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‘Reprocessing, core of nuclear programme’

Siddharth Varadarajan

Former BARC Director A.N. Prasad questions 123 agreement and Washington’s intentions

Having a shortage of natural uranium could not be a justification for proceeding with 123 deal
Dedicated reprocessing facility would reduce the flexibility of the Indian nuclear programme

New Delhi: The Hyde Act passed by the U.S. Congress last December turned the July 18, 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement into a “fiction” and it was hard to see how a ‘123 agreement’ meant to operationalise the deal would be able to reconcile these two documents, A.N. Prasad, a former Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, said here on Tuesday.

Speaking at a seminar on the nuclear deal organised by the Mumbai-based Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS), Dr. Prasad said the deal in its initial shape held out the promise of the Indian nuclear industry growing “out of its shell” and taking on a larger global role.

But subsequent developments, including the passage of the Hyde Act, made it clear the U.S. intention was to allow a selective lifting of restrictions aimed at undermining India’s indigenous programmes in the nuclear field.

The U.S., he said, wanted to benefit from the growing demand for nuclear power reactors in India and also tap India’s large human resource in the nuclear field for its own “moribund” domestic industry. But by denying India the right to reprocess the spent fuel produced by imported reactors and retaining its embargo on the sale of reprocessing, enrichment and heavy water equipment, it sought to undermine and weaken the Indian three-stage nuclear energy programme.

Dr. Prasad said India’s “crime” was to have a shortage of natural uranium but this could not be a justification for proceeding with the deal under such conditions. "We developed our three-stage programme based on the fact that there were limited uranium resources. In the 1950s, we said we will use this uranium in such a way to get to the thorium stage".

The key to this transition, he said, was reprocessing. But Washington did not want Indian policymakers to be patient. “They want to control and slow down our three-stage programme. Once we get hooked on to uranium imports, there will always be official reluctance to pursue this programme and funding won’t be given. It will get a bad beating,” he said.

Expressing concern at India’s “compromise” proposal for a dedicated reprocessing facility under permanent international safeguards, Dr. Prasad said such a facility would reduce the flexibility the Indian nuclear programme needed to keep costs down.

Reprocessing was a complex business and plants were prone to outages and breakdowns.

“If an unsafeguarded plant breaks down, we will not be able to send the un-safeguarded spent fuel that would normally be processed there to another facility because that would be under permanent safeguards rather than in “campaign” mode. We would thus have to wait for the maintenance cycle to be completed in the un-safeguarded plant before we could process the spent fuel. So in other words, we will lose the kind of flexibility that is needed to keep costs down. A permanently safeguarded reprocessing facility, therefore, will be quite an expensive proposition,” he contended.

Dr. Prasad also took exception to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent statement that all “patriotic Indians” should support the nuclear deal.

Such language reminded him of U.S. President George W. Bush’s “all those who are not with us are against us” statement during the Iraq war.

“The fact that he is influencing our Prime Minister to talk the same language is something that is really bothering me,” Dr. Prasad said.

The other speakers were security analyst Brahma Chellaney, Supreme Court advocate Rajeev Dhawan, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) D. B. Shekatkar of FINS and the former HRD Minister and BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi.

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