Bharat Rakshak

Mumbai, Aug. 6 (PTI): The agreement to operationalize the Indo-US civil nuclear deal has "compromised India's case to a large extent and the United States could "remotely drive our atomic programmes in the long run," former Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Dr A N Prasad, said here Sunday night.

He said the draft text of the 123 agreement, reached in Washington last month, clearly tried to accommodate diverging interests and constraints of both India and US by clever use of the language.

"We are now in effect reduced to a mere recipient state mandated by the Henry Hyde Act (passed by the US Congress) to carry out a set of do's and don'ts and strive to earn a good behavior report card to become eligible to continue receiving what they can offer," he said.

"In the process, slowly but surely, they (US) could gain control and remotely drive our nuclear programmes in the long run," Prasad said.

Prasad, who was active in IAEA inspections in Iraq, said "this deal, through the Hyde Act, gives far too many opportunities to penetrate deep into and interfere even in our 3-stage programme to slow down realization of our goal to harness our own vast resources of thorium for long-term energy security."

Prasad pointed to two points in support of his view: first revelation by Nicholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State, during his interview to the Council on Foreign Relations and secondly the duration of the 123 agreement coinciding with the time India intending to take thorium use to a commercial reality.

He pointed to Burns' remark that "it had been an easy 'strategic' choice for Washington when faced with the question - should we isolate India for the next 35 years or bring it in partially now (under safeguards inspection) and nearly totally in the future."

Secondly, Article 16.2 of the 123 text says the agreement shall remain in force for 40 years and at the end of this initial period each party may, terminate by giving 6 month's notice.

"There is no built-in provision for terminating before 40 years even if we were to suffer for any reason in the implementation of the deal. This is expected to cover the period by which we intend to take the thorium utilization to a commercial reality," he said, adding "what a coincidence?".

"Is it not obvious that their intention is to put hurdles on our thorium utilization programme right from the beginning? Prasad said.

Talking about some of the contentious issues like reprocessing of spent fuel issue which has been stated to be the most hotly debated issues, Prasad, considered the father of India's reprocessing technology, said "reprocessing is at the core of our 3-stage nuclear power programme.

"The irony is US, knowing fully well our four decades of experience in reprocessing and aware of its importance in our 3-stage programme, has sought to create impediments and make us cringe for reprocessing consent, that too after accepting us as strategic partner. Should we call this nuclear cooperation or non-cooperation?" he said.

He said it was naive to judge the merits of the civil nuclear deal purely based on the language of the draft of the text of the 123 agreement.

"The underlying under-currents and the intentions of the controlling party are important and cannot be wished away as hypothetical or as their internal matter and of no concern to us when they do actually have serious repercussions on our long-term interests," Prasad remarked.

He said there has been a careful balancing of US commercial interests with the goal of bringing India into the non-proliferation hold, an obsession they are pursuing for a long time ever since NPT came into existence in 1970.

"There have been overt suggestions in the Hyde Act to the US Administration for not only attempting to cap, but also try to eventually roll back our strategic programme and report to the Congress", Prasad said.

"Try they will, but whether we are smart enough to thwart their designs or they manage to succeed given the tremendous access they get through this deal, time will tell," he said.

Prasad said even though there is what is called a fast reactor nuclear fuel cycle, not a word is mentioned in the agreement on fast reactor cooperation while the text calls for all future fast breeder reactors to be put under civil list for applying safeguards in perpetuity just because plutonium extracted from imported uranium spent fuel is fed into these reactors.

Burns is on the record about strategic choice and bringing 90-95% of our reactors and facilities under IAEA

I don't understand why this (90 - 95%) is giving people heartburn.

Without this agreement, we will likely not be building new reactors. So if new reactors are built under safeguards, it is natural that more and more of them will be under IAEA. That is a "talking point" of no real value, because the real issue pertains to fuel supply, not reactor construction.

This is not entirely accurate. The DAE does have plans for additional reactors. The real question is can India achieve the 2020 plan of 20,000 MWe of nuclear power without the US-India agreement?

yes.. regarding AK, I too suspect the same.. that is coming from a 800 pounder to actually a negative-voice (in the sense, accepted the stand without giving it a time to sleep with it ) in the media now.

was he treated by some CIA monoclonal antibodies that is fused with a psychological nebulizer?.. from the "ddm as view" perspective, he is a candid proof of a tamed gorilla or a turned gorilla that now completely accepts everything is great now.

now am i thinking (after the above thoughts), that he is speaking from onleee technical angle to satisfy civilian and military equations from the view of barc, and nothing more, i.e., he is not looking at this deal in a strategic angle (which is highly understandable from his point of position).

btw, he did not participate in real discussions for the final draft. i wish now, or should i ask now what was the text before "this new agreement" looked like, so that we can compare two texts of agreement and come up with some basis for his behavior@?

But really, suppose the deal falls through? There's still the significant likelihood that US Congress will derail it. What then?

What will India do with the nuclear program to deliver the goods to the people?

But really, suppose the deal falls through? There's still the significant likelihood that US Congress will derail it. What then?

THAT sounds ominous. This is no lightweight half-wit party hack speaking (I mean Dr. Prasad, not moi).

But WHY do all desi top babus like him assume that India cannot protect the military/ strategic research program, by removing it from the facilities that are to be "safeguarded"? It does imply some serious investment in military/strategic protected facilities, but isn't that justified by the prospect of having a thriving commercial civilian operation, that is removed from the backs of the military program?

I have not understood that.

The complaint here seems to be that there is no overt promise of substantial, meaningful tech transfer on several things that India wants.

Frankly, from what I have heard, the NPT signatories don't get any of this either - the "cooperation" consists of them giving up nuke weapons, and the P-5 giving them zilch in return. As for cooperation BETWEEN the P-5, maybe Unkil gives stuff to Poodle, but the other 3 are totally independent, except that China gets W-88, and all other US military secrets ready-made and transferred to them.

So what these guys claim the US is not giving, may be something the US doesn't give anyone.

Not saying that this the best deal, but to call it a sell out(abishekcc) is childish.

This deal effectively writes off our freedom to improve our nuclear arsenal, without comparable benefits on the (civil) energy front.

But WHY do all desi top babus like him assume that India cannot protect the military/ strategic research program, by removing it from the facilities that are to be "safeguarded"?

one more question, if we want to import a reactor from, say , russia, do we need US approval for that too?

I beg to differ there, since the deal does not say a thing about testing, let us not extrapolate. Even if we do test , we may be in a bit of trouble, but....i believe that the effect will be minimal, as by your own logic we will be getting only a few reactors. In my view, India imposed a ban on itself with regards to testing and i it still holds. There have been compromises made on both sides.

As far as the civil nuclear energy thing goes, i believe we have to wait and watch. If AK is happy, i am happy.

ARTICLE 16 - ENTRY INTO FORCE AND DURATION
4. This Agreement shall be implemented in good faith and in accordance with the principles of international law.

They will pass even worse laws

Why cant we reciprocate?

Alok_N was sadly banned by admins for protesting against arbitrary locking of the discussion on religion topic.

The only thing that we could have done was to provide reprocessing services to the rest of the world, and that seems to have been clipped in this deal.

With what? What are we providing to them that we can ask back? We can, of course ban some American companies from investing in India. Who is the loser in that account?