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INDIA-U.S.: RIGHT TO REPROCESS NUCLEAR FUEL STILL POINT OF DISCORD
adnki.com
New Delhi, 5 June (AKI/Asian Age) - The not so subtle attempts by the United States to cap India’s nuclear capabilities, by denying reprocessing rights and insisting that New Delhi yield on harnessing of the thorium - a relatively cheap source of nuclear energy - for its three-stage programme to generate electricity, remains a sticking point despite the latest round of talks between India's foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon and US undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns.
The US has sought to justify its reluctance to give India the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel on the grounds that the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement could be a "template" for dealing with other countries, but the Indian nuclear establishment led by Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar has maintained that reprocessing was non-negotiable, as it held the key to India’s energy independence.
Some retired nuclear scientists have pointed out that thorium research was being carried out in the West and there should therefore be no let-up. Even Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has cited the abundant reserves of thorium in the country to put his weight behind thorium-fuelled reactors. The construction of the indigenously-developed Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) was expected to begin this year.
Washington had made its intentions known last year. Dr Ashley Tellis, a strategic affairs expert who had spent a stint in New Delhi as a senior aide to former US ambassador Robert Blackwill and is now a senior adviser to Burns, had said that by signing up for the nuclear deal it was certain that New Delhi had determined that its plutonium-based deterrent "suffices". This newspaper had reported Tellis’ speech in New Delhi on July 18 last year, in which he said that the nuclear deal offered an "alternative" to India’s three-stage nuclear programme.
Tellis made it explicit that Washington could be expected to act on a "straightforward, cold-blooded calculation of [US] national security interests." He had then gone on to suggest that the "absence of uranium scarcity undermines the viability of the three-stage programme" and, therefore, "if uranium is available (through this deal) to India for all time to come, should India pursue the three-stage (nuclear) programme?"
"(The nuclear deal) could undermine [India’s] three-stage programme but it does not do so necessarily," Tellis said during the question-and-answer session that followed his presentation. He was responding to questions raised by Prof. Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research and others who felt that the nuclear deal placed constraints on India’s strategic programme.
Reprocessing is needed to separate Plutonium 239, a byproduct from the first stage, and use it with thorium to fuel fast breeder reactors (FBRs), which is the second stage. The FBRs breed more fuel than they consume. In the third stage, the Uranium 233 (extracted via reprocessing) will fuel FBRs to generate electricity. The three-stage programme overcomes the scarcity of uranium by relying on the abundant reserves of thorium.
According to the US-based outfit Strategic Forecasting (commonly known as Stratfor), India owns more than 30 percent of the world’s thorium reserves, compared to just 0.7 per cent of uranium reserves. It has said that using thorium made good economic sense but Uranium 233 also could be used to make nuclear weapons, and that was not something US President George W. Bush would be able to sell to the US Congress.
Reports in the Western media suggest that Thorium Power of the US and Red Star of Russia would jointly conduct research on the harnessing of thorium for use in commercial reactors. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said that his government would support the efforts to develop a new generation of thorium-fuelled reactors. A Sydney-based firm is collaborating with British investors in this regard.
(Aki/Asian Age) |
