Manufacturing the nuclear scare

One major controversy gaining ground in India about the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation is that it will lead to a serious debilitation ...

One major controversy gaining ground in India about the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation is that it will lead to a serious debilitation of our national security due to the consequent capping of the fissile material inventory. The fear is that this would limit the level of our 8220;minimum nuclear deterrent8221; in course of time. These objections have several reasons, but the root cause is differing perceptions about the deterrent itself.

Some in this country feel that India need not have a nuclear deterrent at all. A comparable, but small, fraction of the population considers the current nuclear arsenal to be insufficient in quantity and quality, and believes that we must perfect better and more powerful weapons, including thermonuclear devices of the megaton level. This group includes a large number of the currently serving and retired nuclear weapon scientists as well as key leaders of certain political parties. But, the majority of Indians, while they are proud of

India8217;s nuclear attainments, are increasingly opposed to any significant increase in the nuclear arsenal and would like to see the country8217;s funds and talent directed to rapidly meeting the dire needs in energy, drinking water, health, primary education, and science and technology development for industrial growth. The framework of cooperation between India and the US in the nuclear arena must be viewed in the backdrop of this current mood in the country and not through the eyes of a few who feel a serious threat to their own status or others who find opportunities to their advantage in opposing this initiative.

The Vajpayee government had asserted in 1998 itself that they can produce moderately powerful fission and thermonuclear warheads without any further tests. The input materials needed for fission bombs would be either plutonium Pu or high-enriched uranium, while the thermonuclear bombs will require, in addition, the hydrogen isotope tritium. Plutonium for weapons, in turn, can either be from the heavy-water research reactors like CIRUS and Dhruva, which produce 8220;weapon-grade8221; plutonium, or from any of our PHWR power reactors, if operated under uneconomic conditions to get the same Pu grade. In addition, if the power reactors are run in their normal mode, they will produce what is known as 8220;reactor-grade8221; plutonium, which also can be used to build warheads. The main difference is that a warhead using weapon-grade Pu will need on the average about 5.0 kg of Pu, whereas if reactor-grade Pu is used it will require roughly 8.0 kg of that Pu. These numbers are available in open publications.

True inventories of fissile materials in any country are closely guarded secrets. But, analysts have made estimates based on reactor operations data, which are always openly available. Such estimates for India can be found in the open document Plutonium Watch, authored by David Albright and Kimberly Kramer and published in June 2004 by the Institute for Science and International Security. According to this report, by the end of 2003, India already had a total of 13,360 kilogram of plutonium. It consists of 13,000 kg of reactor-grade Pu from the spent-fuel discharged from our nuclear power stations, and about 360 kg of weapon-grade Pu from our two research reactors in BARC. This existing total plutonium will be sufficient to produce roughly 1700 fission-warheads of the Hiroshima type, if all this inventory is retained for the weapons programme.

Various authors have also estimated the devastation a Hiroshima-type about 15 kiloton nuclear warhead can cause in a major Asian city for instance, in Nuclear War in South Asia, by McKinzie, Mian, Ramana 038; Nayyar, 2001. These analyses show that about 1.8 to 4.8 lakh people would lose their lives, depending on the population density, from the use of a single warhead of that type! Based on this, India8217;s present weapons know-how and our existing plutonium inventory will be theoretically sufficient to kill a total of 300-800 million people spread over several metropolises. Is this not far beyond the kind of 8220;minimum deterrent8221; any rational government can justify to its own people and to the international community? Therefore, it is sheer madness to aspire for more inventories of fissile material and thermonuclear weapons, while what the country should be doing is to transfer much, if not all, of the current stocks of reactor-grade plutonium to the civilian side for use in the fast breeder power reactor programme.

Under the IAEA safeguards system indicated in the new cooperation framework, it is for India to name the civilian nuclear assets which are to then come under IAEA inspections. India would be prudent to keep CIRUS and Dhruva reactors and all fuel cycle facilities associated with the weapons effort, the uranium enrichment plant near Mysore, the critical laboratories and defence nuclear facilities in Kalpakkam etc strictly under our 8220;weapons facilities8221; list and out of IAEA purview. But there is no harm in placing all our civilian nuclear power plants under safeguards, unless the weapons group can credibly convince the PM of their absolute need to retain one or two PHWRs also with them.

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Both India and the US function as democracies. The legally binding agreements which are to ultimately flow from this framework in a synchronised manner will require legislative approval in both countries. In India, these will have to be discussed and

approved by Parliament before formalisation, for them to be internationally binding. In the meantime, no one needs to fear that Dr Manmohan Singh has already given away the country8217;s nuclear jewels to the Americans!

The writer is a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board