Ukraine's gift:Canada plans to send its spent nuclear fuel back to the United States as part of a global effort to secure vulnerable nuclear material
The US has GNEP, India is proposing GCNEP. Two totally different entities.ramana wrote:NRao< India needs its own think tanks in the community.
Mrs N. Rao had hinted about setting this up in her pre-trip briefing.
And there are quite a few. We already knew about the Chilean and Ukrainian announcements that they would give up their last stores of highly enriched uranium. Ukraine also agreed to switch its reactor to use low-enriched uranium instead.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signed a deal to destroy large amounts of weapons grade plutonium today. Now, the Russians have announced they will shut down the plutonium plant in Zheleznogorsk, a once-secret city in Siberia. (They actually agreed to do that two years ago, but nice to know they will actually follow through.)
And Canada announced today that the country will give up a lot of its nuclear material, while Mexico announced today that it will convert it research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium.
Now then, Dmitri. You know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dmitri. The hydrogen bomb.
—President Merkin Muffley to Premier Dmitri Kissov, 1964.
Dmitri, we agreed.
—President Barack Obama to
President Dmitri Medvedev, 2010.
Britain should be prepared to scrap its nuclear deterrent, a group of generals write in The Times today, pushing the future of Trident to the forefront of the election.
The generals say that the next government would threaten both frontline Forces and global disarmament talks unless it considers different ways of spending the £80 billion required to replace the fleet of submarines.
Their intervention, although nonpolitical, offers timely support for Nick Clegg, who goes into tomorrow night’s foreign affairs debate with Gordon Brown and David Cameron as the only party leader arguing against a like-for-like replacement.
Writing in The Times, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, General Lord Ramsbotham, General Sir Hugh Beach and Major-General Patrick Cordingley express “deep concern” that the future of Trident has been excluded from the Strategic Defence Review that will follow the election. They caution that suppressing discussion of the issue or dismissing alternatives would be “a major strategic blunder”.
Nato member states like Britain must consult allies before making changes to their nuclear deterrent policies to ensure that "unity is maintained'' and "there is a defence structure'', the secretary general of the Alliance stressed yesterday.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen's comments came after a Nato summit decided that "decisions on nuclear policy will be made by the Alliance together ... and a broad sharing of the burden for Nato's nuclear policy remains essential".
In 2006 Pakistan urged China to approve the new project but China was not keen to do so. Pakistan diplomats said then China was holding back because it was not clear that the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal would be approved by both governments and by the NSG.
After the U.S.–India deal was approved and India’s NSG exemption entered into force without any Chinese objections in 2008, China’s policy evolved to support demands by Pakistan for compensation, but China did not expressly advocate awarding Pakistan a broad exemption from NSG trade sanctions matching India’s.
The U.S. State Department, in line with its response to a 1998 reactor export from Russia to India, continues to hold that a new reactor export by China to Pakistan would be contrary to both NSG and U.S. policy, but whether the United States would record an objection at the NSG or encourage other NSG states to do so would be up to President Obama following interagency discussions and consultation with foreign governments including Pakistan and China.
Chinese officials said last month that export of the reactors to Pakistan would be justified in consideration of political developments in South Asia, including the entry into force of the U.S.–India deal and the NSG exemption for India. Western diplomats said China would not strongly favor an NSG exemption for Pakistan matching India’s because that would not additionally benefit Chinese industry and because Pakistan, compared to India, is a limited nuclear power market with far less infrastructure and far fewer financial resources.
We had to suffer so much including a scare of govt downfall for getting a nuclear deal and the world's evil proliferators - Pukistan gets it's reactors so easily.Should any NSG party object to these Chinese exports, the NSG would have no recourse to prevent the transaction, because its guidelines are not legally binding, leaving a decision to abide by the guidelines up to each sovereign member state.
Welcome to world of power politics. If Indian elite are not ready to play it right for the national interest then there is going to be change.Sen_K wrote:
We had to suffer so much including a scare of govt downfall for getting a nuclear deal and the world's evil proliferators - Pukistan gets it's reactors so easily.
And how would NSG member China itself import reactors from other NSG members if it broke consensus? This won't happen.Should any NSG party object to these Chinese exports, the NSG would have no recourse to prevent the transaction, because its guidelines are not legally binding, leaving a decision to abide by the guidelines up to each sovereign member state.
The plant, totally hidden in Fuling's Jinzishan mountain, saw its construction work start in 1967, but in 1984, when it was almost completed, the country called it off due to a favorable international environment for China. The plant was declassified in April 2002.
