The issue of whether or not India’s fast breeder reactor should be placed under safeguards is at the core of the storm raging in India around the Indo-US nuclear agreement. Leading functionaries of our atomic energy establishment have categorically asserted that the breeder reactor and some other power reactors feeding into it must be declared as military facilities and not be opened up to safeguarding. The DAE chairman, Anil Kakodkar, has cautioned that to do otherwise would compromise not only our nuclear energy programme but also national security.

It is understandable if the lay public places great weight on these pronouncements by scientists. Certainly, such dire warnings from the leadership of our atomic energy programme deserve to be taken seriously. But the community of Indian scientists is larger than what exists inside the walls of the DAE. It would be a pity if at least a few members of the larger scientific community in India did not critically examine these assertions. This is demanded not only by the tenets of scientific enquiry but is also essential for the process of checks and balances that should characterise debate on such an important issue.

Consider the national security argument first, since it carries more ominous overtones. The main issue here is that we may need some of the plutonium (Pu) generated in the breeder reactor for making nuclear weapons — something that placing it under safeguards would not permit. Note that there are two grades of plutonium, depending on its purity. The first, called ‘weapons grade plutonium’ (WGPu), is ideal for making weapons. Our Dhruva and Cirus reactors in BARC have been producing WGPu for decades and experts estimate that about 400 kg of this material is available for bomb-making, after discounting for losses in the earlier nuclear tests and research activities. Now, it takes about 5 kg of WGPu for a 20 kiloton (Hiroshima-Nagasaki level) bomb. We thus have approximately some 80 bombs worth of Pu, some already assembled into weapons and the rest in stock. Our nuclear arsenal is based on the principle of minimal deterrence. Many would argue that this requirement will be more than fulfilled by these 80 odd weapons, and that further efforts should be spent in ensuring the survivability and delivery of these weapons. Even if it is felt that more bombs (and hence more WGPu) may be needed in the future, the Indo-US agreement does not preclude our constructing more reactors like the Dhruva within the military fence at BARC to produce it.

In addition to WGPu, we also have over 10 tons of ‘reactor grade’ plutonium available in the spent fuel of our existing power reactors. This is not ideal for making bombs and special design features have to be incorporated to avoid overheating and premature explosion. But it is widely believed that viable bombs can be made with reactor grade plutonium at roughly 10 kg a bomb.

That means we have in stock already material for nearly a 1000 more bombs. If necessary, we can demand that this entire stock of spent fuel and the re-processing plants needed to separate the Pu from it, be placed inside the military fence and only the future output of our power reactors, run with externally purchased uranium fuel, be put under safeguard. With this proviso, the breeder and all the other power reactors can be opened for safeguarding. In a world where nuclear arsenals are getting smaller (except in South Asia) and where the UK has pared its arsenal to 200 weapons, our minimal nuclear deterrence does not require more plutonium from our breeder reactors.

Next, consider the possible dangers to our civil nuclear programme from opening the breeder reactor to safeguards. DAE scientists have had to contend with three decades of sanctions and have heroically struggled to build most of their reactor capacity indigenously. In all likelihood many design features of our breeder are DAE’s own innovations. There are understandable concerns of intellectual property and trade secrets.

But it is not the US that will conduct the safeguarding but the IAEA, with whom we will be dealing directly. IAEA’s concern is only to ensure that none of the fissile material is diverted to weapon making. Surely we can insist on negotiating with the IAEA procedures that protect commercial secrecy and don’t shackle design innovations.

Incidentally, the breeder reactor itself needs tons of plutonium and uranium fuel. If it is designated as military, this fuel would have to come from our own stocks. Allowing it to be safeguarded gives us the choice of obtaining them from the open market.

Given our limited uranium ores and our vast thorium deposits Bhabha’s 3-stage plan to convert thorium into U(233) using breeder reactors should be pursued. But breeders are nowhere nearly as established as heavy water reactors. International experience with them is mixed. Cooled by liquid sodium, breeders require more stringent and expensive safety devices. The US has never used them to generate power. Germany started a breeder project but closed it down. France’s Phoenix has been functioning, but the Superphoenix reactor was shut down. None of these involved the thorium cycle, which will be a new experience on the commercial scale.

Conservative estimates suggest it would take at least 30 years before we can have a commercially viable self sustained thorium cycle for nuclear energy. Meanwhile, our energy hungry economy will need all the power it can generate. As we wait for the thorium-breeder project to fructify, expansion of nuclear power will be greatly facilitated if conventional reactors and uranium fuel could be purchased from the international community.

Until now our nuclear scientists had to work in isolation because of sanctions. But why should they continue to do so, now that the possibility of lifting these sanctions has been offered? Instead, they could enter the international community and with the indigenous expertise developed during their forced exile, emerge as leaders of modern reactor technology.

The writer is emeritus professor of physics, JNU