Indian Nuclear News & Discussion - 01 Aug 2007

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disha
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Post by disha »

samuel wrote:sorry, how is the substance of what you are saying any different from what i just said?
I will not be going into you said/I said debate, but if you re-read my post again, it actually contradicts your sky is falling post.
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Post by samuel »

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Last edited by samuel on 03 Aug 2007 08:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by samuel »

disha wrote:
samuel wrote:sorry, how is the substance of what you are saying any different from what i just said?
I will not be going into you said/I said debate, but if you re-read my post again, it actually contradicts your sky is falling post.
you mean the one that you actually cite in that R&D message, which has to do with the infeasibility of putting non-civilian off-grid, or was that a random quote inserted in lieu of the problems you are facing? good god, if you knew the answer why not just state the facts. sorry, that was confusing...
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Post by milindc »

samuel wrote:
disha wrote: I will not be going into you said/I said debate, but if you re-read my post again, it actually contradicts your sky is falling post.
you mean the one that you actually cite in that R&D message, which has to do with the infeasibility of putting non-civilian off-grid, or was that a random quote inserted in lieu of the problems you are facing? good god, if you knew the answer why not just state the facts. sorry, that was confusing...
samuel,

Quote from this link
Dr. Singh said the Separation Plan does not come in the way of the integrity of India's three-stage nuclear programme, including future use of the country's thorium reserves. "The autonomy of our research and development activities in the nuclear field will remain unaffected. The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) remain outside safeguards. We have agreed, however, that future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian Fast Breeder Reactors would be placed under safeguards, but the determination of what is civilian is solely an Indian decision."
Please don't post that it is statement of MMS who is a sell-out...
Come up with some evidence to buttress your assumptions on 'what is civilian'

btw, PFBR which is unsafe-guarded will be connected to grid once it is operational. So your assumption of a reactor that is connected to grid is 'Civilian' doesn't hold.
Per me, a IAEA safe-guarded reactor is Civilian in the context of our discussions. Determining which reactor is/will be safe-guarded is our right with under-lying agreement that any reactor that needs foreign fuel will be IAEA safe-guarded.
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote:
samuel wrote: you mean the one that you actually cite in that R&D message, which has to do with the infeasibility of putting non-civilian off-grid, or was that a random quote inserted in lieu of the problems you are facing? good god, if you knew the answer why not just state the facts. sorry, that was confusing...
samuel,

Quote from this link
Dr. Singh said the Separation Plan does not come in the way of the integrity of India's three-stage nuclear programme, including future use of the country's thorium reserves. "The autonomy of our research and development activities in the nuclear field will remain unaffected. The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) remain outside safeguards. We have agreed, however, that future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian Fast Breeder Reactors would be placed under safeguards, but the determination of what is civilian is solely an Indian decision."
Please don't post that it is statement of MMS who is a sell-out...
Come up with some evidence to buttress your assumptions on 'what is civilian'
why would I do that? PM Singh is fighting for this country as much as anyone else and he is the prime minister. You see me saying anything personal like that a dollar to you!

Ok, so milind, we all know that the designation of civilian rests with goi. right, pages have scrolled. But you know what, I don't know what civilian means, and that is what nrao, vsudhir, saik too a shot at too (see last page). So did I...it makes little sense for non-civil to be not-grid. But did disha not just say that again, and then that it is in the text. But he did not enclose the text.

But thank you for asking me to do the work...I'll be back
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote: Please don't post that it is statement of MMS who is a sell-out...
Come up with some evidence to buttress your assumptions on 'what is civilian'

btw, PFBR which is unsafe-guarded will be connected to grid once it is operational. So your assumption of a reactor that is connected to grid is 'Civilian' doesn't hold. Per me, a IAEA safe-guarded reactor is Civilian in the context of our discussions. Determining which reactor is/will be safe-guarded is our right with under-lying agreement that any reactor that needs foreign fuel will be IAEA safe-guarded.
Where did I say that reactor connected to grid is civilian? Can you show me? (read instead NRao's take, which does say that). You just made my point! And what was that? It is improbable to come up with load that is off-grid for non-civilian reactors, where is all that energy going to go, hot water? Did you just miss all that?

