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The India-America nuclear dialogue

R. Ramachandran

While nothing substantive is likely to result from the Indo-U.S. nuclear dialogue, the climate is opportune to resolve the contentious issue of spent Tarapur fuel.

IF ONE were to believe recent media reports in general, the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the United States, beginning July 18, is likely to result in a major Indo-U.S. announcement on the nuclear front. Nuclear matters came to focus soon after the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in April when Washington sought to broaden the strategic partnership beyond the ongoing Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) initiative to include nuclear energy as well.

A realistic analysis would, however, suggest that little can be expected out of this India-U.S. nuclear dialogue, unless the latter can prevail on the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to relax its guidelines and also change its own domestic laws. In fact, even under the NSSP, the U.S. has been inflexible in relaxing controls on the export of a class of nuclear-related dual-use goods — the so-called NP2 controlled items — which could have been easily done without violating its domestic laws or NSG Guidelines.

The NSG Guidelines are an essential component of the current non-proliferation regime that is built around the tenets of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These require imposition of full-scope safeguards (FSS) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on all current and future peaceful nuclear activities of a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) for transfer of equipment, material, and technology directly related to the nuclear fission fuel cycle. This includes the source of the fissionable material, namely uranium ore or the processed yellow cake, as well.

What India needs

What is it that the Indian nuclear programme critically needs today from the global nuclear suppliers? It is not technology or reactors or cooperation in safety-related matters. It is access to nuclear fuel, both natural uranium — which has 0.7 per cent of fissionable uranium-235 — for the indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and low enriched uranium (LEU) — with 2-3 per cent U-235 — for the Tarapur light water reactors (LWRs), TAPS-1 and TAPS-2 (see The Hindu , December 18, 2004).

With the current uranium mines at Jaduguda fast depleting, local opposition has prevented the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) from exploiting the potential mining sites in Andhra Pradesh and the Northeast for the future natural uranium needs of its PHWRs. As regards LEU for Tarapur, the one-time supply in 2001 by Russia — for which it was severely reprimanded by the NSG — is likely to run out in 2006. China, which had supplied LEU in 1995, is an NSG member since May this year. So for both kinds of fuel, the DAE will soon face a real crunch.

The Indian nuclear tests notwithstanding, India is an NNWS as per the NPT definition and access to nuclear material or technology would, therefore, attract FSS. Of the 15 currently operating nuclear plants, only TAPS-1&2 and RAPS-1&2 (in Rajasthan) are under IAEA safeguards. The two upcoming Russian LWRs at Koodankulam will also come under safeguards. But it is too simplistic to assume that, despite U.S.' global clout in nuclear matters, all other 43 countries will immediately agree if the U.S. were to suggest that the NSG Guidelines be relaxed for India.

The occurrence of the word `peaceful', however, allows NSG Guidelines to be interpreted to India's advantage, provided India offers to put all the peaceful nuclear activities under safeguards. The NSG is more likely to accord a de facto nuclear weapon state status to India and allow export of nuclear goods to India under this condition than relax its guidelines. But, despite serious problems of fuel facing the nuclear programme today, the DAE does not seem to be doing any serious thinking in this direction. It is, therefore, wishful thinking to expect anything substantive out of this Indo-U.S. nuclear dialogue at least as far as the current generation of nuclear reactors is concerned. But what about future generation technologies?

In a recent testimony to the House Committee on International Relations, Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and part of the U.S. think-tank on South Asia, has suggested the following:

The U.S. should invite India to participate in International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Generation IV and Radkowsky Thorium Reactor (RTR) research programmes.

Pending a permanent solution to the problem, the U.S. should permit India to purchase LEU for TAPS-1&2.

The second suggestion is unrealistic for the simple reason that U.S. permission alone is not sufficient; it requires NSG consensus. Having criticised Russia for its supply in 2001, a collective favourable response from the NSG would be unlikely. Any possible paradigm shift in the NSG's thinking and policies towards India (as also Israel and Pakistan), following recent Indian initiatives towards effective export controls on sensitive goods and technologies, cannot be expected in the near term.

