyde Act — to hold India on a non-proliferation leash — if New Delhi were guaranteed permanent fuel supply in all circumstances. The Act indeed decrees that India be prevented from building any fuel stockpile of a size that would permit its "riding out any sanctions that might be imposed" by the US in the future.

The only fuel stocks it permits India to build are merely to "minimise down time when reactor cores are removed."

Given that the Hyde Act serves as the legal framework for cooperation, the US fuel assurances in the 123 agreement are subordinate to the legislative conditions. These assurances, including a notional right for India to take corrective measures, are really intended to help New Delhi save face at home.

With the latest 123 agreement, America now has 24 such bilateral agreements, none of which guarantees what the Prime Minister had sought — lifetime fuel supply. The one accord that did — the 1963 agreement with New Delhi, which guaranteed fuel "as needed" by India — the US broke with impunity, despite the absence of an overarching law like the Hyde Act. Now, India will accept perpetual IAEA inspections on its entire civil nuclear programme without an unequivocal guarantee of perpetual fuel supply.

Sixth is that India has agreed, according to Burns, that "all future breeder reactors will come under safeguards."

That will leave out only the tiny experimental breeder and the under-construction prototype breeder (which together, according to US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, have "very limited capability"). And although both sides admit the Indian strategic programme would not be directly affected, the deal’s embedded qualitative and quantitative checks would "limit the size and sophistication of India’s nuclear-weapons programme," in the earlier words of Joseph R. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Seventh is that despite the hoopla about a supposed major American concession, the US will keep a prior-consent veto on Indian reprocessing until New Delhi in the years ahead has negotiated with it "arrangements and procedures" that pass muster with Congress.
To help the Indian government save face domestically, Washington has indeed conceded a theoretical right to New Delhi to reprocess, but preserved its veto until such time that India, on its own cost, has built, in Burns’ words, a "new state-of-the-art" reprocessing facility under IAEA safeguards, and only "then the subsequent arrangements and procedures will be agreed to by the US and India."

So the practical right to reprocess would not form part of the agreement under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, but is to be worked out in the future under Section 131, titled "Subsequent Arrangements." Securing the practical right would thus entail a second round of congressional scrutiny and approval.

The accompanying table on reprocessing shows how history is repeating itself. By agreeing to reprocessing-related terms that are tougher than those in the earlier 123 agreement signed in 1963, India risks sliding deeper into the same trap from which it wishes to extricate itself.
Just as it built a special facility at Tarapur to reprocess spent fuel under the safeguards-related terms of the 1963 accord, it has pledged to construct a new reprocessing facility under the latest agreement. But even though the PREFRE facility at Tarapur passed muster with the IAEA, and India reprocessed spent fuel from RAPS I & II there under IAEA inspections, the US refused until the very end of that 123 agreement to jointly determine with New Delhi the facility’s safeguards-related adequacy.

The US did not have any prior-consent veto in the 1963 agreement, yet it breached its terms by continuously refusing to either exercise its first option to buy Tarapur spent fuel in excess of India’s needs or to carry out a safeguards-related "joint determination" of the PREFRE facility. What gives New Delhi confidence that when the US shunned a simple "joint determination" of an IAEA-certified reprocessing facility, it would be willing to work out, to India’s satisfaction, complex "arrangements and procedures" under Section 131 in the years ahead?

India’s last reprocessing facility at Kalpakkam took five years to complete. The new "start-of-the-art" facility could take longer, given that the US would have a say in its design. Only thereafter, as Burns has repeatedly clarified, would the US negotiate with India reprocessing-related "arrangements and procedures" needing congressional approval.
Contrast that statement with the claim in the Indian fact-sheet that to give "effect" to the Indian right to reprocess, "India will establish a national reprocessing facility to reprocess IAEA safeguarded nuclear material, and the parties will agree on arrangements and procedures within one year." No sooner had this claim been made than the NSA conceded in a newspaper interview that "I don’t think the whole thing will be decided in one year." He raised the spectre of "spoilers" nitpicking on the facility design.

