Illini Security Briefing: The US-India Nuclear Deal
Published: October 27, 2008
by Richelle Bernazzoli
Professor of Nuclear Engineering Clifford Singer responds to questions about likely future developments resulting from the nuclear agreement between India and the United States, now that it has cleared the final hurdles for approval.
As part of the deal, India will place its fourteen civilian nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. How much is known about the operations of the eight military facilities that will remain closed to outside scrutiny?
The design and operational status of the existing commercial nuclear electric power plants that will stay off the safeguarded list are well known, except perhaps for some details about the disposition of the weapons-usable material they produce. The new liquid sodium cooled ("fast") reactor into which some of the plutonium from these reactors is meant to feed has enough details published about its design that it has been possible for outside analysts to reach reasonable suppositions about its expected operation and performance. These facilities will not be "closed to outside scrutiny," but rather just not part of a complete safeguards regime.
Proponents of the deal argue that it represents a positive development for the global nonproliferation regime, as well as international stability in general. In what ways might the end of India's "outcast nuclear status" positively or negatively impact nuclear nonproliferation and other facets of international stability?
India's open access to global uranium markets is already undercutting the argument that it needs reprocessing and fast reactor development. Operation of the new fast reactor even at only 25-50% capacity factor will greatly unbalance the weapons-usable fissile material production rate between India and Pakistan. This is likely to be more a matter of perception on the part of Pakistan than actual Indian use of most of the available material to make nuclear explosives, but such perceptions can be important. Indian access to the global uranium market is a necessary but not sufficient condition for India to eventually either put its fast reactor program under safeguards or discontinue it; at least it opens the door to that possible eventual outcome if some of India's concerns about the nuclear arsenals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are addressed. For now, however, the "deal" as concluded missed an opportunity to engage India constructively on global nuclear weapons programs in a way that could have frozen South Asian nuclear arsenals straightaway.
What implications might this deal have for U.S. relations with Pakistan—a rival of India and a non-Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nuclear weapon state, but also an ally of the U.S. in the ongoing "War on Terror?"
The implications of the deal with respect to Pakistan are not unlike to those described above with India: a lost opportunity that will take hard work to regain.
Does India's newfound nuclear legitimacy, as part of a wider international nuclear industry revival, have the potential to significantly improve situations such as global warming and energy prices, as some supporters claim?
Not much. Global warming is the dog, and nuclear energy the tail. That is, constraints on carbon emissions could eventually improve the economic climate for nuclear energy, but slightly accelerating India's inevitable access to the global nuclear technology base will have very little impact on global warming. The U.S.-India nuclear deal will also have negligible impact on energy prices for decades to come, since the high capital cost of nuclear energy means that facilitating its adoption doesn't make energy appreciably cheaper overall.
Could the US position on other countries' nuclear ambitions, such as Iran's, be weakened by the current administration's decision to finalize this deal without requiring India to sign the NPT or to stop producing weapons-grade fissile material?
So it is claimed, but the India deal only sets a precedent of countries that have commercial nuclear power and have never signed the NPT (i.e. India and Pakistan). Countries that have signed the NPT have made a commitment that India never did. Israel's approach to nuclear materials and security has its own regionally determined dynamic and is very unlikely to be appreciably influenced by what happens to India.