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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: safeguard

A Bridge Too Far?

28 Wed Jun 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Israel, Middle East, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on A Bridge Too Far?

Tags

CANDU, Fast Breeder Reactor, FBR, hydroelectric power, IAEA, India, Indo-US nuclear deal, International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel, Leviathan, Mari-B, natural gas, Negev, Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, NSG, nuclear energy, Nuclear Suppliers Group, OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PFBR, PHWR, Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor, Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, renewable, safeguard, Shivta, Tamar

Perhaps the most substantial show of friendship India can make towards Israel is to offer cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Some might argue that a complete disavowal of the Palestinian cause and close diplomatic alignment with Israel would be a greater commitment, especially given Jerusalem’s craving for international recognition and normalisation, but an alliance with a middle power who does not have veto power in the United Nations has too many limitations to be worth much. Nuclear cooperation, however, holds far more allure for two critical reasons: one, it has an immediately utilitarian dimension, and two, pace what some academics have argued about prestige, nuclear commerce is tightly controlled by an international cabal who have deemed Israel ineligible to receive nuclear material.

Yet what will nuclear cooperation with Israel look like? Is Israel even interested in nuclear energy? Can India conduct nuclear commerce with a country that is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or have any sort of tacit acceptance such as the waiver India received from the Nuclear Suppliers Group? Will it invoke sanctions? What would be the ramifications for India? Is India capable of becoming a nuclear vendor? There are several questions that deserve careful thought before either country embarks upon such a venture.

Is Israel interested in nuclear energy?

Israel’s present installed electricity generating capacity is close to 17 GW, putting it in the same league as other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. If the country maintains an economic growth of five percent, energy requirements will rise to approximately 45 GW by 2050.

Israel’s policy of amimut – a Hebrew word meaning opacity – regarding its nuclear weapons programme has meant that it has shied away about discussing anything nuclear in public. However, calls for the country to invest in nuclear energy began in 1976 and continued throughout the 1980s. A site in the Negev desert at Shivta was reserved for a nuclear power plant with a generating capacity of 3,000 MW in 1980. Early in the new millennium, the became more frequent early in the new millennium. In February 2007, Uri Bin-Nun, an official at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, said that Director General Gideon Frank had told him that Israel was actively considering building a nuclear power plant in the Negev. Barely six months later, infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer declared that building a nuclear power plant is a national priority and the proposal had the support of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The tsunami at Fukushima also threw water on enthusiasm for nuclear energy in Israel. In an interview with CNN, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that he was having second thoughts about nuclear power after Fukushima. However, Israel’s precarious energy situation meant that calls for nuclear energy would soon resurface. In 2015, the Ministry of Infrastructure raised the test balloon in a report that called for private sector participation in a nuclear energy programme. In an energy plan that forecast the doubling of Israel’s energy needs by 2030, the Ministry of Infrastructure suggested that at least 15 percent of Israel’s energy come from nuclear power by 2050.

Israel’s energy needs are not merely a matter of fuelling the economy – Jerusalem is very conscious of its energy security as well as the environment. After its diversification from coal to natural gas in the late 1990s, Israel discovered what would become the Mari-B gas field off the coast by Ashdod. Within a decade, natural gas became the country’s primary source of energy. Demand became so high that gas had to be imported from Egypt. However, the agreement had to be cancelled after seven years (2005-2012) due to political turmoil and terrorism and this experience underscored Israel’s vulnerability to Jerusalem. The discovery of the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields in 2009 and 2010 has given Israel a new lease of life, at least for the next 50 years, and plans are afoot to even begin exports to Europe; since January 2017, Israel began to quietly export gas to Jordan.

Israel also has no hydroelectric power to speak of, so it must rely entirely on fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear power. Its move away from coal was partly due to environmental factors but also due to rising cost of imports; however, reliance on natural gas is still not quite environmentally friendly if Israel is to meet European emissions standards. More importantly, natural gas can serve as a reliable and valuable source of revenue if other energy sources can be found. Israel has invested in renewable energy and despite several remarkable startups in the sector, the government is not particularly enthusiastic about renewables due to its several shortcomings such as low efficiency, storage issues, water demands, land requirements, and grid stability. That leaves Israel with only nuclear energy.

