POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDO-US NUCLEAR DEAL

By Engr. K Vijayachandran FIE

Media, especially newspapers of Kerala and West Bengal, have sensationalized statements by Budhadev and Jyoti Basu on nuclear power: Editorial writers advise the rank and file of left parties, to go by the advise given these leaders and reject Prakash Karat and other hardliners, who campaign against Indo-US nuclear deal. This is sheer mischievous propaganda: There is no anti-nuke movement in India as in USA, by the left or the right, and scientific opinion in the country largely echoes the global consensus: Mankind will increasingly depend on nuclear energy and need based technology development will decide the pace of this transition.

However, barring China and India, developing countries hardly use nuclear electricity today. Their share in global nuclear electricity was around six percent in 2002, former Soviet Union had a nine percent share, and OECD countries, which has its own Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), accounted for the the balance 85 percent. Nuclear technologies continues to be the privileged intellectual property of developed nations, thanks to its complex nature and demanding highly effective state intervention. India, China and possibly South Korea (it is a member of OECD) are the possible exemptions to this rapidly widening North-South divide. Pakistan had exploded a couple of toy bombs, in response to the political bombs of Indira and Vajpayee, just across the border. Compared to India and China, Pakistan is a big zero in reactor and related technologies, demanded by large nuclear power plants.

South Korea has established a large generating capacity of 15,000 MW (more than twice that of China) during the last two decades, with plants and technology mostly imported from USA or Japan. Nuclear monopolies of USA, like Westinghouse and GE, virtually control the comprador type industries and institutions such as DHIC, built in South Korea, as part of its massive nuclear expansion program. Close to half of the electricity consumed in South Korea is targeted to be from nuclear power plants, by 2015. Today, US monopoly capital enforces its hegemony over South Korea, by sitting on the driving seat of its power development program. Indian businessmen and the investing NRI community in USA are fascinated by a possible South Korean model nuclear development in the country, on the strength of an Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement.

India, however, has its own agenda and national program for the development of nuclear electricity. The three stage national program, based on local fuel resources, has successfully crossed the half-way mark, and is on the verge of breaking into the decisive third and final phase. Overall progress of this program has been satisfactory, despite threats and arm-twisting by imperialist countries led by USA, lack of commitment from India's ruling classes, and even denial of plan funds for crucial programs like Uranium mining and the 10,000 MW by 2000 program during early eighties. Bulk of the 3000 MW nuclear capacity already operating in the country, today and the 3600 MW capacity under construction, is based on one hundred percent indigenous technology. The three stage program, based on locally available fuel resources, including the Thorium resources of Kerala, is expected to take our nuclear power capacity to 18500 MW by the year 2022, and further to 205,500 MW by 2052. This is without any sort of support or consideration, offered under the Indo-US deal which, on the other hand, has every potential to destabilize this indigenous program of crucial importance.

Country reports, available on IAEA websites, reveal that, India's nuclear power development program is far more self reliant and independent, compared to that of China: Despite its membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and patronage promised under the Chinese-US by cooperation agreement, China appears to be lagging far behind India, with regard to power plant technologies. True, Chinese nuclear capacity is presently more than two times that of India, however most of this capacity was built with imported reactors and fuel systems. India is much ahead of China in nuclear power technology, especially fuel cycles and breeder technologies. Reports indicate that Chinese efforts to build nuclear power plans in Iran had met with serious setbacks: Russians had taken over the Busherhr project, abandoned by Chinese. The much publicized Pakistan-China nuclear cooperation is confined to the development of training simulators for nuclear power plants.

India is, undoubtedly, the most advanced non-weapon nuclear power, among developing nations: Its holistic atoms for peace policy, three stage nuclear power development program, well equipped 45,000 strong nuclear establishment, and the array of distinguished nuclear scientists are highly respected in global forums, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, India is prevented from playing its legitimate role in IAEA, as a major non-weapon nuclear nation of more than a billion people, because of its gross failures on the diplomatic front.

IAEA was set up by UNO, in the early fifties, for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy. India, as a founding member country and its world renowned nuclear scientist, Homi Bhabha had played the key role in establishing this UN body and detailing its objectives and programs. IAEA serves as a global repository of nuclear technologies, but it is more known for the policing role forced on it by the USA. This august UN body is misused as a police dog of imperialism and as a tool for non-proliferation of peaceful technologies in the name of NPT, a highly unjust and unequal treaty forced on the non-nuclear nations of the developing world. It is used as an effective check against third world countries developing their own technologies for the peaceful use of nuclear energy: Not only the experience of India, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but even that of South Korea would vouch for this neo-colonial discrimination.

Using Indian and Pakistani bombs as an excuse, the NSG was set up as an informal pressure group outside the UN-IAEA, under the initiative of USA. In the uni-polar world that emerged after the downfall of Soviet Union, the NSG, which functions on a consensus basis, serves as the handmaiden of USA, as in the case of WTO and similar bodies: It is used for bullying the UN-IAEA, a situation that needs urgent correction, in the best interests of developing world and humanity at large: India should show the moral courage to question the legitimacy of NSG and demand the disbanding of this informal body outside the UN system. IAEA may be expanded should be pressed on and persuaded to work toward its original objective of genuine international cooperation in peaceful applications of of nuclear energy, especially in nuclear electricity, in the best interests of the developing world and humanity at large. It could learn from the working experience of UNIDO and other UN organizations, which had a an altogether different focus on developing countries. Such proposals for strengthening and broadening of the UN system from all possible directions, are sure to get the support of vast majority of developing nations, possibly even that of Russia and China.

US has never believed in the peaceful and democratic coexistence of nations: It finds use in the UN only when the organization suits its own selfish interests. On the nuclear front, President Bush has now offered to the countries of the world, a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), outside of the UN-IAEA, projecting it as the only solution for global warming: But nobody has so far looked at this offer of partnership with any seriousness, other than India's comprador diplomats and businessmen, who find in it great opportunities for repeating the South Korean model nuclear power development, right across the globe. Nuclear strategists of USA are aiming for the driver's seat of global nuclear power development, so as to retain and reinforce its hegemonic hold on global economy: Such efforts for US supremacy are being resisted even by the junior partners of imperialism. GNEP, an essential link in the geopolitical ambitions of USA, got targeted at India's three stage program more by accident than design, but it immensely suits the immediate interests and visions of India's comprador classes: They are in a hurry to dismantle the organizational assets built up under the three stage nuclear program during the past half a century, and divert its large human resources base for immediate private profits.

Nuclear electricity, no doubt, is the electricity of the immediate future; and India's three stage program has already made big progress in this direction, without waiting for an Indo-US deal and the GNEP offer of President Bush. The Thorium technology, that is emerging out of it, is of immense relevance to India's energy security and the people of Kerala coast. This national program need to be safeguarded against sabotage, and pursued with renewed vigor. Even contemporary nuclear technologies make plenty of economic sense in places like Kerala, thousands of miles away from the Bihar-Bengal coal belt.

For a better clarity on these energy related issues, we have to get back to the fundamentals of the ongoing power sector reform in the country, which is inflicting irreparable damages on the national economy. Nuclear deal has simply eclipsed the national debate on the serious problems created by power sector reforms, insisted on by the working class movement in our energy sector. Instead of listening to these patriotic voices, Budhadev and Jyoti Basu have blindly supported the arguments of our elite classes and comprador bureaucracy, who are conspiring to put US on the driving seat of our power sector, on the strength of a South Korean model nuclear partnership. That precisely is the implication of their blank cheque for nuclear electricity, at the given context of a national campaign against the nuclear deal with USA.

25th September 2007