(This article was first published in Vijay Times, 17 December 2006).
United States President George Bush is to sign the Hyde Act into law on Monday. The Act will govern the terms of a future India-US nuclear cooperation agreement. Although both the US and Indian establishments have claimed that the bill does not constrain India’s nuclear weapons programme, its critics in India are worried that several of the bill’s provisions are designed to do exactly that.
Firstly, the separation plan itself will have the effect of slowing down India’s production of reactor-grade plutonium, the basic fissile material for India’s plutonium-based weapons programme. It will also reduce the production of tritium, a special nuclear material that is essential to ‘boost’ fission weapons.
According to strategic expert Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, what’s even more worrying than the submission of 14 of the country’s 22 nuclear reactors into the safeguarded civilian programme is the commitment given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to shut down the Cirus nuclear reactor, which is a direct source for nearly 30 percent of the weapons-grade plutonium India produces each year.
But the separation plan in itself will not mean an end to the weapons programme in the short term. For one, India will retain eight nuclear reactors for military purposes. For another, India already has a large stockpile of reactor-grade plutonium, which can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium. India will also retain the option to build more reactors under the weapons programme.
However, the Hyde Act has sought to take care of the possibility that India will indeed be able to continue producing fissile material. Therefore, it stipulates that the US government should terminate nuclear cooperation with India, and force other nuclear suppliers to follow suit, if India steps up its military nuclear programme.
The Hyde Act has written in a number of reporting requirements which the US President will have to meet every year to satisfy the US Congress that civil nuclear cooperation with India is not contributing ‘‘in any way directly or indirectly’’ to India’s weapons programme.
These reporting requirements include details on how much uranium is mined and milled in India, how much reactor-grade plutonium is reprocessed in India (this can be gauged from hundreds of kilometres away from fumes of krypton gas given out during the reprocessing), and on how many weapons are being produced in India each year.
While the nuclear separation plan and the reporting requirements together seek to constrict the Indian military nuclear programme quantitatively, the most dangerous clause in the Hyde Act is Section 106 which stipulates that nuclear cooperation will be terminated if India conducts another explosive nuclear test. Not only is there no force majeure clause that allows India to withdraw from the nuclear cooperation agreement and from international inspections of its nuclear programme, Section 110 then goes on to prohibit India from conducting even sub-critical tests for its weapons programme. Such low-yield tests are allowed even under the terms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which India has not signed and which the US Congress too rejected.
According to former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board A Gopalakrishnan, ‘‘this deal will close all options for any future nuclear weapon tests by India, while Pakistan, China, the US will be free to further improve and expand their nuclear arsenal through future weapons tests. India will remain frozen in time with 1998 weapons technology, with not even the freedom to do low-power hydro-nuclear tests for ensuring the safety and reliability of our limited arsenal.’’ Indeed, the US itself has conducted a dozen sub-critical tests since announcing its own moratorium on explosive testing. It has also embarked upon programmes to build 150 plutonium pits a year as well as to extend the life of its nuclear arsenal beyond year 2040 through what is called the ‘Reliable Replacement Warhead’ programme.