Can India become a nuclear vendor to Israel?

At first glance, India seems a most unlikely nuclear partner for Israel. After all, how can a country which cannot sustain its own nuclear programme be of use to anyone else? It is true that the Indian Department of Atomic Energy has countless weaknesses but with a little political prodding, the DAE might just be able to assist Israel and in doing so revive its own domestic agenda. Despite its shortcomings, India does have the second-largest fleet of pressurised heavy water reactors in the world and decades of experience in building, operating, and maintaining them.

Globally, PHWRs are not the common choice for power generation; light water reactors have been preferred by the non-proliferation-minded governments of nuclear vendors. Yet with appropriate safeguards, this should not matter much to the international community which has experience in monitoring Canada’s 19 CANDU reactors of a technology similar to that which inspired Indian derivatives.

India’s reactors have the added benefit of being cheaper and smaller than the standard production models offered by Areva, General Electric, Rosatom, or Westinghouse. While these firms offer reactors with capacities between 1,000 and 1,650 MW, Indian models come at 220 MW, 540 MW, and 700 MW. The smaller size may suit Israeli needs better by allowing it to distribute reactors between three or four sites around the country. Admittedly, Israel may indeed prefer small modular reactors to even the diminutive Indian PHWRs but those models are yet to have a single working model even if Israel were eligible to purchase them.

It is not advisable to compare reactor costs across sites and technologies due to the dozens of variables that could change. However, as a rough illustration showcasing the viability of Indian nuclear exports, the two Russian 1,000 MW VVERs at Kudankulam III & IV cost India just short of ₹40,000 crores; by comparison, India’s 700 MW PHWRs at RAPS VII & VIII cost ₹12,300 crores and ₹11,500 crores at Kakrapar III & IV.

The biggest obstacle to India’s domestic nuclear manufacturing has been that no industrial house is willing to invest in the nuclear sector due to the paucity of orders. If India aggressively pursued nuclear energy for itself as well as for export purposes, it is a reasonable bet that there would be greater interest. India’s recent decision to approve ten more PHWRs for itself is a shot in the arm and if an order for 20 Israeli reactors over the next 30 years were to trickle in, it could reshape the industry.

There is also the issue of quality control. Indian manufacturers have had trouble producing nuclear grade turbines, instrumentation panels, and other equipment to an international standard. Cooperation with Israel need not be a one-way street – if Israeli know-how could augment Indian experience, these minor irritations might well disappear. This does require working with a level of openness the Indian establishment is not used to but it is a good measure to build character!

The biggest challenge to an Indian nuclear partnership will be its inability to provide full spectrum service. Delhi may be able to supply the reactors, manufacture fuel rods, train Israel to operate and maintain them, even buy back the used fuel to assuage proliferation concerns but it cannot guarantee a supply of uranium ore or yellow cake. India’s domestic production is shrouded in unwarranted secrecy but it relies on imports from Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The only way for India to emerge as a full spectrum nuclear vendor is by acquiring uranium mines abroad. This would help with domestic use as well as export and is a sound option that Delhi has anyway been considering, regardless of whether India cooperates with Israel in the nuclear field.

Another option for India to break out of the commercial nuclear stranglehold it finds itself in is to prioritise its thorium reactor programme. India is a leader in this kind of advanced nuclear technology and it is blessed with mineral resources to last centuries. With a technology chain from mining to decommissioning entirely outside the influence of the NSG cartel, India has the ability to emerge as the Saudi Arabia of safe and clean energy. The benefits of such ambition are accrued not only domestically but also contribute towards global environmental health. India can assure Israel and its other clients of full-spectrum service in thorium energy if it ever proceeds with its development.

What are the geopolitics of Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation?

This is the real question the proposal for Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation boils down to. How will the international community react to the news? What will be their counter-moves? Can India and Israel bear the costs, if any? Are the benefits worth the price?