Aren't you messing causality here...Since civilian reactors are one that are going to be safeguarded, therefore those that are safeguarded are obviously civilian is obvious. How does that tell you what civilian is?

So, here is the answer after a round of googling: See, item 8.
Sorry no better reference.
some blog
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Post by Rye »

The Indian govt. decides which sites can come under IAEA inspections, i.e., civilian. If the govt. keeps a site out of reach for the inspectors, it is non civilian. What other definition is interesting from a POV of keeping as many as required in the non civilian sector and some more for the strategic/military program?

Why is the above definition inadequate in the eyes of the folks who are apparently upset?
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Post by samuel »

http://meaindia.nic.in/pressrelease/2007/08/03pr01.pdf

Here it is folks, in all glory, go!
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Post by Mort Walker »

Thanks Samuel!

I don't know if this needs to be repeated, but all BRF members need to read this agreement in detail.
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Post by milindc »

samuel wrote:Where did I say that reactor connected to grid is civilian? Can you show me?
Samuel,

What does the below quote from you allude. Aren't u arguing that a breeder reactor which is used for civilian energy needs (i.e. connected to grid) needs to be safeguarded.
What I'm trying to convey is that reactor which is un-safeguarded can be connected to grid (e.g PFBR). In simple terms as long as fuel is indigenous then it is up to us, whether u declare it safe-guarded or unsafe-guarded.

Or else I completely mis-understood ur statement below. Could please clarify what you meant by bolded part.
samuel wrote:According to available information, India will place 65% of its present and all future civilian thermal and breeder reactors under safeguards. It retains the right to designate a reactor as civilian or military. We cannot therefore put-up a breeder (FBR/ATBR) for civilian energy needs without putting them under safeguards.
This agreement doesn't prevent us from pursing 3-stage program or nor does it force us to expose our IP as long as the fuel source is indigenous.
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Post by Mort Walker »

Please read Article 5, paragraph 6(b)(iv).

The US & India would convene friendly countries to restore fuel supply to India.

It appears to be a good agreement.
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Post by samuel »

Wow, this document reads great at first pass!
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Post by milindc »

Mort Walker wrote:Please read Article 5, paragraph 6(b)(iv).

The US & India would convene friendly countries to restore fuel supply to India.

It appears to be a good agreement.
But this fact is not refered in the Article 14, Termination and Cessation of Agreement. Refer to paragraph 5. All it says is that consultations will give special consideration to uninterrupted fuel supply but no specific guarantees.

So, the question remains what happens when the agreement terminates, do we get uninterrupted fuel supply?
I guess, we need to go back to the definition of 'strategic fuel reserve' in the Article 5, paragraph 6(b)(iii). It says that it will guard any disruption over the lifetime of India's reactors. What about foreign reactors, which need be returned as well
Also, it deliberately doesn't specify any quantities and is very vague. It can be double edge sword. It basically depends on how much fuel we are allowed to accumulate (and that will be the real test of this agreement)..

Anyway, based on the limited reading I favor the agreement... atleast it provides a window for foreign fuel accumulation. Per me, that is the only benefit of this agreement.
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Post by williams »

Page 6:e

Development of a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to
guard against any disruption of supply over the
lifetime of India's reactors
This should be the key if we need to insulate ourselfs in case of future testing. So far I see 123 to be clean. But gurus may see it otherwise.
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Post by milindc »

samuel wrote:Wow, this document reads great at first pass!
No it doesn't guarantee uninterrupted fuel supply once the agreement terminates (just special consideration during termination consultations). Yes, while the agreement is is vogue it will support the building of strategic reserve for India's reactor. (I don't know why they used the term India's reactors. Will the foreign sourced reactors be considered India's reactors. Is there a special meaning)

It all depends on how much we can accumulate per the definition of strategic fuel reserve.
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Post by Mort Walker »

Article 14, para. 6 is very good.

