Nuclear self reliance
President Abul Kalam reiterates my thoughts over the past weeks about why this new effort by the Congress-led government towards getting Washington to agree to sell us nuclear technology and material is in the long run, a bad idea.
It is definitely a plus that we have the option now of buying from the US and possibly even England, nuclear technology to boost our domestic civilian nuclear capabilities. On the other hand, we have agreed to international monitoring of our facilities, have agreed to honour the discontinuation of military testing although formally we have not signed the CTBT yet. Washington, on the other hand has no obligation to keep the technology-flow continuous. I doubt that this technology is going to come cheap either, considering that it is private companies that will sell to us. The US could pull out anytime, leaving us dependent on their technology and handicapped. The way I see it, it makes us vulnerable to be led into a wooded forest, where the only light would be the purchased technology and then there is a chance that in the advent of strained Indo-US relations, we might have to reinvent fire again to work our way out.
What is even more worrisome is the fact the the Honourable President, who is constitutionally the Supreme Commander of our Armed Forces, and most of the country's leading nuclear and defence scientists agree that this is a bad idea (read article - IHT reports) . Why is the government deaf to this huge and most important opinion pool ? Were they even consulted before a decision was taken ? What was the motivation for such a move ? When the scientists are requesting more funding for indigenious research and to harness our abundant Thorium reserves, why are we running behind expensive and non-sustainable Uranium based technology ? Buy a sack of apples - you can eat once. Learn how to grow apples, you can feed the next few generations and make a few succesful apple farmers in the process. Is this concept too difficult to grasp for our myopic government ? How can decisions on such a big issue which also borders on the matters of national security be taken without consulting the most important people involved ?
Even if our nuclear arsenal is not subject to scrutiny, civilian nuclear power is closely related to our military nuclear capabilities, eg. there are plans to invest in nuclear powered submarines. What if we feel compelled to test our nuclear capabilities once again ? We must write off on the US cooperation then, won't we be handicapped ?
It is definitely a plus that we have the option now of buying from the US and possibly even England, nuclear technology to boost our domestic civilian nuclear capabilities. On the other hand, we have agreed to international monitoring of our facilities, have agreed to honour the discontinuation of military testing although formally we have not signed the CTBT yet. Washington, on the other hand has no obligation to keep the technology-flow continuous. I doubt that this technology is going to come cheap either, considering that it is private companies that will sell to us. The US could pull out anytime, leaving us dependent on their technology and handicapped. The way I see it, it makes us vulnerable to be led into a wooded forest, where the only light would be the purchased technology and then there is a chance that in the advent of strained Indo-US relations, we might have to reinvent fire again to work our way out.
What is even more worrisome is the fact the the Honourable President, who is constitutionally the Supreme Commander of our Armed Forces, and most of the country's leading nuclear and defence scientists agree that this is a bad idea (read article - IHT reports) . Why is the government deaf to this huge and most important opinion pool ? Were they even consulted before a decision was taken ? What was the motivation for such a move ? When the scientists are requesting more funding for indigenious research and to harness our abundant Thorium reserves, why are we running behind expensive and non-sustainable Uranium based technology ? Buy a sack of apples - you can eat once. Learn how to grow apples, you can feed the next few generations and make a few succesful apple farmers in the process. Is this concept too difficult to grasp for our myopic government ? How can decisions on such a big issue which also borders on the matters of national security be taken without consulting the most important people involved ?
Even if our nuclear arsenal is not subject to scrutiny, civilian nuclear power is closely related to our military nuclear capabilities, eg. there are plans to invest in nuclear powered submarines. What if we feel compelled to test our nuclear capabilities once again ? We must write off on the US cooperation then, won't we be handicapped ?
posted by Roshan Rammohan at 2:31 PM
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