Deal Dilemma
Posted : October 24, 2007 at 9:08 pm [IST]
Indo-US Nuclear Deal has become the subject of the most intriguing debate in recent past. As it appears, the majority of the columnists and scientists including the former ones from Atomic Energy Commission are in favour of the deal. Even the media representing the majority of the middle class that constitutes the major consuming population will prefer to have a better relation with US. With increasing number of the families having one or more member in US, it has become more imperative. However, it is surprising that almost all the political parties in opposition including BJP that initiated the deal during its tenure are against it. Perhaps the Congress Party and Manmohan Singh in the lead role of UPA and the deal couldn’t market it successfully.
Leftists are at the forefront in opposing the deal. If the PM or the government goes ahead with the deal, leftists will withdraw their support from the government. The government will fall and a mid-term general election will be necessary. None including the leftists wants that to happen.
The leftists argue that the deal is unnecessary for energy security. The nuclear power plants are highly capital intensive, and unsafe. Further, Indian scientists and technocrats have been setting up the plants on their own and making the bombs and they should continue doing that. Why should India go for the deal?
Unfortunately, the leftists hardly appreciate the cost of India’s isolation from high-tech communities of developed western countries and its R&D. Indian scientists can’t think of any access to the double use technology. Nuclear technology is not only for bombs and power. It also has many important applications in medicine, agriculture and food conservation, and even in water management.
None of the nuclear supplier countries will give India uranium to run even the existing plants. Some plants are already closed or closing down for the uranium requiring replacement. Can leftists get it from China?
The Indo-US Nuclear deal would remove all the restrictions. The existing plants would have been running at peak of the capacity and new ones with private investment would have got established over the years. Indian scientists would have freely participated with the scientists of advanced countries. Why can’t the leftists understand this basic logic? It blindly follows one point agenda. US is the enemy and India must not go nearer to it and more so with it.
Post Independence, India achieved fantastic records in developing nuclear capability.
India has been successful in addressing to its national security concerns as well as in innovating the peaceful applications of nuclear technology. India built its credible nuclear deterrent. Indians made a breakthrough in the advanced technology of reprocessing nuclear spent fuel from reactors as early as 1965. This technology breakthrough opened the plutonium path for the Indian nuclear programme - for both energy and weapons programmes - bypassing the enormously costly uranium enrichment method.
India has its nuclear R&D centres - the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc), Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Centre for Advanced Technology (Cat), Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Indian Institute of Plasma Research and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. Indians must be proud of these achievements.
Two special features inhibit India’s nuclear power programme.
India’s limited uranium resources are capable of supporting a nuclear power programme of no more than 10,000 MW.
The sanctions imposed since 1974 by the US and other nations has largely ruled out import of advanced light water reactors, and has necessitated the almost total dependence on the natural uranium-fuelled Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR).
India went for ‘Bhabha three-phased programme’ of Pressurised Heavy Water thermal reactors. While the first phase went with plutonium-uranium-fuelled fast breeder reactors, the next phases concentrated on advanced fast breeders with thorium as the main fuel. The Indian nuclear establishments created a close-ended fuel cycle to recover plutonium and depleted uranium from reactor’s spent fuel for recycling in fast breeders.
In the process, India first mastered PHWR technology, and now going for the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) and the 500 MW Prototype FBR (now under construction).
But it is necessary for India to have free international nuclear trade - importing uranium and advanced light water reactors, etc - just as China is doing in a big way. It can come only if the India-US nuclear deal gets through. Operationalising is essential. It would ensure India’s energy security, and Indian scientists can freely participate in peaceful exploitation of nuclear technologies. Even India could export smaller reactors.
I wish the parliamentarians would discuss and decide in favour of the deal in the forthcoming session and would n’t miss the bus as usual.
- Indra
Category: Indian politics |
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