Unclear Nuclear

Washington, July 10: Invoking national interest, renowned spiritual guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has appealed to all Indian political parties to display ‘magnanimity’ and support the troubled Indo-US nuclear deal.

“All parties must support the deal that is beneficial to the country,” he said.

India has always had a tradition of the government and opposition coming together in national interest whenever a crisis of war befall on the nation, he said, appealing to all the political parties to display magnanimity on the issue.

“At a time when the country is faced with severe energy shortage, the government has negotiated a nuclear deal with the US, which can augment sustainable energy sources,” he said in a statement issued in Seattle.

“The opposition need not oppose everything that the government does,” Sri Sri added.

Back nuke deal: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to Opposition – ExpressIndia.Com.

Sure ! Where economists, nuclear scientist and least of all the (otherwise intelligent) public of India, failed to positively weigh the pros and cons of the Nuclear deal, or at least restrained from offering an opinion, a spiritual leader considers himself to be qualified, experienced and capable enough to make a deciding statement (in the name of magnanimity: “forgiveness and generosity”) in the Nuclear deal issue. What amused me much more was the fact that he made headlines.

The last time I offered my humble opinion on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal (henceforth abbreviated as NucD), in an interview for an MBA seat, I am pretty sure that I got dinged due to my response. The day I had my interview the topic was just fresh out of the oven. More on this later in the post.

The key aspects of the NucD and my take on the same:

The agreement not to hinder or interfere with India’s nuclear programme for military purposes.

Fair enough. USA will not interfere with India’s nuclear military program. Especially after it will be doing India a huge favor by financing/negotiating with the IAEA, for a proper blend of nuclear material set and researched on by US scientists. That in the past US has been seen to interfere with most of the issues in third world countries is a separate story.

US will help India negotiate with the IAEA for an India-specific fuel supply agreement.

It has to. Otherwise there will be no material procured. No deal.

Washington will support New Delhi develop strategic reserves of nuclear fuel to guard against future disruption of supply.

“Strategic Reserves” as in? Where countries are already set to be nuclear powers themselves, the only strategic reserves will come from other countries rather than both India and US. And to have these “strategic” reserves, how many more deals should be signed?

In case of disruption, US and India will jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include nations like Russia, France and the UK to pursue such measures to restore fuel supply.

It’s amazing that Russia is being listed as a “friendly” nation in a scenario where US is globally involved. Enough said.

Both the countries agree to facilitate nuclear trade between themselves in the interest of respective industries and consumers.

Ok.

India and the US agree to transfer nuclear material, non-nuclear material, equipment and components.

If no details are mentioned one can only speculate at the terms “Equipment and Components.”

Any special fissionable material transferred under the agreement shall be low enriched uranium.

Currently, the breeder reactors in India, produce weapons grade plutonium from low enriched uranium. The process generates a lot of waste which is difficult to dispose. Low grade uranium is also used for Research reactors out of which there is no plutonium thorium reactor. It has yet to be built. We have been trying to build a fast breeder reactor (that uses thorium, and India has thorium in plenty) for the last 30 years, and failed. Where developing countries have their own reactors using the fast breeder fission mechanism, we can’t even build an indigenous one.

Low enriched uranium can be transfered for use as fuel in reactor experiments and in reactors for conversion or fabrication.

Ok.

The ambit of the deal include research, development, design, construction, operation, maintenance and use of nuclear reactors, reactor experiments and decommissioning.

Where it takes so much time to ponder over the simple signing of a deal, how can one be so sure that something as dicey as decommissioning of a reactor will not take more than the average life of a human being?

The US will have the right to seek return of nuclear fuel and technology but it will compensate for the costs incurred as a consequence of such removal.

Fair enough.

India can develop strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of its reactors.

Currently all the nuclear power plants of India jointly produce only 1480 Mega watts (electric) of power.

Agreement provides for consultations on the circumstances, including changed security environment, before termination of the nuclear cooperation.

Consultations, consultations.

Provision for one-year notice period before termination of the agreement.

Considering Indian politics, I guess it should have been a decade.

The US to engage Nuclear Suppliers Group to help India obtain full access to the international fuel market, including reliable, uninteruppted and continual access to fuel supplies from firms in several nations.

Ok.

The US will have the right to seek return of nuclear fuel and technology.

Interesting! First you give us fuel to generate the power that we need, and then we route the power back to you.

In case of return, Washington will compensate New Delhi promptly for the “fair market value thereof” and the costs incurred as a consequence of such removal.

Ok.

Both the countries to set up a Joint Committee for implementation of the civil nuclear agreement and development of further cooperation in this field.

Ok.

The agreement grants prior consent to reprocess spent fuel and each country will aid the other in waste management.

This is the BIG ONE. Waste management.

Let’s digress to the scenario in Germany which is not a G8 country.

The first nuclear plant in Germany, has been in operation since 1970, it will be decommissioned by 2009. Germany produces about 21000 Mega watts of electricity using nuclear plants. However, the functioning of these is not smooth. The majority of the problems are defective or worn out parts and as a result of this, all the nuclear plants currently operating in Germany will have to be decommissioned latest by 2022. Germany is facing serious problem in the disposal management of its nuclear waste, especially with the mounting pressure of decommissioning of its nuclear plants. Since there is no permanent location in Germany to store the huge amount of radioactive waste, it stores the waste in as much as 50 different locations.

India: Is India capable as yet to handle a responsibility of that magnitude? After 60 years of independence where majority of the infrastructure had already been built by the British, the project that we can talk about the most is the Delhi Metro. A train on wheels vis-a-vis the supersonic magnetically levitated trains being built in countries like Korea. I was there in Mumbai on 26th July 2005, when a common bout of rain managed to wreak havoc on the city. It was ordinary monsoon rain, not a cloudburst. The rain water caused the sewage system to overflow and all water lines were contaminated. The Government ordered all housing societies to add chlorine to their water tanks while they decontaminate the water supply. The BMC declared most of the areas in Mumbai to be “hygenically sensitive“. According to an estimate the total losses incurred were around US $ 100 million. The present storm-water drainage system in Mumbai was put in place in the early 20th century and is capable of carrying only 25 millimeters of water per hour which was extremely inadequate on a day when 944 mm of rain fell in the city. The drainage system is also clogged at several places… The mangrove ecosystem is being replaced with construction and uncontrolled, unplanned “development”. (This entire paragraph was my response to “Why don’t you favour the nuclear deal?” in an interview, in an Indian MBA school. I got dinged)

Mumbai Mega Flood (a documentary produced for the National Geographic Channel) was an attempt to understand events that conspired to bring Mumbai to its knees.  It is not just a story of Mumbai, but the story of a highly populated city’s inability to cope with natural disasters.

Where a simple monsoon rain can cause such damage, is India really ready to manage its radioactive waste, where our cities are not even able to manage municipal waste? Nuclear reactors in the hands of extremely capable engineers of India, would be sheer failures when it comes to infrastructure and politics. I have been to over 140 cities in 25 different countries and have never seen a country where the government actually manages to pull it off, by neglecting its citizens on such a gross scale, and invoking in them a false sense of patriotism in the name of politics and religion. And what is worse is that this gross mismanagement takes its toll.

And all that anyone can do is sit back and write articles (hordes of them) as to how the people of Mumbai stood by each other in the face of calamity. That the “calamity” was a simple scenario that could have been easily controlled had we put some thought into improving the country’s infrastructure, is a topic shoved under the carpet by our “leaders”. To where these people are leading the country is a mystery to me. Perhaps where the “leaders”, scientists and economists have failed, honorable Sri Sri Ravi Shankar would know better.