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Why is Pakistan relentlessly obstructing any progress on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty? For the last sixteen years, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) has been unable to move beyond the Shannon mandate of 1995. One of the principal sources of this impasse is the vehement opposition of Pakistan. Since the 64 member CD works on the principle of consensus, the CD is practically dysfunctional.

Pakistan’s reservations regarding the current state of FMCT negotiations engender from the contentious issue of fissile material stocks. Both the Shannon mandate as well as the 2006 draft FMCT excluded the issue of stocks from the purview of the treaty and sought to control only future production of fissile material. Pakistan’s principle worry is the disparity with the Indian stockpile of fissile material which, according to her, threatens the strategic stability in the region. According to the latest report by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Pakistan is ahead of India in the absolute number of nuclear warheads, and its military stocks of fissile material are comparable to that of India. However, these numbers just reveal half the picture of the South Asian nuclear scene. To understand the real significance of the FMCT for Pakistan, one needs to dig deeper into India’s nuclear energy program. It is India’s accumulation of reactor grade plutonium for its fast breeder reactor which is Pakistan’s principal worry. Surprisingly, the current impasse on FMCT emanates from the most unlikely source- India’s nuclear energy policy rather than its nuclear strategy.

India possesses more than 1300 tons of un-safeguarded reactor-grade plutonium in the spent fuel which its power reactors have generated over the years. Out of the 1300 tons reactor grade plutonium in the spent fuel, 750 tons has already been separated. India’s rationale for accumulating such a vast inventory of reactor grade plutonium stems from its three stage nuclear energy program. The Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) are the mainstay of this grandiose plan. By producing more plutonium than they consume, at least theoretically, FBR’s can act as a self-sustaining energy dispensers. At the least, this was the fundamental motivation behind the Bhabha plan for the future nuclear energy in India.

Over the years, India continued to tread on this futuristic nuclear energy plan. It invested heavily in Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor’s and the Fast Breeder Reactors.  India currently runs 15PHWR’s, out of which only 4 were under safeguards before the Indo-US nuclear deal was concluded. With the implementation of the deal, 10 of these reactors will be under safeguards by 2014. The 1300 tons of reactor grade plutonium come from the irradiated fuel of these reactors. However, India has not accepted any safeguards on its fast breeder reactors. India runs a small demonstration FBR of 13 MWe since 1985. The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is under construction and is projected to be completed by this year’s end. PFBR will seriously augment India’s capacity to produce fissile material. Not only will it produce more plutonium than it will consume but the plutonium produced will be highly concentrated (high fissile material fraction) and therefore, extremely useful for weapons. According to Alexander Glaser and M.V. Ramana, the PFBR can produce more than 144 kilograms of weapon grade plutonium (fissile fraction of about 95%) annually.

FBRs form the backbone of India’s grand plans for nuclear energy. According to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India will produce 20,000MW of atomic energy by 2020 and more than 274,000MW by 2050. At present, India produces only 4560MW of energy from its nuclear power plants. This means that a 5 fold increase by 2020 and more than a 60 fold by 2050. To realize these grandiose plans, India seems poised to construct hundreds of FBRs. DAE argues that the FBR’s will produce 199MW of energy by 2050. Clearly, more FBRs mean more potential to produce fissile material.

For Pakistan, India’s accumulations of reactor-grade plutonium as well as its plans with the FBR technology have serious implications for the nuclear stability in the region. This fear of strategic disparity is further accentuated by the fact that one of the nuclear tests of 1998 was based on reactor-grade plutonium. Further, the Indian establishment has provided no assurance that the accumulated reactor-grade plutonium and the weapons-grade plutonium which will be produced once the PFBR starts functioning will not be diverted to India’s nuclear weapons program. Clearly in the Indian case, the nuclear energy program and the nuclear weapons program is highly intertwined. However, any progress on the FMCT would only be possible if India is willing to separate the domains of nuclear energy with that of nuclear security.