New Delhi
4 June 2007
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 thorium for its three-stage programme to generate electricity, remains a
sticking point despite the latest round of talks between Foreign Secretary Shivshankar
Menon and US Under Secretary 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 ground that the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement could
be a "template" for dealing with other countries but the nuclear establishment led by
Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Dr 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 in the West and there should therefore be no let-up. Even President APJ 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.
Incidentally, Washington had made known its intentions last year. Dr Ashley Tellis, a
senior adviser to Nicholas Burns, has said that by signing up for the nuclear deal, it is
certain that New Delhi has determined that its plutonium-based deterrent "suffices". This
newspaper reported Dr Tellis's address 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.
Dr Tellis made it explicitly clear that Washington could be expected to perform "straight
forward, cold-blooded calculation of [US] national security interests". He then went on
suggest that the "absence of uranium scarcity undermines the viability of 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," Dr 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 Strategic Forecasting (commonly known as Stratfor), India
owns more than 30 per cent 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 joint research for harnessing thorium's 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.
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