Nuclear: Consider the Cost of Waste Storage

According to the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, “nuclear legacy” issues cost £2.5 billion, roughly 42% of the total budget. 

The Hindu: Protests against move to dump nuclear waste in Kolar Gold Fields

Blind To Fukushima

One study compared the health status of the inhabitants of five villages within 10 km of the Rajasthan atomic power station and four other villages more than 50 km away. It observed statistically significant increases in several indices including the rates of congenital deformities, spontaneous abortions, still births, and solid tumours in the villages closer to the reactor. 
It is unclear whether the industry itself believes its safety claims. The manufacturer of the Kudankulam plant, Atomstroyexport, is protected by an intergovernmental agreement between India and Russia, which completely absolves it of any responsibility in the event of a disaster. If anything, the risk of a nuclear accident in India is likely to be higher than elsewhere because of weaknesses in the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.

The Hindu: Where the mind is full of fear

Australia Backflips on Uranium to India

Prime Minister Julia Gillard to seek support from her party to end the ban on exports of uranium to India.
The argument was that it did not make any sense to export the yellow cake to authoritarian China, a signatory of the NPT but whose proliferation record remains doubtful.

India can thank Uncle Sam for Julia Gillard’s uranium backflip

Conversations with Chinese on Pak, Afghanistan

Some US scholar visiting China got a chance to hear Chinese views on their latest N-deal with Pak, and also their views on the situation in Afghanistan.

US to Go for N-Deal with Pak?

Is the United States interested in pursuing a nuclear deal with Pakistan? If so, then apparently they don't mind the Pakistani nuclear centrifuges and the warhead design which were sent to Iran.
Apparently they don't mind the idea of having more nuclear materiel in a land where it could fall into the hands of the worst extremists.

UK Researchers Develop Cheaper Way to Extract Uranium from Seawater

Researchers in the UK have found a much cheaper way to extract Uranium from seawater:

The discovery that inositol phosphate is potentially six times more effective as well as being a cheap waste material means that the process becomes economically viable, especially as the world price of uranium is likely to increase as countries move to expand their nuclear technologies in a bid to produce low-carbon energy.

As an example, if pure inositol phosphate, bought from a commercial supplier is used, the cost of this process is $19.30 per gram of uranium recovered. If a cheaper source of inositol phosphate is used such as calcium phytate, the cost reduces to $0.14 for each gram of recovered uranium.

At 2007 prices, uranium cost $0.34/gram; it is currently $0.14/gram.

So we're talking about matching current international market prices for uranium???
Is this for real?? If so, we're saved!

"Wee dun need no steenkin' N-Deal!"

The Big Spill Bill

The facts are now spilling out: India has now passed a nuclear accident liability bill which will protect foreign nuclear suppliers -- particularly those from the US -- by capping liability f0r damages at $450M, and only holding the operator responsible (in contrast with Union Carbide). Kaangress must salivating over the kickbacks it's getting for pushing this one through. Our own domestic industry will be kept at a disadvantage, thus ensuring our descent into complete foreign dependency.

Reading links: more on nuclear “deal”

Three important links on the nuclear front

Vardarajan exposes manmohan hypocricy - http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/13/stories/2009071351090900.htm

Parthasarthy warns of danger ahead - http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/07/09/stories/2009070950280800.htm

Pratap Mehta senses buyer’s remorse on deal - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-nuclear-games-begin/488710/0

Brutal fact is nobody cares. The cash tills in Switzerland are ringing as India will soon buy American reactors. thank you EVM’s. thank you chawla

The yanks are doing to us on nuclear front (enrichment and re-processing) what they are doing to China on the economic front (ever declining US treasury) i.e. selling a bill of goods they have no intention of honoring

Where are the deal huggers – eagerly lapping up US intentions to ‘make’ India into a superpower? Also where are the Obama automatons? No ‘hope and change’ – it is all “cap, rollback and eliminate”

Obama screws india over on nuclear “deal”

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/11/stories/2009071158290100.htm

one more step in “cap, roll-back and eliminate”. Interesting this comes the same week as Obama gave money o the pakis to kill more hindus with. this is how the yanks treat all strategic allies - by neutering them and making them utterly dependent on yankee largesse. where are the supporters of Obama and nuclear deals?

no word from Manmohan- the cash till is ringing in Switzerland. lady boos is happy
http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/11/stories/2009071152701000.htm

india's future: the ugly reality of nuclear power costs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html?ref=business

50% cost overrun (so far) on EPR - the world's premier reactor technology. makes you wonder what the Yankee junk that Manmohan buys will be like. of course you will not see this printed by the twits in the english media in India. they are too busy being paid off by the kickbacks obtained by KKKangress
Some Indian analysts like Swaminathan Aiyar of Swaminomics fame think that cost of nuclear fission reactors will come down as India becomes a manufacturing base. They feel we can do to nuclear reactors, what we have done to software - apply high skills/low cost base to dramatically lower the cost of building reactors. Hence support the Indo-US nuclear deal.
I have my doubts. For one India does not possess a critical mass of scientific/ intellectual/ academic base in reactor construction that it does in software. Even if this does happen - the deal does not immidiately allow us critical technologies like reprocessing spent fuel. In fact - this might lead to dual slavery. We build cheaper reactors for others (e.g. US, Australia and Canada) while they hold us hostage to Uranium shortages.
Incidentally - Brahma Chellaney has been warning for years about the absurd costs of fission, and Manmohan's pipe-dream deal. India is better served investing in indigenous breeder reactors - or better yet solar power

India-Pakistan De-hyphenated

TIME article on 123 Deal. Again, I realize we've made some compromises for the interim, however we have opened up the road for higher tech transfer, which will help us to regain lost ground. BJP is also revising some of its views.

