“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.

... contd.