Even before the reprocessing issue is operationally resolved, Burns foresees that "American companies will be able to go in (for reactor contracts), and we’re very anxious to have that happen" as soon as Congress is able to pass the 123 agreement.

In addition, there are other conditions, spelled out in the Hyde Act.

Among them are US end-use monitoring (which the government says is unavoidable, given the bilateral end-use verification agreement governing high-tech exports), New Delhi’s "unilateral adherence" to US-led regimes unrelated to the nuclear field, and an annual presidential certification of India’s "full compliance" with the congressionally imposed conditions.
Eager to underpin the assorted congressional conditions, America negotiated the 123-agreement text by relying on a battery of lawyers, who have given India only a fig leaf to comply with the new US-set non-proliferation obligations. Burns referred to "legions of lawyers on both sides of the table." But there was no lawyer on the Indian side, as the NSA has admitted. According to the NSA, "our country is not litigious like that" and "I must say God played his role in this" agreement.

Having fashioned diplomacy on hope, the government wants the country to repose its faith in God, too. Personalised policymaking, wishful thinking and a disinclination to learn from the past, sadly, remain India’s curse

http://www.asianage.com/presentation/columnisthome/brahma-chellaney.aspx

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Nuke accord recognises 'real difference' between India, Pakistan: US

Indo-asian news service, Washington

The Daily Star - August 1, 2007

The United States says it considers relations with both India and Pakistan as important but the accord to implement India-US civil nuclear deal is a clear recognition of a "real difference" between them.

Washington "also wants to see a dialogue between India and Pakistan, dialogue that has expanded and has grown under the leadership of President Pervez Musharraf and others," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said on Monday.

But "...this is not something that should be viewed as an action that we take with India that somehow requires a similar action in the case of Pakistan," he said in response to a question suggesting that Pakistan had test-fired another missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons to "challenge" the deal.

"And I think we've also been very clear that because of the issues with proliferation from Pakistan, that it's a very different situation between those two countries. And the fact that we have this agreement with India now is a clear recognition that there is a real difference," Casey added.

Repeating US Under Secretary of State Nick Burns' remarks on Friday on the formalisation of the 123 agreement, "the critical piece required under our law" to implement the nuclear deal, he said, "we believe that we have a relationship with India that's important and we have a relationship with Pakistan that's important."

"In the case of India, we've moved forward with this arrangement because, as the President said and as you heard from Nick on Friday, India has been a responsible actor. It's been outside the non-proliferation regimes, but it's actually behaved responsibly. It hasn't proliferated weapons technology. It hasn't done anything to undermine international assurances," Casey said.

http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/08/01/d708011305123.htm

 

[intruder]

India has been a responsible actor. It's been outside the non-proliferation regimes, but it's actually behaved responsibly. It hasn't proliferated weapons technology. It hasn't done anything to undermine international assurances," Casey said.


Nice article Munshi ... I am missing your valuable comments ....

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Divide and rule .... ring a bell .....

 

[intruder]

Divide and rule .... ring a bell .....

Poor soul .....

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Ok ... what about a sucker being born every minute .... I think that fits India's situation now in its relations with the US.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Ok ... what about a sucker being born every minute .... I think that fits India's situation now in its relations with the US.

 

[joey]

Okay can Mods do some cleanup up there?

Cross posting from other thread my reply to blain which has some straight cut details regarding some thing,

**************************************************************

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.

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[joey]

Cross posting,

The deal text is out and it truly seems like we got a sober deal, I'll have to study and read what other persons are studying on this a bit though, seems like the mallu menons with the 600 pound gorrila Dr Kakodkar as described by US NP guys, has pulled off a magnificient deal

http://meaindia.nic.in/pressrelease/2007/08/03pr01.pdf

Link to the Full text of the deal.