Legally, India stands in a unique space to offer Israel nuclear cooperation if it so desires. It is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty nor is it a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the primary cartel that restricts trade in nuclear technology, components, and fuel. Technically, Delhi breaks no laws by extending nuclear cooperation to Israel. Itself a non-signatory to the discriminatory NPT, India is perfectly placed to accept Israel’s refusal to accede to the treaty – albeit the reasons are somewhat different.

The primary concern for the international community, in principle, should be the diversion of civilian cooperation to military applications. To reassure the world, and because it is a better business practice, India can ask Israel to accede to safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency to those specific facilities India will be a partner in or offer a bilateral safeguards mechanism that follows the same protocols. The primary principle of non-proliferation reassured, the international community is but left with a sore nose at this circumvention of their net.

Used nuclear fuel is usually a concern for non-proliferation. India can buy back the used reactor fuel from Israel for use in its eventually coming fast breeder reactor programme. If the FBR programme shows promise, Israel might even be interested in recycling its used fuel with help from India. In a worst case situation, the fuel can be stored in an onsite facility until a suitable geological depository is found as is the case with all current nuclear power plants.

Will cooperation with Israel hurt India’s chances of furthering its own goals, such as getting into the NSG? Theoretically, perhaps. However, with China waiting to veto any mention of India and membership in the same breath, this really need not concern Delhi at all; its chances of getting into the nuclear cartel are as close to zero as one can get. The only way India might squeeze into the NSG is if Delhi is willing to let Pakistan off the hook and give it a clean chit for past transgressions. This is what “principles-based membership criteria” means and it is too high a price to even consider.

It is folly to even think that India is now a partial member of the nuclear community. Barring a handful of countries keen to do deals with it, the hurdles other countries place before Indian aspirations indicates that Delhi is resentfully seen as an interloper with powerful friends. India can expect further outrage from the non-proliferation community through at least these NSG members. Yet legally, India and Israel will have all their bases covered.

It may be tempting to compare Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation to the Indo-US nuclear deal but it s not – neither India nor Israel are part of the non-proliferation architecture built around the NPT and NSG, freeing to engage in contracts of mutual benefit without restrictions. Regardless, the 2008 deal does establish a precedent and provide a structure for acceptable nuclear commerce outside the strict ambit of the non-proliferation regime. As with India, the non-proliferation community might decide that it is safer to have Israel’s reactors within the fold than without.

Much will depend on how the United States reacts, and as a close ally of Israel, Washington might be amenable to reason. India and Israel may also count on some assistance in lubricating the wheels of power in Washington through the influence of the famed Jewish diaspora. The deal, not a matter of identity or ideology, should not get caught in the internecine conflict in the American Jewish community. Israel has also been cultivating China, mainly for economic interests, who will have to choose between its relationship with Israel and its rivalry with India. The main opposition will likely come from the non-proliferation lobby, or nuclear ayatollahs, as Indian scholar Bharat Karnad has aptly named them.

Conclusion

Nuclear energy is not merely about a diversification of energy sources for Israel. World over, nuclear power plants have proven to have a multiplier effect on the local economy. The Shivta site, for example, would fit perfectly into Jerusalem’s other goal of developing the Negev. Additionally, nuclear power allows cheap desalination of large quantities of water from the waste heat generated by the reactors. A 15 percent share of total national energy creates a need for a fair number of reactors that can ease the pressure off Israel’s water supply. Tamil Nadu has operated desalination plants for over a decade from the waste heat of nuclear power stations in the state. Finally, a booming nuclear industry will also mean high-skilled employment opportunities for the population.

For India, nuclear cooperation will cement relations with an important strategic partner. It will also promote trade and strengthen the nuclear manufacturing sector by providing greater volume to make it lucrative for more players. A nuclear relationship with Israel would in effect set up a parallel nuclear commerce system to the NSG: if they wish to influence Indian policy, they must do so by letting India into the club.

