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Canada’s uranium to India – a recipe for nuclear weapons proliferation

In a contortion worthy of Houdini, Prime Minister Harper claims Canada can prevent a repeat of the 1974 nuclear betrayal because India has solemnly promised to specify which facilities are military or civilian, and to keep them strictly segregated.

But this is akin to keeping a bucket of water divided in half — fissile materials, knowledge, and budgets are notoriously porous, hidden in secrecy, and immune to meaningful inspection or policing.

Canada courts calamity with India nuclear deal Selling Candus in South Asia only heightens local arms race. Straight Goods -, July 13, 2010by Paul McKay Ten days before Canada inked a nuclear sales pact with India at the G20 summit, the Indian government invited global investors to help finance its $70 billion plan to develop 20,000 Megawatts of solar power plants in that sun-rich country by 2022.That followed an official Indian government estimate that its long windy coastlines and interior deserts can host nearly 50,000 Mw of wind generation.

When built, this 70,000 Mw of new green power would roughly triple the total electricity produced in all of Ontario by all power plants of all kinds, and generate as much peak power as 140 Pickering-sized nuclear plants. Renewable energy sources would help offset India’s rocketing greenhouse gas emissions, and dovetail with its pressing need to quickly build de-centralized power plants on a fragile, far-flung grid system.

All this could be ramped up before a single new Candu reactor could be designed and built there. India’s new green mission has been hailed by investors, developers, environmentalists, and Indian citizens.

Obviously, Prime Minister Stephen Harper missed this memo. And the one reminding him that, in 1974, India extracted plutonium from an earlier “peaceful” Canadian reactor to make its first atomic bomb. And the memo confirming that India has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And the one reminding him that India’s bitter arch-rival, Pakistan, also used “peaceful” Candu technolgy to produce plutonium for its own growing nuclear arsenal…………….

Are we to believe Stephen Harper’s claim that shipping more reactors and uranium to India will be as benign as building indigenous solar and wind power plants?

Hardly. Both India and Pakistan now use reactors, based on the unique Candu design, to make plutonium and tritium for their hydrogen bombs. All Candu reactor models produce plutonium.

Both countries know how to extract plutonium from waste fuel, and distil tritium gas. Both have refused to sign the NPT or global bomb test protocols. Both adamantly assert a sovereign right to perfect, test and stockpile an unrestricted number of missile-capable nuclear weapons.

Worse yet, India has also committed to building a fleet of even more dangerous reactors, called fast breeders, which will operate as dual civilian-military facilities. These will not only vastly increase the volume of plutonium created and extracted, but convert an abundant yet atomically benign mineral, thorium, into yet another fissile outlaw element, Uranium-233.

Fast breeders will further blur any distinction between peaceful and military atomic uses within India, and undoubtedly incite Pakistan to match its rival by either building its own breeder reactors, or escalating plutonium production at its civilian power plants to keep weapons parity with India.

In a contortion worthy of Houdini, Prime Minister Harper claims Canada can prevent a repeat of the 1974 nuclear betrayal because India has solemnly promised to specify which facilities are military or civilian, and to keep them strictly segregated.

But this is akin to keeping a bucket of water divided in half — fissile materials, knowledge, and budgets are notoriously porous, hidden in secrecy, and immune to meaningful inspection or policing.

Straight Goods – Canada courts calamity with India nuclear deal – Selling Candus in South Asia only heightens local arms race.

July 15, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | India, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear weapons, renewable energy, solar, wind