http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=07&filename=8920&filetype=html EPW Commentary July 30, 2005 A Deplorable Nuclear Bargain India has betrayed its disarmament commitment, joined the 'Atomic Apartheid' regime, and agreed to pursue an uneconomical and unsafe energy technology by signing the 'grand' nuclear bargain with Washington. Praful Bidwai Prime minister Manmohan Singh has surprised the world by entering into a nuclear cooperation agreement with president George W Bush, which legitimises the present discriminatory global nuclear order in return for India's acceptance by the US as a 'responsible' de facto nuclear weapons-state (NWS) and Washington's promise of resumption of civilian nuclear commerce. The central, overwhelmingly important, fact about the July 18 agreement is that it marks India's descent into cynical, Machiavellian nuclear realpolitik as a newly recognised member of the cabal that forms the world's exclusive 'Nuclear Club'. This is a comprehensive and disgraceful betrayal of the United Progressive Alliance's promise to "take a leadership role in promoting universal nuclear disarmament and…a nuclear weapons-free world". This was meant to correct a 'deviation' effected by the Vajpayee government in abandoning India's 'traditional' emphasis on global nuclear weapons abolition, and a prelude to updating Rajiv Gandhi's thoughtful plan for nuclear disarmament of 1988. India has now upheld and sanctified the global nuclear regime, which it for decades condemned as 'Atomic Apartheid'–by joining its ruling hegemons. This will further erode India's credibility and global stature and expose her colossal hypocrisy in masking a crude, dirty truth behind high moral posturing. Many will say India had nothing against 'nuclear apartheid'; for 15 years or longer, it only wanted to be inside the Club. After legitimising the world's skewed nuclear regime in return for being decorated as a "responsible" state "with advanced nuclear technology" (a euphemism for NWSs), New Delhi cannot credibly demand that the order be radically altered so the five 'recognised' NWSs fulfil their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Signing an agreement that leaves the global nuclear order basically unreformed, while making a one-time exception for India, amounts to hammering the last nail in the coffin of India's half-century-long commitment to ridding the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons. Egregious Unilateralism The Washington bargain reflects president Bush's egregious unilateralism in restructuring the global nuclear order outside of a multilateral forum and without consulting other states, including the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG). India, which professes a strong commitment to multilateralism and the UN, has legitimised Bush's unilateralism. The Washington deal has several unctuous features. For one, it wholly lacks transparency. Neither its rationale, nor its likely content, was discussed in advance in the cabinet, its committee on security, the national security council, or the national security advisory board. Even the department of atomic energy (DAE), its principal executing agency, was kept in the dark about it until the last stage. The only advance briefing, to select members of the media, reportedly came from the US embassy in India. This sets an extremely undesirable precedent for policy-making on issues of national importance. Asymmetrical Deal For another, the agreement is not symmetrical. It does not impose, as has been claimed, the same obligations on India or confer 'the same benefits' on it as the five NWSs. India must take several steps including "identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities"; declaring "civilian facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)", "voluntarily" placing them under its inspections; continuing the nuclear-testing moratorium; and "working with the US" for a "Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty". India must also "secure nuclear materials …through comprehensive export control" and through "adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and NSG Guidelines". But India is not even a member of the NSG or MTCR, a plurilateral agreement among a minority of the world's nations. India's commitment to continue its testing moratorium is not reciprocated by the US. This is not an academic issue: Washington reportedly has every intention to resume testing to develop new uses for nuclear weapons (such as 'bunker-buster' bombs) and invent new weapons, including 'Star Wars'-style ballistic missile defence systems. Even more important, India must separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities. But this obligation does not apply in practice to the five NWSs. For instance, The Telegraph (July 25) reported: "France has produced substantial quantities of military plutonium from civilian power reactors at Chinon, St Laurent, Marcoule (now under closure) and Bugey. The United Kingdom built the Calder Hall and Chapelcross nuclear power stations to produce plutonium and tritium for weapons as well as electricity. There is no separation of civilian and military programmes in Russia and China." The US civilian nuclear facilities are operated by private or municipal utilities. But it has placed only a handful of its 100-odd reactors under IAEA safeguards. The IAEA rarely inspects these, citing shortage of funds/manpower. The safeguards regime has always been unequal and based on the assumption that the five NWSs have the 'right' to divert materials to military uses – because they are, so to speak, 'legitimate' possessors of nuclear weapons. And for a third, the 'benefits' offered to India – through a promise to "adjust US laws and policies" and "work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes" to enable full civil nuclear transactions – are intangible or dubious. It is not certain that Bush can sell this agreement either to the US Congress or to the NSG. Visible Opposition There is visible opposition to it from influential members of the US 'strategic community', such as former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, former US assistant secretary for non-proliferation Robert Einhorn, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice-president George Perkovich and Stimson Centre president emeritus Michael Krepon. Days after the Washington deal was signed, a committee of the House of Representatives resolved to block nuclear technology transfer to India – a calculated signal opposing it. In the NSG too, the agreement is likely to be opposed by states like Brazil, South Africa and Argentina (which renounced their nuclear capability in the 1980s), and possibly by China, Germany and Japan. China, which piloted Resolution 1172 through the UN Security Council in 1998 reprimanding India and Pakistan for their tests, has so far made a guarded response to the deal: it "has noted the report… We hope the US-India cooperation …will be conducive to safeguarding peace and stability in the Asian region". There is thus no assurance that Bush's promise to 'adjust' domestic and international arrangements to facilitate nuclear commerce with India will materialise. That said, the criticism of the deal by the Bharatiya Janata Party and some super-hawkish Indian right-wingers is fundamentally misplaced. The deal won't, contrary to their claim, 