Of course, all of this may be too soon for a country that has itself come in from the nuclear cold barely a decade ago. India, to paraphrase the immortal line of Lt. General Frederick Browning in the 1977 World War II classic, A Bridge Too Far, may be trying to go a bridge too far. People probably said the same thing about the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2005.

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We Have A Framework!

03 Fri Apr 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Iran, Middle East, Nuclear, United States

≈ Comments Off on We Have A Framework!

Tags

Additional Protocol, Arak, centrifuge, Code 3.1, E3+3, enrichment, Ernest Moniz, Federica Moghierini, Gérard Araud, heavy water, Heavy Water Reactor, HWR, IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, IR-40, Iran, Javad Zarif, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Lausanne, Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, nuclear, plutonium, PMD, possible military dimensions, reprocessing, safeguard, sanctions, United States, uranium

Late in the night, Indian Standard Time, news emerged from Lausanne that a framework for a nuclear agreement between Iran and the E3+3 (France, Germany Britain + Russia, United States, China) had been agreed upon. Lausanne, the small and picturesque Swiss town on the shores of Lac Léman, has been the latest host to dozens of diplomats, lawyers, and nuclear scientists involved in the long and difficult negotiations over the state of Iran’s nuclear obligations. A short joint press conference by Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, and Federica Moghierini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, announced to the world that a significant milestone had been reached and that an agreement would be drafted by June 30. More than elation, tiredness marked the faces of the two diplomats. This last phase of discussions had gone late into the night for the previous two days and even these were only the tip of an 18-month long conversation between Iran and the E3+3.

The outcome of the negotiations has been hailed in the expected corners as well as condemned by the usual suspects. If this framework holds and a final agreement is inked by June 30, this will be one of the few times in recent memory that diplomacy has held sway over force. Barring the Cuban Missile Crisis, few major international squabbles in the past century have been solved through negotiations. So much so that we might have even forgotten what compromise looks or feels like – either side is satisfied but not content. The same is the case with the Iran talks. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Republicans might prefer total supplication and abject surrender from Iran but there is as much chance of achieving that – even through war – as there is of the West giving Iran a clean chit on its nuclear activities.

The framework is far more elastic than it appears at first sight. Though the United States has released a fact sheet and the US Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, made a statement, these are just US interpretations of what has been agreed upon and Iran has not signed off on them yet. Iran’s only public commitment is stated in the joint statement made by Zarif and Moghierini. Troubling to some, the framework has been portrayed in a different light by Iranian leaders in Persian to their domestic audience than Western negotiators have to their citizens. This was also seen in November 2013 when the Joint Plan of Action was first agreed to and is nothing to be alarmed about. It would hardly be healthy for the life of the framework if Iranian President Hasan Rouhani portrayed the JCPOA to the clerics and common Iranians as an American victory or an Iranian submission any more than for US President Barack Obama to tell the US Congress that Iran outwitted the United States and the Europeans in the negotiations. Such diplomatic license must be allowed in reading the behaviour of politicians.

Nonetheless, that statement still gives several reasons for optimism. The parameters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, at the very least, assures the world that Iran’s Heavy Water Reactor at Arak will not be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, that its enrichment capacity, level, and stockpile will be limited for a specified duration, and that there will be no enrichment facility other than at Natanz. Reprocessing is forbidden Iran and spent fuel will be exported. Tehran will also accept the modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements of the International Atomic Energy Agency and nuclear-related sanctions will be removed upon IAEA verification of Iran’s safeguards.