If the party exercising the right of return, they must promptly compensate the other party. In other words if the US pulls back material, then it could be set up to compensate GE, Westinghouse, Areva and so forth.
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote:
samuel wrote:Where did I say that reactor connected to grid is civilian? Can you show me?
Samuel,

What does the below quote from you allude. Aren't u arguing that a breeder reactor which is used for civilian energy needs (i.e. connected to grid) needs to be safeguarded.
What I'm trying to convey is that reactor which is un-safeguarded can be connected to grid (e.g PFBR). In simple terms as long as fuel is indigenous then it is up to us, whether u declare it safe-guarded or unsafe-guarded.

Or else I completely mis-understood ur statement below. Could please clarify what you meant by bolded part.
samuel wrote:According to available information, India will place 65% of its present and all future civilian thermal and breeder reactors under safeguards. It retains the right to designate a reactor as civilian or military. We cannot therefore put-up a breeder (FBR/ATBR) for civilian energy needs without putting them under safeguards.
Once something is civilian (FBR or thermal) its on safeguard. The discussion was, what does it mean to be civilian. The obvious interpretation was whatever is used for civilian need, with the caveat: i dont know how these are defined. Then came an idea, whatever is connected to grid is civilian. the separation document i sent you says that grid connectivity is not the measure of designation. that's where we are.
This agreement doesn't prevent us from pursing 3-stage program or nor does it force us to expose our IP as long as the fuel source is indigenous.
right, agreed. If we use our own fuel/reactors, there is no applicability if we call them as unsafeguarded. we agree on that. The IP discussion is valid for when we want to reprocess foreign fuel with our technology, or want to use foreign fuel for our 3-stage. the only way that's possible is if we go under safeguard, or else we have to get the whole kit imported.
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Post by pradeepe »

First read - looks good. Yes, they have left some things - fuel supply guarantees a bit inconclusive.

Heavens I am no lawyer..but theres enough verbiage in there which sounds darn good. Not a single word referring the non-civilian side and infact at the outset lays those straight as complete non-parties to this agreement.

Thumbs up.
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Post by milindc »

milindc wrote:
samuel wrote:Wow, this document reads great at first pass!
No it doesn't guarantee uninterrupted fuel supply once the agreement terminates (just special consideration during termination consultations). Yes, while the agreement is is vogue it will support the building of strategic reserve for India's reactor. (I don't know why they used the term India's reactors. Will the foreign sourced reactors be considered India's reactors. Is there a special meaning)

It all depends on how much we can accumulate per the definition of strategic fuel reserve.
btw, even the fuel from strategic fuel reserve can be in the 'return items list' per the Article 14. Now, remember this is the agreement between US and India. The question is if other NSG members follow this as template.

The barriers are consultations, compensation, environmental concerns etc which are good.
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Post by williams »

(I don't know why they used the term India's reactors. Will the foreign sourced reactors be considered India's reactors. Is there a special meaning)
This is a GOI to USG agreement.
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote:
milindc wrote: No it doesn't guarantee uninterrupted fuel supply once the agreement terminates (just special consideration during termination consultations). Yes, while the agreement is is vogue it will support the building of strategic reserve for India's reactor. (I don't know why they used the term India's reactors. Will the foreign sourced reactors be considered India's reactors. Is there a special meaning)

It all depends on how much we can accumulate per the definition of strategic fuel reserve.
btw, even the fuel from strategic fuel reserve can be in the 'return items list' per the Article 14. Now, remember this is the agreement between US and India. The question is if other NSG members follow this as template.

The barriers are consultations, compensation, environmental concerns etc which are good.
Hi Milind,
its not like my larger questions have vanished, this is going to take some reading to parse, because this document is amazing for what it not says.
In fact, it appears to be just a compilation of whatever extent they could agree on, leaving much to what we do with it.

I am still to understand the fuel guarantee points, considerable verbiage has been spent on it. In fact, this document doesn't really appear to say anything we sort of did not already know?
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Post by williams »

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 030902.htm
Asserting it has got the right to ask for return of nuclear fuel transferred by it in the event of India conducting a nuclear test, the US has said it would not help New Delhi find alternative sources of fuel in that case.

