A Negotiable Nuclear Deal

By B B Singh

15th September 2014

India-Japan nuclear cooperation still seems to be in limbo despite almost four years of deliberations. But it is very much within negotiable skills. Both countries are equally keen and need it considering the socio-economic and geopolitical situations. Japan sees in it a great potential for nuclear business in India and in return India would immensely gain from the vast experience of Japan in advanced nuclear technology and management of accidents/incidents in nuclear power reactors. Technologically, many of the reactor components including the most crucial reactor vessel are best manufactured in Japan and may be used by the foreign suppliers of nuclear reactors to India. In the absence of any cooperation agreement with India, it would be difficult if Japan decided to impose end-user restrictions.

While the Indian nuclear liability law and reprocessing of the Japan-supplied nuclear fuel continue to haunt, it is the non-proliferation issue that dominates Japan’s stand. It is a termination clause in the agreement if India conducted any nuclear tests, which has become the main bone of contention. It is understandable since Japan is unique and singular having faced nuclear calamities twice, the wrath of two nuclear bombs that were unwarranted and the peace-time disaster from the Fukushima nuclear reactor. Japan wants no further proliferation. It would like to see a still more stringent inspection machinery overseeing India’s peaceful nuclear activities than the currently accepted International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Japan would also wish to ensure the highest safety standards are practised in civil nuclear reactors and Fukushima or Chernobyl are not repeated.

Japan is not unaware of or is unconcerned with the present situation in Southeast Asia, as India faces two hostile neighbours with nuclear capability and that the two countries are also friendly to each other. Japan has realised India’s safety and security concerns and its need to acquire a credible minimum deterrence. Japan has appreciated India’s responsible behaviour when soon after the 1998 nuclear tests, India declared voluntary moratorium on further testing and also the “no-first-use” pledge. Japan is also sensitive to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events that were not militarily required and realises that there may never be any such devastating use of nuclear energy in future. History supports this contention since during the Cold War era several conflicts arose approaching the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons but the matters were sorted out without resorting to it. No country’s polity in its senses would like to use nuclear weapons against any other country.

Still the situation that India is faced with today, a credible minimum deterrence would ensure peace in the region but such a credible deterrence does not come merely on possessing and stocking a few nuclear devices. It requires periodical testing of the stockpile against aging; for improving the structural material and design of the device to fit into the newer, faster and longer range missiles as delivery vehicles and to withstand the associated velocity and vibrational stress. In addition, nuclear testing is also required for maximising the explosion yield for a given mass of the explosive material.

However, it is now being advocated by the five nuclear weapon states that sufficiently reliable information can be obtained by computer simulations without actually conducting full-scale tests. The group-five nuclear states—the US, Russia, UK, France and China—that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) will depend on such simulations. It is to be noted that before being signatory to these treaties they had already conducted full-scale nuclear tests numbering in orders of tens and hundreds and thus amassed data to make their computer modelling reliable. In contrast, India has conducted barely six tests and the data collected from such a small sample size experiment would make reliability of simulation very limited. In such circumstances, India may have to conduct tests and this option it has retained by not signing the above mentioned treaties.

India declaring a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear testing is as binding and enforceable as signing any of the treaties where provision for resuming tests is available in extreme national interests. It is a moral binding by India which any country may like to strengthen by legal binding and India should not feel hurt or slighted if Japan insists on a specific clause on nuclear tests to be included in the formal agreement. India is however maintaining that the agreement with Japan be in the same sense and spirit as that of the Indo-US 123 Agreement that contains no such clause. In this connection, it must not be forgotten that although the Indo-US Agreement does not have a clause on nuclear tests but the US legislation “The Hyde Act 2006” has taken full care of this eventuality. This Act provides that if India conducts any nuclear test with yield greater than one pound TNT, all concessions and privileges granted to India shall be negated. As Japan doesn’t have any such domestic law, it is insisting on a termination clause for nuclear tests in its agreement with India.

It can be inferred from above that the US considers one pound explosion as “Zero-Yield” which India can conduct without jeopardising its interests. This ridiculously unrealistic low-value exemption “zero-yield” is purely for the US to maintain its supremacy over India. Japan insisting on a termination clause on nuclear tests in its agreement with India is not for nuclear supremacy but is an outcome of the extreme anguish and great agony it faced during World War-II. It is understandable.

The “Zero-Yield” provides a window concept. It is believed that during the initial phases of CTBT negotiations, the US had favoured for itself a zero-yield limit of 4 lbs of TNT whereas the UK proposed 100 lbs while Russia preferred 10 tons and France/China a level between 100 to 200 tons. If “no-tests” be the hurdle in the India-Japan nuclear deal, the definition for allowable “Zero-Yield” tests may be negotiated as a window to provide a possible solution.

The author is a practising lawyer and a retired scientist formerly with BARC, Mumbai, and IAEA, Vienna.

Email:drbbsingh2010@gmail.com