The Devil, as they say, is in the details and these will not be known until the final agreement is drafted. Iran hawks warn that the JCPOA does not go far enough but several experts seem to have confidence that the agreement will lead to something more substantial by the end of June. Many are in fact surprised that Iran conceded so much at all though they will hold the champagne until the deal is signed and implemented. To get into specifics, first, Iran will retain the right to enrich uranium. Yet it has agreed to limit this to 3.67 percent for at least 15 years and not build any new enrichment facilities for at least as long. Tehran is allowed only 6,104 centrifuges under the agreement, a far cry from the 19,000 operational presently. The excess centrifuges will be stored under IAEA supervision and will be accessed only as replacement for operating centrifuges. In addition, all operational centrifuges will be IR-1, that is, Iran’s more inefficient first generation equipment. It has also been agreed that Iran will not maintain a stockpile of uranium enriched to 3.67 percent greater than 300 kgs; presently, the country has 10,000 kgs of low-enriched uranium. It is not clear whether the excess will be downblended or exported but either way, it will not go into the Iranian nuclear programme in its present state. In conjunction, it is estimated that were Iran to try and make a nuclear device – it will certainly not be a bomb – the breakout time would be at least a year as opposed to the three months at present.

Second, Fordow – the secret site that was revealed by the United States, France, and Britain in 2009 – will be converted into a research centre. It may work on nuclear related matters but not enrichment research for at least 15 years. The facility will neither enrich nor store uranium for the same period. Almost two-thirds of the nuclear infrastructure at Fordow will be removed; it will have 1,044 centrifuges remaining but these will not be used to enrich uranium and will be placed under IAEA safeguards. This means that the only facility at which Iran can enrich uranium is Natanz, where 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges will be allowed to operate. The thousand IR-2M centrifuges will be removed and placed in safeguarded storage for 10 years. Iran’s other more advanced centrifuges are similarly prohibited for ten years. Research related to the development of advanced centrifuges will be limited for ten years and after that, subject to IAEA supervision.

Third, the IAEA will have regular and even continuous access in some cases to Iran’s entire nuclear fuel cycle. Its uranium mines will be under continuous surveillance for 25 years and its centrifuge manufacturing facilities for 20 years.Natanz and Fordow will, of course, come under safeguards and all of Iran’s technological and material procurements will be channeled through the IAEA. The JCPOA suggests that Iran will implement the modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements with the IAEA; this requires it to give early notification to the IAEA when it constructs new nuclear facilities. The statement released by the United States says that Iran will accept the IAEA’s Additional Protocol but the joint press release suggests that this acceptance will be provisional and temporary. One can guess that Iran’s provisions refer to other promises made by the E3+3 but what it means by temporary acceptance is yet unclear. Though the US statement says that the IAEA will have the authority to investigate suspicious activities, Iran will likely question the definition of “suspicious activities.” The US seems to be sure that Iran will confess to its past work on the possible military dimensions of nuclear research but this is unlikely. This is also, thankfully, the least bothersome of the clauses and may be honoured more in the breach than the observed if the other clauses are satisfactorily implemented.

Fourth, Iran has agreed to redesign and rebuild the HWR at Arak. The core of the IR-40 will in fact be removed and destroyed, making it impossible to produce weapons-grade plutonium in the reactor. Iran has agreed not to reprocess fuel and will export its spent fuel out of the country for the reactor’s lifetime. Tehran has agreed to abjure from building any more HWRs for the next 15 years and it will not accumulate heavy water in quantities greater than is needed for the operation of the research reactor at Arak.

These are substantial compromises from Iran. In exchange, the nuclear-related sanctions against it will be removed upon verification by the IAEA that Iran has livedup to its safeguards and transparency commitments. UN Security Council resolutions shall be lifted under similar conditions. Interestingly, the greatest hurdle in the rapid re-imposition of sanctions upon an Iranian breach of faith would come not from Iran but Russia, a member of the E3+3. Moscow has long stated that snap-back sanctions bypass the veto in the UNSC and it is not willing to give up that right. From Russia’s point of view, it may no longer be interested in maintaining sanctions on Iran or it might want to leverage it against the United States if the geopolitics has shifted significantly at a later date. How the United States and its European allies convince the Russians to agree to a snap-back remains to be seen.