'cap' India's fissile production or the size of its 'minimum nuclear deterrent'. Nor will it permit the IAEA's 'interference'. IAEA inspectors cannot go into unsafeguarded facilities. There is no obligation on India to place all its thermal-nuclear reactors or fast-breeders under safeguards. (The latter supposedly represent its 'second' as-yet –unproved stage of nuclear power development, eventually leading to the still – very-experimental thorium cycle – itself premised upon the wish that India with its plentiful thorium reserves could somehow obviate the need for uranium while greatly expanding nuclear power generation.) The agreement's most questionable civilian component is its unquestioning faith in the relevance and indispensability of nuclear power for India. No credible study establishes this. There is only a cursory observation in the Mid-Term Review of the Tenth Plan, unsupported by evidence, that nuclear power can be "an important tool for decarbonising the Indian energy sector". Yet, nuclear power is declared to be the key to India's "energy security" and to "cleaner and more efficient" energy generation. India's experience with nuclear power has been, to put it mildly, unhappy. India sinks thousands of crores every year into nuclear power development. Yet, nuclear power contributes less than 3 per cent to electricity generation. The DAE is one of the worst performing departments of the government, with a history of missed targets, grotesque cost overruns, gross mismanagement, lack of coordination between different programmes (e g, heavy water and uranium production), and an appalling safety and occupational health record. India's nuclear reactors are among the most contaminated atomic plants in the world. They have exposed hundreds of workers to radiation in excess of DAE-stipulated maximum permissible doses. Unsafe practices in plant operation and maintenance and storage and transportation of hazardous materials, are rampant in the DAE. Popular opposition to nuclear power has steadily grown, forcing the DAE to locate new plants at old sites. Protests against uranium mining projects in Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh are the main reason why the DAE cannot procure enough uranium to charge its reactors under construction. The DAE has avoided scrutiny of its activities by shielding itself behind the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 which empowers it to suppress any information. This has promoted a culture of irresponsibility, and lack of transparency and accountability. Globally too, nuclear power has been a failure. As US energy consultant Amory Lovins says, it has "suffered the greatest collapse of any enterprise in the [world's] industrial history. Overwhelmed by huge construction and repair costs, it achieved less than 1/10th the capacity and 1/100th the new orders officially forecast a quarter-century ago… Today, if a nuclear power plant cost nothing to build, it would be cheaper to write it off… than to operate". The US pioneered nuclear power generation. But it has ordered no new nuclear reactors since 1973! US taxpayers have subsidised nuclear power by an estimated one trillion dollars. But nuclear power has failed the market test. In any case, the US is an inappropriate nuclear source for India. India's main reactor technology (CANDU) uses natural uranium. The US only makes enriched-uranium reactors. Importing these will perpetuate external dependence, replicating the sordid Tarapur experience. About two-thirds of the world's 440 power reactors in current operation are in North America and western Europe. Many of these countries went in for nuclear power in the 1960s. They are phasing it out, including Germany, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. Even France, which gets 78 per cent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, has closed 11 reactors, including the much tom-tommed 1,200 MW Superphenix, the world's largest fast-breeder. On current reckoning, a majority of North American and western European nuclear plants are likely to be shut down by 2030. Only a handful of countries have plans for expanding nuclear power generation –including China, Taiwan, South Korea, and more uncertainly, India. It is unclear if rising demand from them can compensate for the receding prospects for nuclear power in the states that account for a majority of today's reactors. The contribution of nuclear power to global electricity generation has marginally shrunk from 17 to 16 per cent. In the 1990s, global nuclear capacity annually grew by 1 per cent, while renewables like solar and wind rose by 17 and 24 per cent respectively. Nuclear power research alone calculates the ultra-conservative Economist, has claimed a huge $159 billion in OECD between 1974 and 1998. The US government funded the entire development costs of America's reactors. Despite such huge subsidies, nuclear power remains about twice as expensive as electricity from gas/coal. Its economics is unlikely to improve unless safety regulations are 'relaxed'– to disastrous effect. In India, wind generation (3,600 MW) has already overtaken nuclear power capacity (3,300 MW). Wind's potential is estimated at 70,000 MW-plus – 10 times higher than nuclear electricity with indigenous uranium reserves. Health Problems Nuclear power generically poses serious safety and occupational health problems owing to that invisible, intangible poison – radiation. All reactor types are liable to undergo serious accidents leading to a core meltdown like Chernobyl, with massive radiation releases. All nuclear plants leave a trail of high-level wastes, which remain hazardous 20fold longer than the oldest human structure. There exists no solution to the problem of storing, leave alone disposing of, wastes. Nuclear power has been recently touted as a remedy for global warming. This claim is spurious. Electricity generation accounts for only 9 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nuclear power globally contributes only 16 per cent to electricity generation, and a mere 3 per cent in India. So the scope for reducing GHGs by going nuclear is insignificant. Nuclear power is not orders-of- magnitude superior even to gas or coal in GHG emissions. It is certainly inferior to renewables like wind, cogeneration and solar. Each step in the 'nuclear fuel cycle', from uranium mining to reprocessing, emits GHGs. There is no evidence that nuclear power contributes to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. Japan's nuclear capacity rose between 1965 and 1995 by 40,000 MW. But carbondioxide emissions tripled. In France, the world's most nuclear power-addicted country, GHG emissions have been rising. The real reason for the present hype about nuclear power in India may have to do with India's aversion to cutting GHG emissions – which has become imperative. By citing nuclear power expansion as a substitute for GHG reduction and thus pandering to its elite's appetite for private transport and profligate energy consumption, India is being disingenuous. But disingenuousness is the stuff of which the nuclear bargain is made. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "If we fight, we may not always win, but if we don't fight, we will surely lose." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SAVAD RAHMAN subeditor,MADHYAMAM daily, pooppalam, perinthalmanna,kerala, india cell:(91)-9846085873
