System shut down

Uranium shortage has already forced the DAE to run the current nuclear power reactors at around half their capacity. Even in the best-case scenario, domestic sources of uranium cannot sustain more than 10,000 MW of nuclear power. If the first stage of the programme based on uranium reactors falters, there is not much hope for the second stage involving the fast breeder reactors that need plutonium fuel extracted from the first stage. No one is claiming that technology to exploit India8217;s vast thorium resources, at the heart of the third stage, can be commercialised in the next three decades. Put simply, without the Indo-US nuclear deal, India will not be able to import badly needed uranium.

Having negotiated hard for acceptable terms of international cooperation, the DAE is rightly pressing for an early implementation of the nuclear deal. In Trombay, the PM reminded the nation that India8217;s nuclear programme was founded on international cooperation and is all set to break out of a long nuclear isolation since the mid-1970s. It is a shame that the BJP and the CPM, which pretended to speak up for the concerns of the scientists until recently, are now determined to wreck DAE8217;s ambitious plans to generate nuclear power. Having been in power, the BJP leadership is fully aware of the uranium problem; yet it has chosen to put political expediency above national interest. For an ideologically blinkered CPM, 8220;anti-imperialism8221; is more important than having a nuclear energy programme. China is buying American reactors and locking up uranium resources around the world as part of a plan to produce 40,000 MW of nuclear power. Can India be sympathetic to politicians condemning the DAE to nuclear backwaters?