The Hindu : Front Page : India insisted on refuel for reactors’ lifetime

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 23, 2007
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India insisted on refuel for reactors’ lifetime

T.S. Subramanian

New Delhi made it clear to Washington that linking fuel supplies to a nuclear test was not acceptable

U.S. insistence on a ban on nuclear test was more of a sentimental issue for India
There was the question of what India would do if China or Pakistan were to conduct a test

CHENNAI: The fundamental issue during the protracted negotiations between India and the United States on the nuclear cooperation agreement was India’s insistence on a U.S. guarantee that India will receive fuel supplies for the lifetime of reactors that it plans to import under the agreement.

Sources said India took a very uncompromising position on this.

According to the March 2, 2006 Separation Plan, the U.S. assured India that it would support an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors.

If, despite these arrangements, a disruption of fuel supplies to India occurred, the United States and India would jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include countries such as Russia, France and the United Kingdom to pursue measures that would restore fuel supply to India.

The Hyde Act

Despite this assurance in the Separation Plan, the Hyde Act of the U.S. threatened to cut off nuclear fuel supplies to India and take back the nuclear reactors equipment supplied to India if New Delhi were to conduct a nuclear test. The U.S. also threatened that it would not allow other countries to supply nuclear fuel to India.

Informed sources said these threats were the real issue and India made it clear during the negotiations that the U.S. linking fuel supplies to a nuclear test was not acceptable to it.

Giving in to these threats amounted to India jumping into a deep well, blind-folded, the informed official said. “When we will be spending billions of rupees in building these mega, imported reactors, the U.S. threat that it will cut off the nuclear fuel supply and take back the reactors equipment if India were to conduct a nuclear test was very, very difficult to accept.”

He stressed that fuel supply guarantee was a very vital issue. And rightly so. The fuel supply should continue for the lifetime of the reactors to be imported.

Past experience

What was at the back of India’s mind when it was unrelenting on this issue was the Tarapur experience. General Electric of the U.S. built two Light Water Reactors at Tarapur in Maharashtra, both of which began generating electricity from 1969. The U.S. had agreed to supply fuel for both the reactors for 30 years. However, when India conducted a peaceful nuclear experiment (PNE) at Pokhran in 1974, the U.S. stopped the supply of enriched uranium fuel for the two reactors. India had to run from pillar to post to get enriched uranium from other countries such as France, Russia and China.

The official said:

“Anybody will appreciate that India will not take the risk of spending billions of rupees in importing reactors when there is no guarantee of fuel supply for the lifetime of the imported reactors. So we took a very clear position.”

The U.S. insistence that India should not conduct a nuclear test was more of a sentimental issue for India, he said.

After India conducted five nuclear tests at Pokhran in May 1998, the then Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, declared a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests. The Joint Statement by Prime Minister Manmohan and U.S. President George W. Bush in July, 2005 also said India’s voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests would continue.

The official said: “When India is saying that it will not conduct any nuclear tests, the U.S. insistence that India cannot conduct any more nuclear tests amounted to ordering India that it shall not conduct any tests at all. Besides, there was the question of what India would do if China or Pakistan were to conduct a nuclear test.”

Dedicated facility

There was nothing new about India’s offer to build a separate, dedicated facility for reprocessing the spent fuel from the reactors that India would import. This was a via media that India offered when the U.S. insisted that India could not reprocess the spent fuel from the reactors to be imported. India had mastered the technology of reprocessing.

It had 40 years of experience in reprocessing the spent fuel from its reactors and it had reprocessing facilities at Trombay, Tarapur and Kalpakkam.

India’s offer of a new, separate, dedicated facility for reprocessing the spent fuel from the reactors to be imported will be an answer to non-proliferation lobbies in the U.S. who alleged that India would use reprocess the spent fuel to make nuclear weapons. For, the dedicated facility would come under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards, the official pointed out.

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