TECHNOLOGY: Russia Breaks Nuclear Boycott on India

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Nov 9 2001 (IPS) - By finalising a deal to transfer two large nuclear power reactors to India, Russia this week broke an international boycott on transfer of nuclear equipment imposed as punishment when New Delhi first exploded a nuclear device almost 30 years ago.

Concluded in Moscow during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Nov 4-7 visit, the deal facilitates transfer of two reactors for a three billion dollar power station at Kudankulam village on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu where they are expected to generate 2,000 megawatts of power.

While the international boycott slowed down India’s ambitious nuclear programme it by no means halted it, either for the production of power or for defence, as demonstrated by a second round of tests in May 1998.

India is not a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not accept full-scope inspections of its nuclear facilities by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), established in 1975 and of which Russia is a member, prohibits the export of nuclear technology to countries which do not accept full-scope safeguards.

Indeed, soon after the present Bush administration took over, it demanded that Russia stop supplying nuclear fuel to reactors at the Tarapore power plant near Mumbai city although the plant observes full IAEA safeguards and was in fact originally installed by the U.S. power giant General Electric in 1969.

The U.S. stopped supplies of nuclear fuel for the reactors after 1974 but India kept the reactors running by sourcing fuel from France and China, apart from Russia which kept up supply even after the 1998 nuclear tests.

According to the influential Indian Express newspaper, Russia supplied 58 tonnes of low enriched uranium for Tarapore this year. The paper described it as “rare evidence that Moscow is prepared to defy Washington when it comes to its own strategic and business interests and its special relationship with New Delhi”.

Leading anti-nuclear and environmental groups like Greenpeace International have charged the Indian government with maintaining close links between its nuclear energy and its nuclear weapons programmes.

“It was technology acquired by India, ostensibly to generate nuclear electricity, that was used in the 1974 nuclear weapons test and subsequent tests in 1998,” says Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner, Ben Pearson.

When the U.S. passed its non-proliferation act in 1978 specifiying that nuclear reactors cannot be exported to countries that do not observe full-scope safeguards it was guided by Congressional findings that U.S. technology may have contributed to India’s 1974 nuclear tests.

Russia appears unconcerned by charges that India’s nuclear power and weapon programmes are linked. Last October Russian President Vladmir Putin even visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) near Mumbai which played a key role in “weaponisation.’

Those plans have compelled India’s neighbour and rival Pakistan to build its own bomb “even if it meant eating grass,” as the late Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhuutto once said famously.

Pakistan, which is off limits to foreign vendors, has benefited from supplies of nuclear technology and equipment, including reactors from its close ally China, which is the only major nuclear vendor which is not a signatory to the NSG.

By 1998 Islamabad had caught up with New Delhi and surprised the world by setting off a rivalling series of tests just days after the Indian explosions in May 1998.

Following the tests, relations between the neighbours deteriorated and the two countries were said to have been on the brink of a nuclear exchange when armed hostilites broke out at Kargil on the Line of Control (LoC) which divides the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The conclusion of the Kudankulam deal this week has not so far evoked any reaction from Washington and the Hindu newspaper’s analyst C. Raja Mohan has speculated that it might even serve as a cue for Washington to review its policy on non-cooperation with India in the civilian nuclear energy sector.

Since the United States favours designating nuclear power as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol it could end up losing out to Russia in partnering India’s stated goal of stepping up nuclear power generation to 20,000 megawatts by the year 2020 from the present 2280 megawatts.

While India has steadfastly refused to accept international safeguards for its indigenously built nuclear facilities, it accepts full- scope controls for facilities built with foreign collaboration.

Opposition to the building of the Kudankulam power station is now confined to local activists such as Mallika Rajendran and S.P. Udayakumar who have been organising demonstrations against the project in the coastal village.

According to the activists the project has all the makings of another Chernobyl and is being pushed through without making environmental, seismological or epidemiological assessments in a thickly- populated, poverty-stricken area of the country.