Defence scientists say that after the last tests they may no longer need to carry out further nuclear tests, should India choose to develop nuclear weapons, writes Rajiv Singh.
New Delhi: The UPA government has submitted a draft text of the safeguards agreement to the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) for clarification before formal ratification. The safeguards text, worked out with IAEA inspectors early this year, has been sent to the agency's 35-nation board in Vienna for approval.
The text reportedly envisages support for Indian efforts to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India's reactors.
The draft reportedly says that the Indian government may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies.
The draft also says that the Indian government will ensure that none of the materials produced in the safeguarded facilities shall be used for the manufacture of any nuclear weapon, or to further any other military purpose. Such material, according to the Indian government, shall be used for peaceful purposes only and not for the manufacture of any nuclear explosive device.
These provisions are already beginning to raise eyebrows amongst the international community of 'experts'. They are pointing to a number of 'ambiguities', which they say need to be clarified by the UN watchdog body before ratification.
The draft, according to certain Washington-based think tanks, contains several points that "raise questions that board members need to get clarity on", according to a report in the International Herald Tribune. The report quotes Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, as saying that the clause in the draft that says India "may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies," could potentially restrict international monitoring of India's atomic programme.
Disruption of fuel supplies, he argues, would happen only if India were to resume testing of nuclear weapons. "Does that mean that India intends to withdraw from what are supposed to be permanent safeguards if it tests and other states decide to terminate fuel supplies?" asks Kimball. "If so, that is a big problem and the Indian government has not clarified what that means," he said.
Kimball conveniently omits to look at the other - the Indian - side of the picture, where if a consortium of states, or any member of such a consortium of states, which supply nuclear fuel around the world, should act in an arbitrary manner and impose sanctions on India for any reason. In such an eventuality, the Indian state would need provisions to safeguard its interests. This is not just a theoretical position that India may adopt for the sake of argument, because it is evident from recent history that there is nothing to prevent supplier nations, belonging to different political camps in a polarised world, from acting in a unilateral manner.
As has become evident over the previous decade or so, at times the UN umbrella appears to unify the nations of the planet only in a nominal way.
Kimball also finds it ''abnormal'' that the Indian government has omitted to submit a list of reactors that it intends to place under IAEA scrutiny. He reasons that though India's motives are not clear, it may be that "they're trying to preserve their options to put some reactors in or take some out" from IAEA scrutiny, depending on future bilateral nuclear cooperation
Reports over the years have suggested that intense negotiations, both internal, amongst the Indian scientific community, and external, with US interlocutors, have finalised the number and types of nuclear facilities that will be placed under international safeguards. Indeed, it was only once these details were finalised between Indian and US teams that the Indo-US deal moved forward to the stage where it is today. There really is no great 'secret' that the Indian government is holding close to its chest here.
Till the deal reaches a stage where such details come into play meaningfully, such details are matters of academic interest, which the Indian government very sensibly may not feel like advertising internationally - particularly to members of Washington-based think tanks.
Long time watchers of the Indian subcontinent, such as Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also a supporter of the deal, is quoted as saying that fears of another Indian nuclear weapons test are theoretical and India risks too much by testing.
"With the investments that they have made in this deal, the incentives not to test actually grow," he said."
If India tests in the future, it will not be the first to test. It will test most likely in response to somebody else testing," added Tellis.
When the Buddha smiled
The debate, domestically at least, hinges around the nuclear deal ''impinging'' on our sovereignty in any way by preventing the country from testing nuclear weapons. Internationally, particularly amongst the non-proliferation lobby in the US, fears also revolve around the issue of testing and weaponisation. It may be useful to revisit the 1998 nuclear tests conducted by India for the clarifications that the scientific community had issued at that point of time.
Two years after the 1998 Pokharan nuclear explosions – the so-called 'Buddha smiles' tests - Dr R Chidambaram, then chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), confirmed some facts about the explosions in response to a persistent controversy regarding the supposed yields. He said that of the five nuclear devices exploded in Pokhran two years ago, "The 15 kiloton device was a weapon, which had been in the stockpile for several years. Others were weaponisable configurations." This then begged the question whether more tests were required to convert these "weaponisable configurations" into weapons.
For this we need to go back further in time to 1998, to a joint statement issued by then AEC chairman and the scientific adviser to the defence minister shortly after the nuclear tests. The statement said: "The three tests conducted on May 11, 1998, were with a fission device with a yield of about 12 kt, a thermonuclear device with a yield of about 43 kt and a sub-kilo tonne device. On May 13, 1998, two more sub-kilo tonne nuclear tests were carried out".
Further, the statement said, "The tests ... have provided critical data for the validation of our capability in the design of nuclear weapons of different yields for different delivery systems. These tests have significantly enhanced our capability in computer simulation of new designs and taken us to the stage of sub-critical experiments in the future, if considered necessary."
As should be evident from this last statement, the need for further testing is already significantly reduced - if not done away with altogether. In any case, if ''weaponisable configurations'' still need to be tested, the statement is unambiguous about the fact that India will conduct ''sub-critical experiments in the future, if necessary,'' as data from the tests had ''significantly enhanced'' capability in ''computer simulation of new designs.''
A Los Alamos laboratory text from September 2006 describes sub-critical testing in the following way: ''Sub-critical experiments examine the behaviour of plutonium as it is strongly shocked by forces produced by chemical high explosives. Subcritical experiments produce essential scientific data and technical information used to help maintain the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile. The experiments are subcritical; that is, the quantity of plutonium used is below the so-called critical mass required for a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, thus, there is no nuclear explosion.''
If there is no nuclear explosion then a lot of debate about ''nuclear testing'', and how its absence, thanks to the provisions of the nuclear deal, may impinge on our ''national sovereignty'' dies a natural death.
Amongst the defence scientific community, the debate would still continue – whether India had reached a level of sophistication and confidence that its weaponisation programme could move ahead on the basis of computer simulations, and that ''weaponisable configurations'' would not require field testing.
But then, it stands to reason that the scientific community would have already conducted this debate a long time back. The conclusions they would have drawn would have allowed the political establishment to proceed with the Indo-US nuclear deal.
India's defence and civilian scientists have had a critical role to play in the formulation of the nuclear deal. Their reluctance was perhaps the biggest hurdle the government had to cross. Once they came on board the process of settling details with US interlocutors really took off.
These scientists do not have axes to grind, the way the various political parties do. In more ways than one the debate over the nuclear deal (not just with the US but with the entire global community) should be dominated by what these experts say rather than politicos hogging the airwaves on every TV news talk show.
