and India's
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exchange greetings in New Delhi on 2 March 2006 In spite of the overall adequacy of its uranium reserves, Indian power plants could not get the necessary amount of uranium to function at full capacity in the late 2000s, primarily due to inadequate investments made in the uranium mining and milling capacity resulting from fiscal austerity in the early 1990s. One study done for U.S. Congress in that time period reaches the conclusion, "India's current fuel situation means that New Delhi cannot produce sufficient fuel for both its
nuclear weapon programme and its projected civil nuclear programme." An independent study arrives at roughly the same conclusion, "India's current uranium production of less than 300 tons/year can meet at most, two-thirds of its needs for civil and military nuclear fuel." This uranium shortfall during the deal negotiations was understood by both players to be a temporary aberration that was poised to be resolved with requisite investments in India's uranium milling infrastructure.
Drivers for the deal from the Indian side It was estimated that after attaining 21 GW from nuclear power by 2020, further growth might require imported uranium. This is problematic because deployment of third stage requires that 50 GW be already established through the first and second stages. If imported uranium was made available,
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) estimated that India could reach 70 GW by 2032 and 275 GW by 2052. In such a scenario, the third stage could be made operational following the fast breeder implementation, and nuclear power capacity could grow to 530 GW. The estimated stagnation of the nuclear power at about 21GW by 2020 is likely due to the fact that even the short "doubling time" of the breeder reactors is quite slow, on the order of 10–15 years. Implementing the three-stage programme using the domestic uranium resources alone is feasible, but requires several decades to come to fruition. Imports of fissile material from outside would considerably speed up the programme. As per research data, the U238–Pu cycle has the shortest doubling time by a large margin, and that technology's compounded yearly fissile material growth rate has been calculated as follows, after making some basic assumptions about the operating features of the fast breeder reactors. Indian power generation capacity has grown at 5.9% per annum in the 25-year period prior to 2006. If Indian economy is to grow at 8–9% for the next 25-year period of 2006 to 2032, total power generation capacity has to increase at 6–7% per annum. As the fissile material growth rate does not meet this objective, it becomes necessary to look at alternative approaches for obtaining the fissile material. This conclusion is mostly independent of future technical breakthroughs, and complementary to the eventual implementation of the three-stage approach. It was realised that the best way to get access to the requisite fissile material would be through uranium imports, which was not possible without ending India's nuclear isolation by U.S. and the NSG. U.S. analyst Ashley J. Tellis argues that the Indo–US nuclear deal is attractive to India because it gives it access to far more options on its civil nuclear programme than would otherwise be the case, primarily by ending its isolation from the international nuclear community. These options include access to latest technologies, access to higher unit output reactors which are more economical, access to global finance for building reactors, ability to export its indigenous small reactor size PHWRs, better information flow for its research community, etc. Finally, the deal also gives India two options that are relatively independent from the three-stage programme, at least in terms of their dependencies on success or failure. The first option is that, India can opt to stay with the first stage reactors as long as the global supply of uranium lasts. The plus side of this is that it covers any risk from short term delays or failures in implementing the three-stage programme. On the negative side, this is an option that is antithetical to the underlying objective of energy independence through the exploitation of thorium. The second option, and perhaps the more interesting one, is that India can choose to access the third stage of thorium reactors by skipping the more difficult second stage of the plan through some appropriately selected parallel approach such as the
high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, the
molten salt reactor, or the various
accelerator driven systems.
Stakeholder views on the linkages Condoleezza Rice and Indian
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, after signing the
123 Agreement in Washington, D.C., on 10 October 2008 Indian commentators welcomed the opportunity simply because they could see that India would be able end its international isolation on the nuclear front and obtain a de facto acknowledgement of it as a nuclear weapon state to some degree, in addition to it being able to obtain the uranium that would increase the success potential of its three-stage programme as well as its efforts to build a "minimum credible nuclear deterrent". It was estimated that the power produced by imported reactors could be 50% more expensive than the country's existing nuclear power cost. However, this was perceived as a minor point in the larger context of the deal. In a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns' prepared remarks stated that "India had made this the central issue in the new partnership developing between our countries". Indian government proceeded to negotiate and execute the
Indo–US Nuclear Deal, which then paved the way for the
NSG waiver on international uranium imports to India in 2008. According to one foreign analyst, the deal could "over time… result in India being weaned away from its… three-phase nuclear program involving FBRs and advanced PHWRs. This would occur should India become confident that it would have assured supplies of relatively cheap natural uranium, including from Australia. Of course, nobody in the Indian nuclear establishment would yet admit to that possibility."
Anil Kakodkar, then Chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission, went to the extent of making public, the milder position of keeping the country's indigenous fast breeder programme out of the ambit of international safeguards, saying "in the long run, the energy that will come out from the nuclear fuel resources available in India (from domestic uranium and thorium mines) should always form the larger share of the nuclear energy programme..." and "our strategy should be such that the integrity and autonomy of our being able to develop the three-stage nuclear power programme, be maintained, we cannot compromise that." The full demand of the Indian scientists, to have the ability to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel of the imported reactors (goes beyond the defensive position of Kakodkar), appears to have been met in the final deal. According to the Indian government's official position, India's indigenous three-stage nuclear power programme is unaffected by the Indo–US Nuclear Deal; "Its full autonomy has been preserved." Both right and left-wing political parties opposed the deal in the Parliament. The left feared the deal would make the country subservient to U.S. interests, while the right felt it would limit further nuclear testing. According to one view within the Indian defence establishment, the deal "has for all practical purposes capped Indian ability to field test and proof high yield nuclear weapons till some time in future (about 20 years) when Indian three-stage
nuclear fuel cycle based on Thorium fuel matures into mainstream power production, thus eliminating Indian dependence on imported nuclear fuel from NSG countries or if there is a breakout in global nuclear test moratorium." ==Indian nuclear energy forecasts==