The NSG waiver to India marks the end of the technology denial regime that crippled the country’s nuclear power programme. Here is what can potentially change with the NSG waiver:

• Seventeen existing reactors which had an average plant load factor (PLF) of 54 per cent in 2007-08, the lowest in ages, will get access to imported uranium to overcome the shortage of indigenous fuel.

• Arrival of imported fuel will allow the firing of three new reactors—the 220 MW Kaiga-4 and the 220 MW RAPP 5 and 6 in Rawatbhata, Rajasthan, which have been stuck for want of uranium. Two 700 MW units are to come up in Kakrapar in Gujarat and two more in Rawatbhata.

• Expansion of the Kudankulam Atomic Power Project in Tamil Nadu, which India is building in collaboration with Russia. While two 1,000 MW reactors are being built there at present, New Delhi and Moscow are keen to expand the agreement into a “Kudankulam Plus” deal to set up four more reactors.

• India will have access to Canada’s CANDU reactors that allow the breeding of thorium directly instead of depending on homegrown breeder reactors to realise the goal of achieving it by 2010.

“This waiver gives us a lot of freedom,” said Prof. CNR Rao, Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister. “All our plans until now were in a vacuum as we needed NSG approval even to deal with willing countries like France or Russia. Most immediately, we can buy uranium from various sources and other countries can come here and set up reactors,” he said.

The waiver also opens the doors for high technology that can be used in a wide range of scientific and industrial sectors. Here are some examples of dual-use technology and trigger list items (sensitive technology), which will be available to India now.

DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGY

• Sonar, which is used for undersea warfare, can be used for finding minuscule abnormalities in mammograms.

• Advanced computers that have weather forecasting applications such as CRAY XPM 14, which was denied to India in the 1980s.

• Digital phosphorus oscilloscopes used in oil refineries.

• Avionic systems to be used for civilian aircraft.

• Heat exchangers to be used in civilian thermal power plants.

• Shaker systems, metal drum-like machines that vibrate at high speeds and are used to test the durability of everything from car parts to cruise missiles, and military aircraft.

• Vacuum and other metallurgical melting and casting furnaces.

• Chemical agents such as triethanol amine, a substance commonly used in applied chemistry as a detergent, which however, because of its character, can be misused as precursor in the production of the fighting gas, yperite.

• Chemicals used to make nerve agents are also used to make plastics and to process foodstuff.

• Components for commercial and remote sensing satellite systems, such as charge-coupled device cameras, multi-spectral scanners and synthetic aperture radar imagers.

• Biotechnology that can enhance public health, improve agricultural yield and foster economic development. Yet, they are restricted as many of the biotech facilities, equipment, and materials can be used for biological weapons.

TRIGGER LIST (Sensitive technology that can be used in weapons programme)

• Nuclear material like uranium, plutonium, etc.

• Non-nuclear material such as tritium, deuterium beryllium, etc.

• Full nuclear reactors and components and technologies.

• Reprocessing and enrichment plants and technologies.

• Plants for the fabrication of nuclear reactor fuel, separation of isotopes or for production of heavy water, and for conversion of uranium and plutonium to be used for fabrication as fuel elements or separation of isotopes.