IEEE Spectrum July, 2007 - 24

ments that would overturn three decades of iniquitous restrictions," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his Parliament
in August 2006.
Proponents of the deal have lauded it for, among other things,
helping to move India away from fossil fuels and helping to
stem the proliferation of nuclear materials and warheads. In
fact, though, the pact will likely decrease India's reliance on coal
and gas by only a nominal amount. What's more, the arrangement is unlikely to provide the much-needed boost to India's
languid civilian nuclear program or fix the myriad problems
that hobble it. Most troubling, the U.S.-India deal, which must
still be approved by various international organizations, would
in all likelihood free up India's uranium resources for military
ends, facilitate the building of even more nuclear weapons and,
possibly, lead to greater instability in South Asia.

To undersTand why the seemingly benign proposal could
lead to such dire unintended consequences, it helps to appreciate
how India's nuclear efforts came to be in such a troubled state,

reactor to shut down for two years to undergo repairs. It wasn't
until 2000 that the reactor managed to run continuously for
more than 50 days.
In October 2004, after 20 years of planning and repeated
delays, the DAE finally began building India's first industrialscale fast breeder reactor. But it isn't expected to be completed until 2010-and only if all goes according to plan.
Exorbitant costs, safety concerns, and engineering problems
have effectively killed similar breeder programs in the United
States, France, and Germany and set them back severely in
Japan and Russia.
Even by the Indian government's optimistic timetable,
breeders using uranium-233 as fuel won't start operating until
the middle of this century, decades behind schedule. And nuclear
power is unlikely to contribute even 10 percent of India's electricity generation in the next few decades.
Despite such shortfalls, the DAE continues to pursue its threephase plan, and in particular the long-standing goal of developing
reactors that use thorium and uranium-233. There is some logic to

India's Nuclear history
March 1956 The U.S.
agrees to supply heavy
water for CIR, now
called CIRUS.
August 1956 Apsara
becomes India's first
operational reactor.

1945
1947 India gains
independence
from Britain.

1950
1948 Indian government
passes the Atomic Energy
Act, the beginning of its
nuclear program.

1955
1955 Canada agrees
to supply India with
a powerful 40-MW
research reactor, known
as the Canadian-Indian
Reactor, or CIR.

July 1960 CIRUS
starts operating.

1960

1962 India predicts nuclear
energy will generate 20 to 25 GW
of electricity by 1987.

1965

1969 India
predicts its
nucleargenerated
electricity
will be 43.5 GW
by 2000.

1970
1972 Work begins on a pilotscale Fast Breeder Test
Reactor. It was expected
to become operational in
1976, but it was delayed until
October 1985.

starting with the unique history of the program. In 1954, seven
years after the country became independent from Britain, the
newly founded Department of Atomic Energy laid out a threestage plan for nuclear power. The first phase was to construct
and operate heavy-water reactors fueled by natural uranium and
then reprocess spent fuel to separate plutonium, which could be
recycled as new reactor fuel. But plutonium can also be used in
weapons-a fact the DAE remained largely silent about. The second and third phases involved developing breeder reactors that
could use thorium. Unlike the uranium-235 contained in natural
uranium, thorium can't undergo fission at low energies. However,
thorium is fertile; when bombarded with neutrons, it can be transformed into uranium-233, which can be used to fuel a reactor.
All of India's 17 existing reactors are part of the first phase,
as are five of the six facilities under construction. Efforts to use
thorium as a fuel have not gone far. An experimental breeder,
the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam, in southern India,
constitutes the only functional part of the second phase. The
Fast Breeder Test Reactor has been continually plagued with
problems since its start-up in 1985. One glitch within the reactor
vessel during a fuel-transfer operation in May 1987 forced the

36 IEEE Spectrum | July 2007 | NA

preferring thorium: by the International Atomic Energy Agency's
estimates, India has about 225 000 metric tons of thorium, or
almost a third of the world's reserves. Uranium reserves, by contrast, are more limited and of poor quality in India.
Under the circumstances, India will be compelled to rely primarily on uranium for some decades. Assuming that its reactors run at 75 percent capacity on average, India needs about
510 metric tons of uranium a year; recent figures suggest its
annual production is about 200 metric tons. The DAE has been
making up for some of the shortfall by using uranium stockpiled
when India's nuclear generating capacity was much smaller.
Even so, reactor electricity outputs, as reported on the Nuclear
Power Corp. of India Web site, fell to 56 percent in 2006-2007,
down from 74 percent just three years earlier. With new reactors
coming online and without uranium imports, this decline will
continue. The department's best efforts to open new uranium
mines and a new uranium ore concentrating plant have meanwhile met with stiff resistance from local communities, primarily because of the many health problems that existing mines
have created, such as well-documented increases in birth-defect
rates in nearby villages.

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lEft: KEyStoNE/gEtty ImAgES;
rIght: rIchArd hArrINgtoN/thrEE lIoNS/gEtty ImAgES

1955 With British
assistance, construction begins on India's
first reactor, the 1-MW
Apsara research reactor.

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