The details in the JCPOA has surprised many observers as have Iran’s substantial compromises. A two-thirds reduction in the number of centrifuges, the restriction on enrichment, a small stockpile, and the unprecedented access promised to the IAEA were beyond what anyone had expected. This has led many to wonder if there are any major discrepancies between the Iranian understanding of the framework and the US interpretation. However, when asked on Twitter, Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, said that the Iranians had agreed to the detailed parameters of the US interpretation. The discussions over the final draft will address how much sanctions relief and when is appropriate for how much safeguards. If even three quarters of this framework is implemented, it will still be an excellent outcome.

To those who remain unconvinced, it might be useful to reflect on the idea that no guarantee is absolute and no agreement is perpetual. Iran may well manage to develop a nuclear device on the sly despite all these safeguards. Geopolitical alignments may change and it may become convenient to look the other way as was the case with Israel and Pakistan. No country will ever adhere to an agreement that runs contrary to its national interests. That is a reality one must come to terms with.

Finally, the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is not about its sovereign right to engage in such endeavours. These long negotiations are about Iran’s failure to keep its word once it signed and ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty. One wonders what would have happened in a world where the Shah of Iran was not persuaded by Richard Nixon to accede to the NPT. As for the hypocrisy of the “recognised” nuclear powers in their disarmament and proliferation obligations, power is the ultimate arbitrator.


This post appeared on FirstPost on April 04, 2015.

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Making Sense of India’s Plutonium Stocks

22 Tue Jan 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Making Sense of India’s Plutonium Stocks

Tags

AEC, Bhavini, energy, FBR, India, Kalpakkam, NPCIL, nuclear, PFBR, PHWR, plutonium, RGPu, safeguard, WGPu

It was recently reported that the commissioning of the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has been further delayed, this time due to a shortage of plutonium. Touted as a one-of-a-kind reactor, the PFBR boasts of some of the latest safety mechanisms and will use a mixed oxide fuel of PuO2-UO2. India’s Atomic Energy Commission intends to follow the PFBR with two more Commercial FBRs whose construction will start in 2017, and three more CFBRs by 2020 before scaling up to 1,000 MW reactors. However, with the PFBR, cost overruns have been as high as 62%, raising initial estimates of Rs. 3,500 crores to a final Rs. 5,677 crores.

Ignoring the wonders of thorium for now, it is indeed puzzling why India would have a shortfall of plutonium. India has been operating multiple reactors capable of generating plutonium as a byproduct – Cirus (1960-2010) and Dhruva (1985) for weapons grade plutonium, and 17 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, of which only six are under safeguards (RAPS I, II with Canada, Tarapur I, II with US, and Kudankulam I, II with Russia). This leaves about 4,000 MW of India’s 5,730 MW nuclear capacity unsafeguarded, an important consideration since India has refused to designate the PFBR as a civilian facility. A separation of Indian nuclear facilities, civilian or military, is mandated by the agreements the country entered into in 2008 with the United States, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and as per the nuclear non-proliferation concept of “contamination,” any unsafeguarded material that goes through a safeguarded facility comes under safeguards.

The amount of plutonium – or any fissile material – a country has is difficult to calculate precisely, particularly a country like India that, until recently, fell outside the non-proliferation regime. Experts estimate Cirus to be capable of producing about 9.2 kgs and Dhruva of 23 kgs of weapons-grade plutonium per annum if run at a reasonable 70% load factor. Thus, Cirus should have yielded about 359 kgs of WGPu by the time it was decommissioned in 2010, and Dhruva 552 kgs until the end of 2012. In addition to the 911 kgs of WGPu (some 130 kgs of which has been used in India’s six nuclear tests as well as to fuel some of India’s test reactors such as Purnima), India’s PHWRs have also contributed to the overall national stockpile with their reactor-grade plutonium. The amount of RGPu produced by the PHWRs over the years is even harder to ascertain with any certainty since Indian PHWRs have been used to experiment with various fuel cycles to conserve India’s small uranium reserves, the outputs of which are not the same. Assuming the use of natural uranium only and a load factor of 73%, approximately 16 tonnes of RGPu should have been produced. The actual figure is likely to be lower – nine tonnes according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials – due to use of depleted uranium and recycled uranium from LWRs, as well as U-PU and Th-Pu MOX fuel cycles. Nonetheless, even the lower range estimates do not point to a potential plutonium shortfall for the PFBR.

