Excerpts from a Talk at the India International Centre on 19 May 2007

Chair:      Manoj Joshi, Editor (Views), Hindustan Times
Speaker: Prof R. Rajaraman, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

The possible impact of the Indo-US nuclear deal on South Asian nuclear arsenals has generated a lot of concern both in India and abroad and the irony is that quite opposite predictions are made by different critics of the deal about this impact. The international community particularly the white knight countries - Sweden, Norway, Canada - feel that the deal leaves India with considerable un-safeguarded capability for producing weapons grade fissile material, should India choose to do so. A second concern that has been flagged by these nations is that India may be able to spend all its indigenous uranium ore for military purposes since the Agreement allows it to import fuel for its civilian reactors. The deal will thus presumably increase India's weapons producing capability. Further, it is apprehended that the deal will provoke a reaction from Pakistan and that it would accelerate an arms race within South Asia.

There is considerable concern about the deal within India as well. One vocal stream of criticism against the Deal has been that it would adversely affect India's national security. In simple, if politically incorrect language, "national security" here refers to India's ability to make more and better bombs. The Indo-US nuclear deal advocates on the other hand, believe that the agreement will help India to develop more weapons. Both these conjectures cannot be simultaneously right. Hence, what are the facts?

According to the Separation Plan of 2 March 2006, out of the 22 nuclear reactors, India has agreed to place 14 of them under IAEA safeguards while retaining 8 under the military sector. The following nuclear reactors will be under the civilian domain:

• Kakrapar-1

• Kakrapar-2

• Narora-1

• Narora-2

• Rajasthan-1

• Rajasthan-2

• Rajasthan-3

• Rajasthan-4

• Tarapur-1

• Tarapur-2

• Kudankulam-1

• Kudankulam-2

• Rajasthan-5

• Rajasthan-6

The military sector will house the following reactors:

• Kaiga-1

• Kaiga-2

• Madras-1

• Madras-2

• Tarapur-3

• Kaiga-3

• Kaiga-4

• Tarapur-4

The other facilities that will remain outside safeguards are the Dhruva (100 MWth) and Cirus (40MWth) plutonium production reactors. The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (13 MWe) and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR; 500 MWe) will also remain within the military domain. In addition to that India has three plutonium reprocessing plants at Trombay, Kalpakkam and Tarapur. These plants can reprocess the plutonium produced in those 8 reactors under the military sector. India also has an uranium enrichment plant that will be primarily meant for submarine reactors. All the spent fuel stocks that will be produced in all the reactors will be placed under the military sector.

On the basis of the Annual Reports of the Department of Atomic Energy and the manner in which reactors have been functioning, it can be estimated that the two plutonium producing reactors - Cirus and Dhruva have produced between 630 to 650kg of plutonium of which about 130kg have been used up in the nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998 and various experimentations conducted by India. However, India is still left with an estimated 500kg of weapons grade plutonium. It takes about 5kg of this plutonium to make a 20Kt bomb. India thus has 100 weapons worth of weapons grade plutonium. In addition, India has all the plutonium being accumulated in the spent fuel of the 14 operating reactors that are to be placed under safeguards that will produce 11 tonnes of reactor grade plutonium. Though this is not ideal for making reliable bombs with kilo tonnage yield, yet it can be used to make reactor grade plutonium. Instead of 5kg, it might take 10kg of this material depending on the state of the technology to make a single weapon but even then India can have 1000 weapons worth of reactor grade plutonium available in the spent fuel of all existing reactors. This can be used for military purposes. In comparison, France has about 700 such weapons, UK has reduced the number to 200, and China's quantity keeps fluctuating between 200 and 500. These are of the order of magnitude of other established nuclear states as compared to India. This is in addition to the 100 high grade plutonium weapons, India could possess. For the future, eight nuclear reactors will continue to be in military sector. As the existing reactors go under safeguards, the additional plutonium that India produces will get less and less but it stabilizes after that. Thus India will generate about 1200kg of reactor grade plutonium every year. Thus the estimated 11 tonnes of reactor grade plutonium will grow at the rate of one and a half tonnes every year (worth 150 weapons). This is possible from just the eight reactors that are in the military sector.

As regards the future, weapons grade plutonium can be obtained from Cirus that produces about 9kg a year and Dhruva that generates 20 to 25kg. In addition the fast breeder reactor will also be producing high grade plutonium. Each breeder reactor produces about 135kg of weapons grade plutonium every year worth about 32 weapons. Thus, year after year, inside the military fence approved by the Separation Plan the breeder reactor will produce 32 weapons. This is not inclusive of the reactor stock mentioned earlier. This stock would have been produced anyway, deal or no deal. The extra capability to make weapons grade plutonium arises only if the surplus of domestic uranium released by the deal is used in one of the eight PHWRs outside safeguards at low burn.

Estimate of Arsenals in India and Pakistan

By 2020, India will have roughly 400 warheads of Hiroshima and Nagasaki type worth fissile material only from the Cirus, Dhruva and the breeder reactors, with the deal in place. There will be no need for India to install additional capacity or use reactor grade plutonium if 400 warheads are enough for India's nuclear deterrent.

Pakistan, with its uranium enrichment facility, can produce 130 warheads by 2020. At present Pakistan may possess about 50 to 60 warheads. Pakistan is also trying to master the technology to produce plutonium-based warheads and can make another 50 plutonium warheads with that. It is reported that the Khushab reactor once operational, will increase Pakistan's warheads arsenal by a few hundreds. However, it is most unlikely that Pakistan can have the Khushab reactor operational by 2010.

India's numbers are fairly reliable and it can produce more than the estimated numbers. If there is excess uranium in store, since now the civilian reactors can be fueled with outside uranium, and domestically available uranium will be more than what is required by the military domain, some of the military reactors can be used to produce more weapons grade plutonium.

Is India likely to make so many weapons?

This is not likely. India's policy is one of minimal deterrence, that when examined objectively and without Cold War preconceptions, does not require anywhere nearly as many weapons. Minimal deterrence does not require a boundless open-ended arsenal, nor does India need to match its weapons in number and strength to those of its adversaries. It only demands that India has enough capability, in a second strike, to inflict "unacceptable damage" to the other side. In order to have unacceptable damage, half a dozen modest 20Kt weapons if dropped on major Asian cities can kill about a million people. That is more than enough to be unacceptable to even a remotely rational government anywhere, including Pakistan and China. All that is needed is a couple of dozen weapons in store to take into account redundancy, survivability and so on, to ensure such a modest second strike. Accuracy is not so important for counter-value strikes. If the adversary is controlled by such irrational and suicidal leadership that it finds a million immediate civilian deaths acceptable as a price for military adventure (as could conceivably happen) then one cannot logically guarantee that a much larger arsenal will deter them anyway.

This is not to project that the estimate of just a dozen surviving deliverable weapons as sufficient for deterrence is shared by the Indian establishment. However, even as of today India already has a weapons grade plutonium stock of half a tonne (worth about 100 warheads), plus nearly 12 tonnes of reactor grade plutonium (worth over a 1200 warheads). This should suffice for even a conservative strategy but India has been responsible for giving the impression of going for large arsenals by invoking national security as a reason for keeping the breeder and eight other PHWRs outside safeguards. The Indian government should make every effort, consistent with sovereignty and national security, to erase this impression and reassure its neighbors and the world that it has no plans to enlarge its arsenal by exploiting the Indo-US Deal.

Note: All technical results in this talk are from collaborative work done with Zian Mian, A H Nayyar, and M V Ramana, as part of the international panel on fissile materials, www.fissilematerials.org.