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But: “I have seen many calculations in the Department of Atomic Energy. In the eighties... a detailed study was done... And, I think, the Planning Commission has done recent work, and they have also come to the conclusion that...” says the PM. And that is the end of the matter.

The fabrications in regard to uranium

The argument that we need nuclear power would not have been enough to justify the deal — for the response could have been, “All right, use domestically available uranium to generate it.” Hence, two further myths were fomented: we are woefully short of uranium; such uranium as we have is of poor quality.

The authoritative compilation on uranium supplies is what is known as the Red Book of the IAEA and OECD. The latest one — published in 2005/06 — records India’s uranium reserves as being 94,000 tonnes. Of these, 64,000 tonnes are what are termed as ‘RARs’, Reasonably Assured Reserves; and 30,000 tonnes are EAR-I, that is, ‘Estimated Additional Reserves’. Currently we are using 1,334 tonnes a year. By every stretch, these are enough to see us through to the time we will master fast breeder and thorium technologies. What is probably the best available study of the potential of these reserves, Atoms for War? (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006) has been done, in fact, by one of the architects of the deal, Ashley Tellis. In it, he shows that India has more than enough uranium — even if it were to aim in the coming decades at a nuclear arsenal of 2023 to 2228 weapons.

Now see how the twin myths are formented. The Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy states: “India is poorly endowed with uranium. Available uranium supply can fuel only 10,000 MW of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors. Further, India is extracting uranium from extremely low grade ores (as low as 0.1 per cent uranium) compared to ores with up to 12-14 per cent uranium in certain resources abroad.” Notice the sleight of words: our average — 0.1 per cent — is compared to other unspecified countries’ highest, their “up to...”

The facts are more reassuring! The most important suppliers of uranium are Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada — half the world’s output comes from them. The most recent account of uranium reserves, put out as recently as November 2, 2007, again by the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that it is only in Canada that the ore — about a fifth of it — is above the 1 per cent grade. “In Australia, on the other hand, some 90 per cent of uranium has a grade less than 0.06 per cent. Much of Kazakhstan’s ore is less than 0.1 per cent.”

Nor has the government ever explained why we are not able to get more uranium from countries that are not members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group — Niger, Nigeria, Mongolia. Is it that we have been fixated on our traditional suppliers, like Russia? Is it that we have tried but found that, in fact, the governments of these countries are so weak that eventually they go by the dictates of multinational companies and the major powers that control the NSG itself, the US, France, Russia, China? Is it that these controllers have blocked the non-members from supplying uranium to us even as they themselves have blocked members of the NSG from supplying it? If that is indeed the case, how come we are putting so much faith in these very controllers as to place our future energy security in their hands?

That last question also arose in regard to what the prime minister said when he charged Yashwant Sinha with spreading falsehoods. Yashwant Sinha was asking why the deal with the Russians for four additional reactors had not been signed during the PM’s recent visit to Moscow. Was it under US pressure? The PM said that “it had always been understood” that this agreement would be signed only after restrictions had been lifted by the NSG. That was certainly not the impression he gave in the written statement that he read out during the joint press conference that he held with President Putin in New Delhi on January 25, 2007. In that statement he thanked President Putin for the help that Russia had given in ending the international restrictions that had been placed on imports of nuclear materials by India. He pointed to the memorandum of intent that had been signed by India and Russia for the construction of four new reactors at Kudankulam. There was not the shadow of a hint that further progress was contingent on anything that was to be done by the very countries that had imposed those international restrictions. And now, suddenly, “it was always understood...”

‘Why don’t you believe the CEO of America instead of some undersecretary?’

The Americans have been absolutely candid in what they intend to accomplish through the nuclear deal. To halt, roll back, and eventually eliminate India’s nuclear capability. To draw India into the non-proliferation regime. To have it sign up on other international protocols that the US, etc are crafting — the FMCT, the PSI, the Wassener Agreement... To make its energy supplies so dependent on imported uranium, imported reactors, that it would ‘on its own’ desist from testing. Provision upon provision of the Hyde Act speaks to this design explicitly. Statements upon statements of US Congressmen, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns and others testify to it.

Each time these have been cited by persons like me, government spokesmen have said, “But why relying on what some undersecretary has said? Why don’t you believe what the CEO of America, President Bush himself said when he signed the Hyde Act into law — that he would not be bound by the provisions? Did he not say that he would treat these as ‘advisory’ — that is, they shall be non-binding — and go by his own assessment?”