"That's absolutely false," Nicholas Burns, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, told 'The Capital' when asked about such an understanding in its civilian nuclear deal agreement with India.
Looks like Burns is already burning the agreement on fuel assurances
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Post by milindc »

My understanding

- If the agreement is terminated by either party there is no fuel guarantee (only a vague reference of special consideration for fuel supply during consultations which means nothing in legal sense)
- Help with strategic fuel accumulation (no specific quantities) only until the agreement is in force
- Even the strategic fuel reserve could be in 'return item list' after termination
- Good barriers to prevent the return. (Consulations, Compensation and Environmental)

Basically if we want to test, we need to tell them to buzz off. There will be no return of fuel or other material, which means we will be in breach of the agreement.

The big question is whether we will get better one-to-one agreement with other NSG countries or will they follow this as template.

Anyway, I'm satisfied since I sincerely believe that 10 years down the line, if not earlier, we will be in position to use this agreement as tissue paper and flush down the drain.
Until we need to take such action, happy accumulation....
Last edited by milindc on 03 Aug 2007 10:45, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by pradeepe »

This will give the NP Ayotullahs a heart attack.
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Post by milindc »

williams wrote:
(I don't know why they used the term India's reactors. Will the foreign sourced reactors be considered India's reactors. Is there a special meaning)
This is a GOI to USG agreement.
Then what about strategic fuel reserve for US sourced reactors. Will the GE reactor be considered as India's reactor.
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Post by milindc »

williams wrote:http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 030902.htm
Asserting it has got the right to ask for return of nuclear fuel transferred by it in the event of India conducting a nuclear test, the US has said it would not help New Delhi find alternative sources of fuel in that case.

"That's absolutely false," Nicholas Burns, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, told 'The Capital' when asked about such an understanding in its civilian nuclear deal agreement with India.
Looks like Burns is already burning the agreement on fuel assurances
What Burns stated is 400% correct, there will be no alternative sources of fuel if US decides to terminate.
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Post by williams »

Then what about strategic fuel reserve for US sourced reactors. Will the GE reactor be considered as India's reactor.
GE reactor will not be considered India's reactor, unless or otherwise, GOI has a contract with GE stating, GOI has full ownership of the reactor built in Indian territory.
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Post by Dileep »

Folks,

The text of the agreement is being posted in this thread for easy reference, quoting etc.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=3337

I am still running OCR and checks, and posting takes awful lot of time, so pages will come up in a brief time.
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Post by milindc »

williams wrote:
Then what about strategic fuel reserve for US sourced reactors. Will the GE reactor be considered as India's reactor.
GE reactor will not be considered India's reactor, unless or otherwise, GOI has a contract with GE stating, GOI has full ownership of the reactor built in Indian territory.
Assuming GE reactor placed on Indian soil is not considered India's reactor, there will be no help from US to build strategic fuel reserve for that reactor, which basically follows Hyde act. Hyde act states that only fuel for one year should be made available.

Better start building our own reactors and just have some US reactors for show case.
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Post by JaiS »

India says no quid pro quo over U.S. nuclear pact

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will not be pressurised into supporting the United States on issues like Iran in return for a nuclear pact with Washington, New Delhi's envoy said in an interview with a local magazine.

U.S. officials say there is strong bipartisan support in Congress for the deal but India's ties with its old friend Iran remain a source of concern to Congress in the run up to the vote.

But Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, told Outlook magazine that India would not tow Washington's line on Iran.

"Linking this agreement with any other issue -- today it be Iran, tomorrow it can be some other issue -- will be counterproductive," a press release from the magazine quoted Sen as saying in the interview to be published on Saturday.

"It would be totally unrealistic to expect a large and vibrant democracy like India to give up its independence of judgment and action."

The deal aims to help India meet its soaring energy needs even though it has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has tested nuclear weapons.
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote:
williams wrote: GE reactor will not be considered India's reactor, unless or otherwise, GOI has a contract with GE stating, GOI has full ownership of the reactor built in Indian territory.
Assuming GE reactor placed on Indian soil is not considered India's reactor, there will be no help from US to build strategic fuel reserve for that reactor, which basically follows Hyde act. Hyde act states that only fuel for one year should be made available.