However, plutonium stockpiles are measured in terms of reprocessed fissile material, not spent fuel. India’s fuel reprocessing facilities, the Power Reactor Reprocessing Plant (PREFRE) at Tarapur and the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant (KARP), are capable of handling 150 tonnes and 100 tonnes respectively of spent fuel per annum. However, Kr-85 plumes – used for nuclear monitoring – from both sites are far below expectations for plants running at maximum potential. If claims that the PFBR project has been delayed due to shortage of plutonium are true, it would mean that India’s reprocessing facilities have been operating at less than 20% capacity. Even low estimates of spent fuel produced and the amount of RGPu contained therein indicate a healthy stockpile for a small nuclear power. Though India’s rickety nuclear infrastructure is known to have interminable hiccoughs, less-than-20% efficiency would represent a new low.

The shortage in plutonium for the PFBR is highly unlikely to be due to a diversion of RGPu to India’s weapons stockpile; nor is a “loan” from the military stockpile likely to help the reactors much. The former is unlikely due to the higher percentage of Pu-240 and Pu-241 in RGPu; Pu-240 is unreliable for weapons as it experiences spontaneous fission and could result in a premature explosion, while Pu-241’s relatively short half-life makes it unsuitable for long storage (fissile core may not retain criticality). Similarly, though supplementing RGPu with WGPu even temporarily is technically possible, it gives diminished results – RGPu contains Pu-240 which gets converted to Pu-241, a better fissile material than Pu-239.

Under the Separation Plan that New Delhi has agreed to under the framework of the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, India will be placing most of its PHWRs under IAEA safeguards. This will reduce RGPu supplies to approximately 50% of pre-Plan levels by 2014. The PFBR itself will not be safeguarded, nor will the reprocessing plants. This seems to be to retain a secondary plutonium source for India’s military programme, which would normally be catered to by dedicated military reactors such as Dhruva (as an aside, though Cirus was shut down in 2010, there is no news of the planned Dhruva II). If there are shortages of plutonium with more reactors free of safeguards, the situation could become quite acute when supplies are reduced. The hope that the PBFR will itself be a source of plutonium will have to remain a hope for a few more years as experts have questioned the doubling time – the time it takes for the reactor to generate enough plutonium to start a second similar reactor – that has been projected. This means that India’s ambitious plans of having five CFBRs by 2020 will join the list of overly optimistic declarations India’s nuclear establishment has made an art form out of.

One can hope that as India’s civilian-designated reactors come under IAEA safeguards through 2014, there will be a little more transparency in their operation. Right now, the Government of India has conflated secrecy with security and the nuclear establishment remains impervious to outside scrutiny. To be fair, there may be some justification to this opacity as capital cities world over are notorious for information leaks. However, it defeats the purpose when secrecy becomes a hindrance in intra-department or intra-agency operations and hurts the outcome. Nuclear concerns like the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd, and Bhavini are ultimately responsible to the Atomic Energy Commission, which in turn is answerable to the Prime Minister’s Office. That is where the ossification starts, and that is where the first step towards efficiency must be taken.


This post appeared on Tehelka Blogs on January 23, 2013.

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Chirps

  • How California's Jewish community won the battle against the state's education system: bit.ly/2ZZ8pcg | Fi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 51 minutes ago
  • US diplomat openly calls for Christian nation-states, rails against Jews: politi.co/3sxwl30 | I guess the "op… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago
  • Korean boy-band yet again the subject of racism in Germany: bit.ly/2ZXA8dm | Radio host at Bayern3 Matthia… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 18 hours ago
  • Today, in 2001, Mullah Omar issued a decree that ordered the destruction of all non-Islamic sanctuaries in Afghanis… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
  • China gives US diplomats anal Wuhan virus test: bit.ly/2ZTic3W | *seriously, no comment* 😷😶...🤣 1 day ago
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