Under a mushroom cloud

As a consequence, it seems to have little interest in taking advantage of the historic opportunity at hand to rapidly expand the nation8217;s capacity to produce nuclear power. It would rather stick to what it has done all these years 8212; advance at snail8217;s 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 administration8217;s 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 DAE8217;s 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 DAE8217;s 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 India8217;s abundant thorium reserves.

Bhabha8217;s 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 8220;too cheap to meter8221;. 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. India8217;s 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 8220;imported uranium8221;. If imports are a 8220;trap8221;, 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 can8217;t 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 R038;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 India8217;s nuclear weapons programme completely self-sufficient. But imports of fuel, technology and reactors could help accelerate India8217;s 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.