Comments on: What Ever Happened? The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal

By: GK MAN

GK MAN — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:18:46 +0000

India dosent need any treaty with US. Government must use thorium in India. It is about 33% of world and more than sufficient. But if US want to give uranium without poking nose into our weapons basket then why should we have a problem. Cant we make electricity by combusting etanol. We must accept what mr Bush propose. It wl be profitable for making more power to feed our cities and industry untill we get a ample power frm Thorium, Etanol and Biodiesel to supplyment Hydroelectricity and Coal.
There is an urgent need for us to get about 3 time more eletricity for peaking the GDP growth upto 12 or 13 percent which is the most natural growth for indian economy and todays 10 percent is still underperformance.
As vast rural areas set to seek global standards then we want about thrice of energy we want today. Economist must understand that about 650million population has a share of 30% and about 95% of such men are rural. As our villages want for globalisation like Banglore they would show a great boom to economy and then anything less than 14% growth would be underperformance in case of INDIA. This would be a natural economic process. If it is lagged due to energy scarity then all the social structure of economy would be shatter and there can be another partition on the issue of power.

By: SM

SM — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:28:09 +0000

Thorium is a fertile material not a fissile one, so it requires a fissile material (U233, U235 or Pu239) to generate power. India has intending to produce U235 and breed Pu239 to create the initial fissile material, and breed U233 from thorium fertile material which will consume their U235 and/or Pu239 to produce U233. Once they have enough U233 stockpiled, they will use in in thorium-U233 cycle reactors, which will breed as much U233 as they use up therefore only requiring thorium as an input. The problem is that to build up sufficient U233 to power all the feactors India will need with it’s increasing energy needs will take 30 years. In the meanwhile India has to rely on coal and oil/natural gas, which although cheaper, cause pollution, green house gases and in the case of oil/natural gas causes India to be reliant on countries like Iran and other middle eastern countries. This means India will have to pander to countries like Iran and Arab countries to secure it’s oil until then. That is why both India and the US were so keen that the deal was signed (the US being more keen than India). By importing uranium/plutonium nuclear waste and stockpiled weapons grade plutonium earmarked for disposal and burning it in Indian thorium reactors as the fissile material, the expensive to store waste gets incinerated and made safe, electricity is generated, and U233 is made for use in thorium-U233 reactors. This allows India to start generating a large amount of power now instead of 30 years from now.

By: proliferationpresswm

proliferationpresswm — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:13:01 +0000

Thank you for the clarification of the cited Startfor.com article.

But one question relating to the implications of your comments: If India currently has the domestic sources for nuclear fuel, where is the need for a nuclear deal with America?

If fuel is not needed, is this really more about international prestige, approval of India’s current nuclear weapons, and geo-political alignment?

And secondly, could an Indian motivation for the nuclear deal reside in the ability to save their current uranium reserves for non-inspected military nuclear sites?

Again, thank you for the
clarification and readership of the blog.

By: SPM

SPM — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:45:22 +0000

(quote)
The problem (from the U.S. perspective) is that U-233 also can be used in nuclear weapons programs — and the idea of indirectly supporting India’s nuclear defense program is not something that U.S. President George W. Bush will be able to sell to Congress, even though, with Iraq in shambles, his administration is extremely keen on claiming a foreign policy success.
(unquote)

Atcually this statement is 100% wrong. The U-233 produced by thorium reactors cannot be used for nuclear weapons because it is contamilated by small quantities of U232 which is very difficult to separate and makes the U233 proliferation resistant.

U232 has a half life of 75 years and it’s decay products emit strongly gamma ray radiation. The gamma radiation emitted by the U232 in U233 produced by Thorium makes reprocessing the rods without remote controlled processing facilities lethal, and re-processing the rods to extract the U233/U232 from the thorium is very difficult due the the fact that thorium oxide is one of the most stable oxides with one of the highest vapourisation temperatures of any oxide, making it necessary to have a large and complex reprocessing facility which is difficult to hide, and making attempted theft and attempted use of the material for a dirty bomb by terrorists suicidal – giving a lethal dose within hours.

Even when reprocessed to seperate out the U233, it is unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons – The U232 which is a by-product is difficult to separate out, and even 10ppm of U232 renders the separated U233 unsuitable for nuclear weapons use. The gamma radiation is harge enough to fry electronic detonation and missile guidance systems, and tt is impractical to shield the radiation without making the missile it too heavy to fly.

The large gamma radiation signature is difficult to shield and makes the presense of U233 weapons or materials easy to detect from a distance, which again makes it unsuitable for use for nuclear weapons. It also makes it very difficult to hide or smuggle without detection.

It is not the U232, but it’s decay product that emits the strong gamma radiation. If someone reprocessed the U233 to remove the U232 decay products in a remote processing facility, it would be possible to remove the gamma radioactivity. However as U232 continues to decay, new decay products are formed, and the gamma radiation returns within a week or so. It is not practical to manufacture and arm and deploy nuclear warheads for such a short time before they have to be returned for reprocessing again.

Any way you look at it, Thorium is a non-proliferation dream.

By: Neel

Neel — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:53:39 +0000

The US India nuke deal, heralded in 2005 as one of Civil nuclear cooperation between India and the US, after two years, in its current form is one of containment of a nuclear power, that is outside the ambit of NPT, CTBT and FMCT.
The terms of the deal clearly suggests that India may obtain heatherto prohibited nuke power tech. in exchange of its soverign rights to nuke testing, reprocessing of spent fuel and to pursue the Thorium route, and ofcourse hundreds of billions in initial investment.
The non proliferation lobby would love to see an India, perperually dependent on technology and fuel supply and subjected to perpetual threat of withdrawal of all cooperation.
While people in India consider the above terms humiliating and not worth the papers these are written on, the non proliferation lobby thinks India is being ” GREEDY ” , and should be happy with what is offerd to it.
It would be interesting to see how the whole episode of so called friendship and cooperation is taken to a logical conclusion !!!

Sincerely,
Neel