Nuclear summer

After more than nine months of tedious wrangling and patient negotiation,India and the US have finally reached an agreement granting India the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. It caps the groundbreaking Indo-US civil nuclear agreement that gave us access to nuclear fuel and technology. The deal was intended to inaugurate billions of dollars worth of nuclear commerce between the two countries,but had been stuck so far because of India’s discomfort with American oversight (there will be none,India will only answer to the IAEA in Vienna) and US concerns about proliferation.

For India,a concrete arrangement on reprocessing terms was vital before buying reactors,to avoid another Tarapore — where we bought American nuclear reactors but US policy did not allow us to reprocess or return the fuel. This arrangement lays down some safeguards to address concerns that the fuel could be diverted towards a weapons programme. India has also bargained and won the right to more than one reprocessing plant,given the risk of transporting nuclear material. Pushing these through has been a wrenching affair in the US,and now the burden shifts to India,which must complete the process and enact a nuclear liability bill to begin brisk nuclear business between the two countries. Such a law is necessary to lay the foundations of nuclear industry,to create an insurance sector,and allow for private participation. While it has been unfairly cast as a favour to American business interests,it is patently in our own interests to get nuclear business going.

Even as we can now transact with Russia and France,it is worth underscoring the fact that this exchange would not have materialised without American heavy-lifting in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The US ambassador greeted the news as part of the “great,win-win narrative of the US-India global partnership” — and indeed,in swatting down its own non-proliferation chorus,and offering India a model that has only been held out to Europe and Japan so far,the US has clearly signalled its investment in the relationship. India would do well to stand by its friends.