Under a mushroom cloud
Tuesday February 7 2006 08:11 IST
Tuesday February 7 2006 08:11 IST
by C Raja Mohan
The cat is out of the bag. The Department
of Atomic Energy (DAE) says it does not need too much of international cooperation to expand nuclear power generation in this country. It wants the nation to wait two or more decades for a large nuclear power programme. Because the DAE wants to plough the lonely furrow of technological isolation.
The DAEs leadership is clearly affected by something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. Like the hostage who begins to love the captors after prolonged incarceration, the DAE, having been cut off from international cooperation for decades, is relishing its isolation.
As a consequence, it seems to have little interest in taking advantage of the historic opportunity at hand to rapidly expand the nations capacity to produce nuclear power. It would rather stick to what it has done all these years advance at snails pace by betting on technologies that are commercially unproven.
Expanding on this incredible nuclear strategy, the chairman of the DAE, Anil Kakodkar, has suggested in an interview to the Indian Express that the government should get off its back and stop pressing for a credible plan to separate its military and civilian nuclear facilities.
Without such a plan, the nuclear deal signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush last July would be a dead letter. And without progress on the nuclear deal, there would be little substance to the Bush visit to India which starts on March 1.
The current divisive debate within the government is polarised around two broad views. One is a grand strategic vision that underlines the importance of fully implementing the nuclear deal with the US that offers India long awaited political recognition as a nuclear weapon state and facilitates expansive international nuclear energy cooperation with India.
The other is a narrow approach focused on securing the limited objective of fuel supplies to the Tarapur reactors and an option to import a handful of reactors that would be fuelled by enriched uranium from external sources. Thank you very much, we are not interesting in anything else from the world.
While the foreign office and the political leadership favours the first course, the DAE has opted for the latter. The Bush administrations willingness to think big about the India relationship facilitated the triumph of the first approach when Manmohan Singh visited Washington in July 2005. The DAE went along grudgingly with the grander vision in Washington. Since then DAEs second thoughts have delayed and complicated implementation of the nuclear deal.
While the public debate has focused on whether the deal might cap the Indian nuclear weapons programme, and on how many and which of the Indian civilian nuclear reactors have to be put under international safeguards, the real problem has been the DAEs reluctance to rethink, and think big, about the strategy to produce nuclear power in this country.
Homi Bhabha, who founded the DAE, was quick to recognise the limitations imposed by the shortage of domestic natural uranium resources. His plan focused on building a few uranium-burning reactors in the first stage. The plutonium from the spent fuel of these reactors would run fast breeder reactors in the second stage. The third stage would focus on exploiting Indias abundant thorium reserves.
Bhabhas plan was made at a time when scientists were talking about atomic power without reference to economics and politics. It was an age of innocence when scientists claimed nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. These dreams crashed by the mid-1970s, when a range of considerations, including non-proliferation, safety and high capital costs grounded nuclear programmes around the world, except in countries like France and Japan. Indias programme ran into trouble as the world cut off nuclear cooperation with New Delhi after its nuclear test of May 1974.
But today amidst high oil prices, the economics of nuclear power have dramatically improved. As the Bush Administration pushes for the worldwide use of nuclear power, it has opened the door for India to regain access to international nuclear cooperation.
But the DAE wants none of it. Kakodkar told this paper the DAE does not want India to fall into the trap of imported uranium. If imports are a trap, India should avoid using oil. In an interdependent world, the question is not whether to import, but how to ensure reliable supplies. China is buying up oil fields and uranium mines around the world. If India can emulate China in the oil sector why cant it do the same in the nuclear field?
In talking about the three-stage programme, what the DAE is not telling us is that substantial commercial electricity generation from the breeder reactors of the second stage are at least two decades away. And thorium breeders are three decades down the road.
Any sensible strategy would suggest that India continue to focus on expanding the first stage of uranium based reactors for some time to come while continuing R&D on plutonium and thorium breeders, whose commercial viability is yet to be demonstrated. Given the work it has already done on advanced reactors, the DAE could claim a leadership role in the global effort to develop a new generation of nuclear technologies.
Long isolation might be driving the DAE to turn its back on the nuclear pact with the US. But if India wants a large nuclear energy programme, and soon, it should be encouraging the DAE to think bold. There are enough domestic resources to make Indias nuclear weapons programme completely self-sufficient. But imports of fuel, technology and reactors could help accelerate Indias civilian nuclear programme.
If the DAE could do well under isolation, it should do even better through international cooperation. In an energy-hungry and globalising India, isolation is no great virtue. That should be the message from the political leadership in Delhi to the DAE in Mumbai.
Editorial
Tuesday February 7 2006 08:13 IST
Civilian N-energy shouldnt be DAE monopoly
Civilian N-energy shouldnt be DAE monopoly
In emerging societies the glorified enterprise of national science has not been amenable to sustained political control. As the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) continues to defy larger national strategic goals in implementing the Indo-US nuclear pact, the time has come for the prime minister to impose some discipline in the short term, and a radical overhaul over the longer term. Nearly two decades ago, then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had confronted this problem when appointing a successor to Raja Ramanna. The principle he recognised political leadership must prevail over the individual fancies of any department should now guide Manmohan Singh.
For far too long have the DAEs goals, budgets and organisational efficiency gone unquestioned by the political leadership. Take, for example, the separation of civilian and military programmes, which is at the heart of the Indo-US pact. If India wants to build a large scale nuclear programme to meet the nations growing power needs, it needs to quickly implement the nuclear pact. Notwithstanding the allegations that Washington has moved the goal posts, India should have separated DAEs civilian and military activities long ago, in its own interest. No other country with a serious nuclear weapons programme has embedded it in a civilian venture as the DAE has done. It is much simpler to run the weapons programme with dedicated plutonium production reactors and military reprocessing plants. Instead of building this islanded capacity, the DAE has got into the habit of cheating on the civilian nuclear programme for the nations military needs. As a consequence, effectiveness on both fronts has suffered.
To make the DAE more accountable, the government must withdraw the monopoly rights given to it under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. In the mid-50s, nuclear research was in its nascence. Most advanced nations have since privatised large components of their civilian nuclear programmes. The DAE should be compelled to focus on cutting edge research in frontier areas. To let one department run the full spectrum of activities, from uranium mining to high energy laser development, makes no sense. To get a bigger bang for the buck for the massive resources that India spends on the DAE, the prime minister must order a comprehensive review of its functioning.
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
To subscribe, send a message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Or go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/
and click 'Join This Group!'
SPONSORED LINKS
| Maharishi university of management | Maharishi mahesh yogi | Ramana maharshi |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "FairfieldLife" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