ITER is an international programme to develop nuclear power systems of the future that exploit nuclear fusion, the process that enables stars to shine. The participating entities in this are the EU, the U.S., Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia. Since all nuclear weapons, including thermonuclear or fusion weapons, require fissionable material, and all controls relate only to fissionable material, collaboration in pure fusion research should not pose any proliferation concerns. Already the EU, Britain, and France, in particular, and Russia have extended their support in principle to Indian participation. U.S. support would, therefore, strengthen the case for Indian participation.

Generation IV nuclear technology is aimed at developing systems that will provide clean, safe, proliferation and terrorism-resistant and cost-effective means of generating nuclear power on a sustainable basis. This is also being pursued as an international venture with ten participating countries — the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, and the U.K., along with the EU. All the six concepts that have been evolved so far are fission based. Therefore, all the controls that apply to currently operational nuclear reactors will apply to these as well. Moreover, all the participant countries are NSG members. So any proposal for Indian participation will run into the familiar roadblocks.

RTR is an interesting concept developed by Alvin Radkowsky, a pioneering U.S. nuclear scientist who later moved to Israel and became its citizen, for utilising thorium (Th-232). The basic idea is a once-through fuel cycle that converts Th-232 to U-233 in a thermal LWR and allows the bred U-233 to burn in situ. The concept obviates the intermediate stage of reprocessing spent fuel and burning the separated plutonium (Pu-239), with a Th-232 blanket, in a fast breeder reactor. Because Pu-239 is never separated, the technology is said to be proliferation resistant. Crudely, one could think of it as all the three stages of the Indian programme rolled into one design.

Though the concept is old, it could not be implemented till recent times because it requires a very high uranium burn-up of over 40,000 megawatt-day/tonne. Advances in reactor technology have now made this achievable, but efficient breeding requires much higher uranium enrichment than usual. Experimental RTR is now an international programme under Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Russian Kurchatov Institute is a major participant because of easy retrofitting in VVER reactors (of the Koodankulam kind) to implement the Radkowsky concept.

RTR could be of interest to India in the long term, according to Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar. Also, since RTR has not been investigated in PHWRs, India could pioneer that initiative. However, since RTR depends crucially on enriched uranium, participation here too is likely to be denied.

But hang on! One of the participating institutes in the RTR project is Ben Gurion University, Israel. Since Israel too is an NPT non-signatory, if Israel could be allowed to participate, India should also be allowed to. How the U.S. disregarded its domestic law in this case is not quite clear. Apparently when the U.S. wanted Radkowsky to help in the programme, he insisted that his institution should also be party to that. India should, therefore, cite this curious precedent and try to seek participation in the RTR project on analogous grounds.

So among all the possible areas of nuclear cooperation, U.S. support to India's entry into ITER appears to be the most likely. RTR may be possible if the U.S. decides to treat India on a par with Israel.

In all this India-U.S. nuclear talk, curiously enough, both India and the U.S. have been reluctant to raise the contentious issue of the American spent fuel at TAPS, huge quantities of which lies accumulated in the water pool. According to the original 1963 agreement, the U.S. has the first right to take it back failing which any reprocessing can be done only after a joint determination. Under the current more conducive climate of dialogue, the U.S. should be urged to take back the fuel. There are no domestic laws or NSG Guidelines to contend with here and could mark a significant step in building mutual confidence in nuclear matters.

If U.S. rejects the proposal, India could seek to reprocess the fuel now and kill two birds with one stone. The separated reactor-grade Pu-239 could be used for introducing as MOX fuel in TAPS. More importantly, the separated uranium — which will still have an enrichment of one per cent — is eminently usable as fuel in PHWRs, subject to some physics considerations, instead of natural uranium. The most suitable candidate for this would be RAPS reactors, which are already under safeguards, and would partially offset the squeeze on natural uranium for PHWRs.

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