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However, it is clear that India will not enjoy the complete flexibility of a “voluntary offer safeguards agreement”, in particular, the ability to move facilities in and out of safeguards at will. Facilities that are declared “civilian” will have to stay “civilian”, certainly those that are imported. Reporting to the Lok Sabha on 6 March 2006, the Prime Minister Singh admitted this, saying [14]:
“India will place its civilian nuclear facilities under India-specific safeguards in perpetuity and negotiate an appropriate safeguards agreement to this end with the IAEA [my emphasis].” However, India will retain great flexibility in the designation of Indian-built facilities. The Indian Government document entitled Implementation of the India-United States Joint Statement of July 18, 2005:India’s Separation Plan [15] sets out the principles on which this designation is based. They are:
“Include in the civilian list only those facilities offered for safeguards that, after separation, will no longer be engaged in activities of strategic [ie military] significance. The overarching criterion would be a judgement whether subjecting a facility to IAEA safeguards would impact adversely on India’s national security. However, a facility will be excluded from the civilian list if it is located in a larger hub of strategic significance, notwithstanding the fact that it may not be normally engaged in activities of strategic significance.”
“A civilian facility would therefore, be one that India has determined not to be relevant to its strategic programme.” In practice, therefore Indian-built facilities that are essentially civilian in nature, but may have a subsidiary military function, will be deemed “military”, for example, power reactors producing electricity for the national grid will be deemed “military” if plutonium for military purposes is going to be extracted from their spent fuel.
Civilian/military split
India has 22 “thermal” nuclear power reactors in operation or under construction. The 6 foreign supplied reactors (2 by US at Tarapur, 2 by Canada and 2 under construction by Russia) are, or are scheduled to be, under IAEA safeguards. India has decided that these 6, and 8 other Indian-built reactors (as yet unspecified), are going to be designated “civilian” and put under IAEA safeguards by 2014. This leaves a further 8 Indian-built power reactors that will be designated “military”, presumably to allow plutonium for weapons production to be extracted. India also has a couple of “breeder” reactors, which are important for the production of plutonium. India has designated these as “military”.
For the future, to quote Prime Minister Singh in his report to the Lok Sabha on 6 March 2006 [14] : “India has decided to place under safeguards all future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian breeder reactors, and the Government of India retains the sole right to determine such reactors as civilian. This means that India will not be constrained in any way in building future nuclear facilities, whether civilian or military, as per our national requirements.”
He also announced that there would be no IAEA oversight of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (which he described as “a nuclear facility of high national security importance” or of “reprocessing and enrichment capabilities and other facilities associated with the fuel cycle for our strategic programme”. He was adamant that the separation plan would “not adversely affect our strategic programme” saying:
“There will be no capping of our strategic programme, and the separation plan ensures adequacy of fissile material and other inputs to meet the current and future requirements of our strategic programme, based on our assessment of the threat scenarios. No constraint has been placed on our right to construct new facilities for strategic purposes. The integrity of our Nuclear Doctrine and our ability to sustain a Minimum Credible Nuclear Deterrent is adequately protected. Our nuclear policy will continue to be guided by the principles of restraint and responsibility.”
Breaking the NPT?
Article I of the NPT requires:
“Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty … not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices … .”
In this context, India is a “non-nuclear-weapon” state, since it’s not one of the five defined by the NPT to be “nuclear-weapon” states. The proposed IAEA safeguards for India may ensure that nuclear material and equipment imported by India, and any nuclear material generated by imported equipment, is not used for weapons production. However, India’s ability to import nuclear material for civilian purposes may mean that indigenous material, which would otherwise have to be used for civilian purposes, is available for weapons production. The prime example of this is uranium, of which India has a limited supply. In other words, “nuclear-weapon” states that supply India with nuclear material and equipment may actually be in breach of their Article I duty “not in any way to assist” India with its weapons programmes.
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