Better start building our own reactors and just have some US reactors for show case.
what does india's reactors mean, exactly. Is that a technical term defined somewhere, or does it refer to reactors operating in India. If we buy a reactor will we own it?

hyde showsup in 2(1). the very begining and nothing the US will do will contradict that.
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Post by samuel »

milindc wrote:My understanding

- If the agreement is terminated by either party there is no fuel guarantee (only a vague reference of special consideration for fuel supply during consultations which means nothing in legal sense)
- Help with strategic fuel accumulation (no specific quantities) only until the agreement is in force
- Even the strategic fuel reserve could be in 'return item list' after termination
- Good barriers to prevent the return. (Consulations, Compensation and Environmental)

Basically if we want to test, we need to tell them to buzz off. There will be no return of fuel or other material, which means we will be in breach of the agreement.

The big question is whether we will get better one-to-one agreement with other NSG countries or will they follow this as template.

Anyway, I'm satisfied since I sincerely believe that 10 years down the line, if not earlier, we will be in position to use this agreement as tissue paper and flush down the drain.
Until we need to take such action, happy accumulation....
right, get that three-stage swinging, boy what a difference that would make.
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Post by Arun_S »

I am no legal expert but from my reading the agreement text I am OK with it.

Just that the iron clad in-perpertuity safegaurd is not matched with iron clad guerentee to permanent fuel supply. OTOH India can buy as much fuel from open international market (not necessailty from USA if domestic US laws limit them to only 1 years fuel business ;) ) as it deems fit for for the life of the reactor.

DAE has 40 years to reach cruising altitude with Thorium based power reactors, they better reach there in 24 years.

Will sleep well tonight.
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Post by Arun_S »

Dileep wrote:Folks,

The text of the agreement is being posted in this thread for easy reference, quoting etc.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=3337

I am still running OCR and checks, and posting takes awful lot of time, so pages will come up in a brief time.
Great service. Thankyou sir.
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Post by Dileep »

Arun_S wrote:
Dileep wrote:Folks,

The text of the agreement is being posted in this thread for easy reference, quoting etc.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=3337

I am still running OCR and checks, and posting takes awful lot of time, so pages will come up in a brief time.
Great service. Thankyou sir.
The full text is now posted, with errors corrected as far as possible in the short time.
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Post by Raghz »

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/sh ... 0070020906

Nuclear fallout: A historical wrong undone
Pallava Bagla
Science Editor
Tuesday, July,31 2007 (New Delhi)
Deal or no deal is the big nuclear question?

Even as that million dollar question gets its 'final review' in the corridors of power in New Delhi and Washington DC, what is evident is that a huge historical wrong done against India has already been undone, a wrong that pushed India into the nuclear dog house, a global mistake that made India into a nuclear pariah.

The way things are unfolding, it may be sooner rather than later that India's unsolicited nuclear winter may be ending.

To India's huge dislike, the developed world literally ganged up to create artificial barriers that impeded the transfer of sensitive high technology that India needed so much for its development. These regressive systems were created in the garb of stopping proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Thanks to the new atomic tango between the world's oldest and largest democracies, these technology denial regimes targetted at India may well be a thing of the past. India is finally getting a place on the high table, a stool at least if not a high chair.

The dice got heavily loaded against India ever since the country refused to sign what it called 'the flawed' Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which had set an artificial date of January 1, 1967 as having been the date by which any country that had exploded a nuclear device, got a nuclear weapons status.

The USA, Russia, France, Great Britain and China - the P-5 - got in and then made all efforts to ensure their hegemony is never broken.

The first country outside this holy NPT framework to explode a nuclear device was India, when in the summer of 1974, the sands below Pokharan shook resoundingly, loudly proclaiming to the world the arrival of a new nuclear kid on the block.

Ever since, all hell broke loose and all kinds of sanctions, technology transfer restrictions were clamped on India, so much so that Indian space and nuclear facilities had to overcome mountains of Red Tape even to import common pins. With India being literally outlawed from the global nuclear community, the common man on the street was denied the fruits of this technology.