It is more than 20 kilometers long and has a total building area of 104,000 square meters. It also has 18 large main caves and more than 130 roads, branch caves, tunnels and vertical shafts. More than 60,000 people have worked for the plant during its 17-year-long construction.
While the Obama Administration was reported to have rejected the Pakistani request, there were indications that it was treating the A.Q.Khan affair as a closed chapter and was sympathetic to Pakistan's energy needs. The US has already made a commitment to help Pakistan improve its conventional energy production capacity.
While rejecting the Pakistani request for a nuclear agreement once again----though not as firmly as was repeatedly done by the Bush Administration--- did the Obama Administration indicate to China that it would not raise an objection to China's going ahead with its proposal for the construction of Chashma III and IV by accepting the Chinese interpretation that it did not attract the NSG safeguards? If so --- I am inclined to believe it is--- this is the second instance in which the Obama Administration has enlisted the co-operation of China in strengthening Pakistan's capacity in various fields.
But nuclear arms also have a significant moral distinction. Unlike other weapons, they are an effective means of preventing the large-scale wars and mass destruction of people, property and cultures that have plagued humanity throughout recorded history. To reject nuclear weapons and strive for their elimination is, no doubt, a moral aim, at least in the abstract. But it is feasible only if humanity changes.
Apparently, the advocates of eliminating nuclear weapons believe that such change is possible. I do not. Indeed, the risks of a world without nuclear weapons — or only a minimal number of them — are tremendous.
The Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership, announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month, will be set up in Delhi or its neighbourhood and involve first-of-its-kind training of security forces in the atomic field.
Of the nuclear-armed countries, Russia has an estimated 12,000 warheads, France about 300, China about 200 and Britain about 160.
There are four countries that are not signatories to the NPT but which have nuclear weapons or devices. According to the Natural Resources Defence Council, India has an estimated 250 warheads, Pakistan 100, North Korea 10 and Israel 80, though it has never confessed to possessing any weapons.
"The Obama administration's priority is to get the START treaty ratified," under secretary of state Ellen Tauscher told a press conference on the sidelines of a UN conference.
"That will take us through the legislative year," Tauscher said, adding that Obama will send the CTBT to the Senate "when the political conditions are right."
North Korea, India and Pakistan have not signed the CTBT and all three have carried out nuclear tests since 1996.
Another six countries -- the United States, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, China and Egypt -- have signed but not yet ratified the pact.
The CTBT cannot come into force until it is ratified by the required 44 states that had nuclear research or power facilities when it was adopted in 1996. Only 35 have done so.
The signals from Washington in the last two months were clearly in favour of civilian nuclear cooperation with Pakistan after a couple of think-tanks came to the conclusion that the imbalance in South Asia, created by the India-US nuclear deal, should be rectified.
Scholars like Professor Steve Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington openly favoured it, even though he thought that it would not happen. Even as the Obama [ Images ] administration kept denying it, Hillary Clinton [ Images ] hinted at a parallel approach to India and Pakistan on nuclear matters. The contours of a new nuclear landscape have emerged with the announcement that China will build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan to restore the nuclear balance in South Asia.
The curious thing about the deal is that the Non-proliferation ayatollahs in the US have reacted calmly to the news. Former US congresswoman Ellen Taucher, the new nonproliferation czar of the Obama administration's reaction was timid. 'These things take a long time. So I am going to wait and see,' she said. At best, she is accepting the inevitable, at worst; she is revealing complicity in the deal, which has been seen in Washington as a necessary evil.
What this will lead to is another few hundred nuclear weapons pointed at India and under that shield, a never ending export of violence, terrorism and Islamist extremism directed towards India.Interestingly, China does not seem to have claimed exemption under the 'grandfather clause' for the supply by arguing that the present deal was part of the 1985 agreement, which led to the construction of two reactors in Pakistan. The argument clearly is that the deal is necessary to restore the nuclear balance in South Asia, a right China arrogates to itself with the acceptance of the US.
Japan's controversial "fast-breeder" nuclear reactor reached criticality -- the point when a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining -- on Saturday following 14 years of suspension.
Gilani on Saturday said the world can now move "beyond safety and security concerns," the statement said. "These were laid to rest at the Nuclear Security Summit where Pakistan forcefully projected a forthright stance on the issue and the world expressed satisfaction at Pakistan's nuclear security arrangements."
I understand that many people claim that successful weapons can be made out of Reactor Grade Pu (containing some amount of Pu-240, Pu-241, Pu-242 etc) as well, apart from Pu-239, which of course, one would try to maximise.rohiths wrote:Chasma nuclear complex is supposed to be a light water reactor.
To the best of my knowledge one cannot produce weapons grade plutonium in a light water reactor. . . .