FMCT and India- Part III
The Conference on Disarmament (CD) finally agreed on August 11 to
commence talks on stopping further production of fissile material for weapon
purposes. Israel, the last holdout among the 61 member states agreed that it will
not stand in the way of the negotiations despite having some fundamental
reservations with the cutoff treaty. Two members, Egypt and Pakistan with Israel and
India in their minds respectively, insisted on the inclusion of stockpiles in the proposed
treaty. This view is not likely to be accepted by the weapon states and we hope
certainly not by India. The Conference members decided that the talks will be
on the basis of "Shannon" mandate of March 1995, which enables
member states to raise the issue of past fissile material production.
Israel's positive reaction was in response to the request of
President Clinton to Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime minister, not to block the establishment
of an ad hoc committee for the talks. Israel's problems regarding the cutoff
treaty were based on the fear that any implementation regime of the FMCT will be too
intrusive and clear any ambiguity that may still remain on the Dimona reactor and the
Israeli nuclear programme.
Pakistan's insistence on including the stock piles was for
totally different reasons. Ambassador Munir Akram in his statement before CD on 30
July 1998, referred to the "wide disparity in fissile stockpiles of India and
Pakistan" and by implication meant that the FMCT should not freeze the
inequality. This position of "parity" is untenable as India could
similarly claim parity with China and China with USA. The official US position is also
that the cutoff should not be seen as a vehicle for "reducing regional
disparities"- an "unrealistic" and "unacceptable" notion in a
multilateral and non discriminatory treaty.
One would have expected Pakistan to oppose the cutoff of fissile
material production for a different reason. Pakistan's Kushab reactor came on stream
last April and the first phase of fuel replacement and reprocessing would have
commenced. Production of weapon grade Plutonium would have started thanks to a
little help from China in building the research reactor and later diverting heavy water
meant for other safeguarded reactors. Henceforth the differential in stock of
fissile material between India and Pakistan would only decrease proportionately. It
was also unfortunate that Ambassador Munir Akram brought up the Kashmir issue in his
statement on the CTBT and FMCT negotiations.
Latest US position:
The statement made by Michael A. Guhin, Deputy Assistant Director
for multilateral affairs in Geneva on December2, 1998, gives the official latest thinking
of US position on FMCT. Briefly stated it says that FMCT would
* codify ban on any further production of
fissile material for any
nuclear explosives and bring all production facilities -that
are not
subject to any international inspections under a
strict
verification and monitoring regime. (emphasis
added)
* help make the world safer from
nuclear weapons.
In specifying what is "in" the treaty and what is
"out"- the following will be "in"
1. An obligation not to produce fissile material for any
nuclear devices.
2. An undertaking to accept verification and monitoring
regime.
What is "out" would be,
1. Recycling of existing weapon material.
2. Tritium
3. Constraints on production of fissile material under
verification for non-prohibited civil or military purposes.
Why is Tritium not being included? It is not because that
it is not a fissile material, but banning Tritium which has a shorter shelf life would in
effect be an eventual "weapon ban" on the nuclear weapon powers. (P5).
It is with reference to India that the US position continues to
be rigid. We quote
While India in particular has sought recognition
of a "new" or "special" nuclear status, we believe it contrary to our
non-proliferation and other interests to "legitimize" or explicitly confirm any
threshold state's nuclear weapons programs. Including, existing stocks, even
transparency measures, would have exactly that effect. Internationally codifying
declarations that they possess such stocks would, in effect, confer on them a special or
"nuclear" status.
India is no longer a "threshold" state after Pokhran II
tests. We have already stated in the first paper on FMCT and India, that
retention of stocks held before the cutoff whether "transparent" or
not should be the bottom line of Indian position. In another paper on Indo US
relations (update) we have said that the US appears to be speaking in three different
voices, moderation and reasonableness to impatience and even virulence and sometimes a
mixture of virulence and moderation. If the hard line quoted above was
only to be the opening position for negotiations then there will be some hope of getting a
consensus on the FMCT which as we have said before is an important element in the non
proliferation regime. If not, in the absence of consensus, the FMCT would also go
the same way as CTBT to the UN General Assembly and the principle of consensus, which is a
must for the "sovereign" nations will be given the go by. To this extent
the role of the CD in Geneva will also become irrelevant.
From the Indian point of view, as said in an earlier paper, the
definition of fissile material itself is important as the spent fuel in most of the
civilian reactors are of Candu type having 70 percent Pu 239 and most of them do not come
under the safeguards regime (1).
The question is whether the reactor grade plutonium could be
defined as fissile material for military purposes. Reactor Plutonium
besides Plutonium 239 has considerable concentrations of contaminating isotopes like Pu
240 (2) and Pu241 that make the handling of the fission products for purposes of bomb
fabrication dangerous and difficult. This does not mean that it cannot be
done. The US and Britain in the past have successfully done it. For making
nuclear weapons from the so called "dirty Plutonium" all activities toward bomb
design will have to be handled remotely and that too by machines. However the
performance of such material in a bomb would have an impact on the reliability of the
weapon, its performance and yield (3).
