Opinion Restoring a ruptured relationship

Cirus,unlike Apsara,used natural uranium fuel with heavy water as the moderator.

The Cirus model,known in Canada as the Candu (Canada Deuterium Uranium) became the basic prototype for the Indian power reactors set up subsequently in Kota,Kalpakkam,Narora,Kakrapar and Kaiga. No country had left such a large impact on the Indian nuclear programme as Canada.

Indo-Canadian nuclear cooperation began at a time when the Indian prime minister,Jawaharlal Nehru,and the Canadian prime ministers,Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson,had a close relationship within the Commonwealth and in the United Nations.

India’s choice of the Candu-type was determined by the fact that at the time,enriched uranium which fuelled the light water reactor,like the first one established with US help at Tarapur,involved continuous import of the enriched uranium fuel from the reactor supplier and therefore dependence on the supplier country. In those days the technology for enrichment of uranium was the very expensive gaseous diffusion method. The cheaper centrifuge technology was developed by Holland and Germany only in the late sixties,after it was invented by an Austrian scientist,Gernot Zippe,in Russia. Therefore,Dr Bhabha’s three-stage Indian nuclear programme finally leading to the utilisation of indigenously abundant thorium on the basis of the first stage being the natural uranium-heavy water reactor based on the Candu model. The plutonium produced from it would feed a fast breeder reactor which would convert a thorium blanket into Uranium-235 which could fuel further reactors. At that time,it was perceived as possible to get the heavy water production technology and reprocessing technology,to separate plutonium from spent fuel uranium from foreign countries,especially France.

When the Cirus reactor agreement was concluded there was no International Atomic Energy Agency or the safeguards system. There was a mutual understanding that the plutonium from Cirus would be used for peaceful purposes only. During those years the concept and attempts to use nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes (PNE) were very much alive. The US conducted 28 and the Soviet Union 239 explosions in this category. The PNEs were recognised in a bilateral treaty between US and USSR concluded in 1976 limiting their explosive yields to 150 kilotonnes. Indian scientists had evinced interest in peaceful nuclear explosions for economic purposes from the early days and had been attending conferences on the subject in the US.

In 1963 Canadian Leonard Beaton published his book The Spread of Nuclear Weapons,in which he predicted that China would go nuclear in 1964 and would be followed by India and Israel. He drew particular attention to the Cirus reactor in India and the Dimona reactor in Israel as capable of giving the nations the capability to go nuclear. In those days there were serious discussions in the US about whether India should be helped to go nuclear ahead of Maoist China. As China carried out its series of nuclear tests beginning October 1964,there were growing security concerns in India. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri attempted unsuccessfully to invoke a British nuclear umbrella. In 1965 he sanctioned the subterranean nuclear explosion programme (SNEP). In 1968 India and Canada concluded an agreement to set up two 220 MW Candu reactors in Kota. Work commenced on both,and by 1974 the first reactor was operational and the second was in an advanced stage of completion.

Again India attempted to get security assurances from the US,UK,France and Russia against the Chinese nuclear threat,Mrs Gandhi sent out a delegation of AEC Chairman Vikram Sarabhai and her secretary,L.K. Jha,to seek security assurances even as the draft of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was being finalised. These assurances were not forthcoming,and India decided to stay out of the NPT.

In 1971 there was a rapprochement between the US and China,and when the Pakistanis committed genocide in Bangladesh and pushed tens of millions of refugees onto Indian soil,the US sided with Pakistan and China and sent the USS Enterprise in an intimidatory mission to the Bay of Bengal. In the aftermath of this event,Mrs Gandhi directed the AEC to carry out a peaceful nuclear explosion to demonstrate India’s technological capability. There were replies to parliamentary questions that India was considering a PNE.

At that stage,in early 1974,Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau asked Mrs Gandhi for an assurance that Cirus plutonium would not be used for any peaceful explosion by India. Mrs Gandhi did not reply and went ahead and carried out the nuclear test in May 1974. That infuriated the Canadians and they accused India of going back on its promise not to use the Cirus plutonium for any non-peaceful purposes. India asserted it was a peaceful explosion for development of peaceful applications of nuclear energy. The Canadians withdrew from the half-finished second reactor construction at Kota. Since then,until this agreement of June 28,Canada had been enforcing technology and material denial on India under the Nuclear Suppliers Club regime.

How committed was Canada to the Non-Proliferation Treaty? The Canadian fighter aircraft CF-101 Voodoos carried US-made Genie nuclear-tipped missiles via a dual-key arrangement where the missiles were kept under American custody,and released to Canada under circumstances requiring their use. It was an unguided air-to-air rocket with a 1.5 kt nuclear warhead. It was deployed by the Canadian Forces Air Command from 1965 to 1984. Prime Minister Trudeau,who condemned India’s peaceful nuclear test,announced at the UN Special Session on Disarmament in June 1978 that he had directed Canadian pilots not to fly any longer with nuclear missiles. Presumably that order could be implemented only from 1984. The entire Non-Proliferation Treaty was based on the arrangement that most,if not all,NATO nations would have their troops trained in the use of nuclear weapons,the weapons would be on their soil,and they would have access to them when required. Most NATO nations were crypto-nuclear weapon powers.Their claiming non-nuclear status was like a person having his drinks at somebody else’s expense,claiming he was a teetotaller since he did not pay for his drinks. Added to this charade was the permissiveness of the non-proliferation community to China’s blatant nuclear proliferation to Pakistan in the eighties as a price for its support to the anti-Soviet mujahideen campaign.

With the NSG India-specific waiver and the Indo-Canadian nuclear cooperation agreement,an unhappy chapter in history has ended.

The writer is a senior defence analyst