A global cartel called the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), now a group of 45 countries, was created essentially to box India into a corner and by its own admission 'the NSG was created following the explosion in 1974 of a nuclear device by a non-nuclear-weapon state, which demonstrated that nuclear technology transferred for peaceful purposes could be misused'.

Much to India's distaste, it became a nuclear untouchable and several unrelated civilian sectors had to pay a heavy price as well.

Fuel and spare part supplies for India's nuclear reactors were suddenly stopped, so much so that at times it became hazardous to keep the Tarapur nuclear power rectors running. In the eighties, India was denied the permission to import a Cray Super Computer for its weather forecasting needs and the reason given was that it could be used to design atom bombs.

Later, the country was denied technology to manufacture Cryogenic engines needed to hoist communication satellites using locally made rockets. The list is endless.

Higher and higher barriers were being placed around India merely to contain the development of the high-technology sectors in India. It is a different matter that the more the technology was denied to India, the more determined did the Indian scientists get, also ably supported by the Indian government, to overcome these embargos.

The embargoes were overcome not by flouting them or by buying stuff from the so called 'nuclear Wall Mart', but by sheer dint of hard work, whatever was denied has been slowly built locally.

Sanctions only delayed the development of these technologies; they did not scuttle whole projects. India is the only country where the American sanctions regime produced only the opposite results for which it was put in place. As an analogy, when fish was denied to the country, in retaliation India mastered fishing, thwarting the very purpose of these actions.

The restrictive regimes became overbearing when in 1998 the sand dunes of Pokhran were emblazoned once again with the sound and fury of another five nuclear weapons tests. Not being coy like last time when the country had dubbed the test as a 'peaceful nuclear explosion', in 1998, India aptly declared itself a 'nuclear weapons state'.

To recall the words of the then US President Bill Clinton who exclaimed "we will fall on them [India] like a ton of bricks", the sanctions regime became very strict with 'presumption of denial' being the guiding principle for every request for sourcing simple spare parts like computer chips and chemicals.

The heat was faced even by Indian scientists; several were summarily suspended from American laboratories. Such was the viciousness that leading nuclear scientist Dr R Chidambaram, today the principal scientific advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was denied a visa to visit USA to attend a scientific meeting.

That India continued its steady tortoise paced but determined plod on the high technology highway and then also had reasonably impressive results to show is one of the reasons that so called 'nuclear hares' of the world decided to once and for all dismantle these artificial walls on their own. The US-India Civil Nuclear Co-operation Initiative is one such concrete step in that direction.

Four decades of nuclear winter is more or less over for India, and it seems the breakthrough came about not really having lost an inch of ground. The country still seems to have retained the same high moral ground on which it had rejected the NPT, and is now being accommodated within the non-proliferation umbrella while retaining the nuclear weapons. That in the last 60 years, India never broke any international norms, or violated any global treaties only helped matters.

Once this landmark nuclear deal is inked, the floodgates to nuclear commerce with India will be opened since as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjee told the Lok Sabha last winter, "Our current estimates envisage nuclear power generation of 30,000 MWe by 2022 and 63,000 MWe by 2032", which translates to India seeking to invest at least $100 billion in this infrastructure sector alone in the next 25 years.

It seems this giant pot of gold was large enough an attraction for the countries to remove the several hurdles, iron out the wrinkles so that trade in high technology could begin once again with India.

Much to India's delight, the very same country that spearheaded the moves to establish these obstacles is today at the forefront of dismantling them. The world indeed has come full circle and a grave historical wrong has been undone, whether the deal gets consummated or not.
Prabu
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123

Post by Prabu »

123 still has concerns and though not very clean, in principle appears to be OK. But Lot of phrases are legal cant interpret in full !! Can some one do a thorough analysis os each clause of text ?? Alok_N , N-Rao, Arun_s help needed please.
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Post by kltrivedi »

Does India's nuclear weapons program require more tests?
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Post by Dileep »

The 123 agreement would not have been ANY different if we were a NWS, simply because it doesn't address those issues. It is a standard agreement with termination clauses etc.
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Post by Gerard »

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