The US National Academy of Sciences after a detailed study of the
problem has come with an ambiguous statement that civil or reactor grade Plutonium can be
used for nuclear explosives- but it also recognizes that such Plutonium as
"unsuitable for weapons use."
In the past a deliberate distinction was made between
weapon grade Plutonium and Plutonium in civilian reactors. From a non
proliferation point of view also, the weapon grade material from the research
reactors should be of more concern than say, the Plutonium separated from commercial
fuel. The Clinton administration which appears to be more concerned with the
civilian Plutonium inventories (4) has adopted the term "weapon usable" to
characterise all Plutonium whether from weapons or from spent fuel. This goes
against the distinction made by the National Academy of Sciences between weapons and
reactor grade Plutonium.
It must be recognised that all sovereign countries have an
inalienable right to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes. The problem as we see it, is within US itself. The Clinton
administration while enunciating the Plutonium policy in September 1993 has said "
The United States does not encourage the civil use of Plutonium and accordingly, does not
itself engage in Plutonium reprocessing for either nuclear power or nuclear explosive
purposes. The US is also against "Breeder" reactors which produce more
fuel that they consume from U238 to Pu 239.
Uranium in its natural form has only 0.7 percent of U-235 and the
rest U-238. This is enriched to three to 5 percent concentration of U-235 (the rest
U-238), fabricated into fuel and inserted in the reactor. While U-235 is fissioning in the
reactor, some portion of U-238 also changes to Plutonium 239 though some of it is also
consumed. The US position is that the fuel with Pu239 is to be treated as waste and
disosed of. No reprocessing is done and the reason as one official put it "we
don't need it."
But the Indian position is that the spent fuel is a resource
to be used again as fuel.
This is the position in countries like France or Japan
where reprocessing has to be done to generate nuclear power. France's position has
been succinctly stated, -"no gas, no oil, no coal and no choice." Japan
and even Germany have invested heavily in nuclear generation and the process cannot be
rolled back easily. In the case of India, with its chronic power shortage, it has
like France "no choice." While the power demands have
stabilised in developed countries, in a developing country like India there is no
alternative to the use of Plutonium for power generation. New deposits have perhaps
been found in Canada and Australia, but going by the unwarranted hostility shown by
these two countries after Pokhran II tests, how can India depend on them for supply of
Uranium for its reactors?
The US statement on FMCT mentions that the common objective of
FMCT as well as NPT is to make the world safer from nuclear weapons. If the nuclear
weapon states are sincere to make the world safer, the first step should be to declare
their fissile material holding. Only USA appears to have declared its
stockpile. The US is said to possess 99.5 tons of Plutonium either in the Department
of Energy or in nuclear weapons controlled by the Department of Defence. (5). In
1995 the US has also declared more than 52 tons of Plutonium as surplus to national
security environments. In the case of Russia, no one is sure in
Russia as to the exact quantity of weapon usable Plutonium held. UK and
France, in pursuance of para 14 of the guidelines of the Director of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, for responsible management of Plutonium have periodically
published holdings of civil unirradiated Plutonium and Plutonium contained in spent Civil
Reactor fuel. However figures relating to their total holding or holdings of weapon
usable plutonium have not been released and are not likely to do so either. For
China, which is more relevant to India, no figures are known.
It should also be noted that for the weapon powers (see item 1 in
"what is out" of Guhin's statement), cleaning up and recycling of already
existing weapon material into weapons is out. Therefore any removal of weapon usable
fissile material does not contribute to non proliferation or towards making the world
safer as these materials could always be recycled and used in nuclear weapons at any time
and any place without notice. So much for the transparency!
Notes:
1. Commercial LWRs contain about 56 percent of Pu239 and
weapon grade material has 93 percent Pu239.
2. Within reactor grade Plutonium, there are several other
isotopes present in significant quantities- Pu 238, -240, -241 and -242. These isotopes
are also radio active and some highly radio active. The presence of these
isotopes makes handling Plutonium very difficult.
3. See David Fischer, "Cooperation in the Peaceful
Uses of Nuclear Energy," Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar on the Nuclear Non
Proliferation treaty, Canberra, 28-29 March 1994.
4. The quantity of civilian Plutonium being produced is
likely to exceed the inventory of weapon grade Plutonium soon.
5. US Department of Energy Office of Arms
Control and Non proliferation, Non Proliferation and Arms Control Assessment of
Weapons-Usable Fissile material, Storage and Excess Plutonium Disposition Alternatives,
DOE/NN-0007, January 1997.
S.Chandrasekharan
26-02-1999