Stratfor on US-India N-Deal

A Stratfor article on the US-India N-Deal:

India, U.S.: Regional Fallout from the Nuclear Deal
October 2, 2008 | 1942 GMT


Summary

The U.S. Congress approved the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear deal late Oct. 1. While some sticking points remain, U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are expected to grant the deal final approval as early as the week of Oct. 5. Geopolitically, this deal brings India into a strategic partnership with the United States — a major irritant to the Chinese and the Russians. For the Pakistanis, this deal gives New Delhi a long-term strategic advantage over Islamabad, marking an inflection point in Pakistan’s already deteriorating relationship with Washington.
Analysis

Despite the chaos in the U.S. Congress over the financial bailout plan, the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal managed to make its way through the Senate late Oct. 1.

The deal is not exactly what India was angling for, however. The version Congress approved included two contentious provisions. One would ban India from reprocessing nuclear fuel (which would allow for the extraction of weapons-grade plutonium), while a second would nullify the deal should India conduct a nuclear test.

India wanted the agreement reworded ambiguously to get around these sticking points, and is now expecting U.S. President George W. Bush to issue a signing statement to appease Indian concerns when he approves the deal. A signing statement is essentially a written pronouncement in which the president conveys his disagreement with a particular provision — or provisions — of a law and states that he does not plan to implement the disputed provision or provisions as Congress intended; Bush reportedly has signed hundreds of such statements during his term in office. The statement itself is nonbinding, and does not have to go back to Congress for approval, leaving it up to the next administration to decide how exactly to implement the deal should India violate either of the two contentious provisions.

After barely surviving a no-confidence vote that centered on the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needs this signing statement to fend off opposition at home. In any case, it appears Bush and Singh will sign the deal within the next two weeks.

The nuclear deal serves several key purposes. For India, gaining access to the global nuclear fuel and technology market after a 30-year ban will significantly enhance India’s ability to cope with skyrocketing energy demand at a time when global crude prices are at record highs. Moreover, now that India can buy nuclear fuel from global suppliers for its civilian nuclear facilities, it theoretically has more domestic uranium at its disposal to expand its nuclear weapons program should it find the strategic need to do so. The United States, meanwhile, has a host of U.S. companies in the nuclear industry eager to get a sizable chunk of the Indian nuclear market. These companies face considerable competition from France and Russia, which already have nuclear deals readied with India. If India wants to build a lot of nuclear power plants on a short timetable, however, the United States is the most capable of meeting this demand.

But this deal is much more than an economic agreement. By signing this pact, the United States and India are entering into a strategic partnership designed to sustain pressure on Pakistan, hedge against China and Russia, and safeguard energy supply lines from the Persian Gulf — all of which greatly concern China, Russia and most of all, Pakistan.

The Chinese knew they would not be able effectively to block the deal in the Nuclear Suppliers Group or the International Atomic Energy Agency. But China is still nervous about the agreement, and is looking to counter this fortified U.S.-Indian alliance in coordination with Pakistan, mainly through expanded Chinese-Pakistani civilian nuclear cooperation — and potentially, a fairly significant sale of military aircraft to Pakistan.

Russia, on the other hand, is planning on staying cozy with India through energy and defense incentives such as the (problematic) delivery of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, a pending offer for India to get a large stake in the Sakhalin 3 offshore energy project, and a separate deal for Russia to build four nuclear reactors in India. High-level meetings between the Russians and the Indians are in the works to move these deals along in the coming months.

The Pakistanis are at a severe disadvantage with regard to India. New Delhi is signing this agreement with Washington as Islamabad’s relationship with Washington has hit an all-time low due to a raging jihadist insurgency that Pakistan is both incapable and unwilling to manage on its own. The alliance the United States entered into with the Pakistanis after 9/11 was for a short-term strategic interest, namely, to eradicate the threat from al Qaeda. The bilateral nuclear agreement Washington has signed with New Delhi, however, formalizes a broad strategic realignment in the works since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The need for this alliance is now more urgent than ever in Washington’s view given Moscow’s increasingly aggressive stance toward the West.

Though the U.S. priority at present involves working with the Pakistanis to stamp out the Islamist insurgency, Islamabad’s relevance has unquestionably declined in Washington’s eyes. India now has been officially recognized as a responsible nuclear power and a major ally of the United States — and with that comes a long-term strategic advantage over India’s South Asian foe.

Conditions Attached by US Congress Sink 123 Deal

It may now be no longer possible for India to sign the 123 Deal, because of the extra conditions attached by the US Congress. These conditions are explicit language that requires the US not just to cut off supplies, but also to disrupt the nuclear waiver, which was not previously the case before. India can still go forward with its plans to negotiate reactor deals with France and Russia, which aren't bound by any similar conditions.

After Japanese funded bail-out; Indian funded jobs

'N-deal can support 250,000 high-tech US jobs'

So here at last is the real reason for the hard-sell on the nuclear deal. It is noteworthy that in the "not classified, but secret" letter sent by the Bush official to Congress members, America's commercial figure as Question Number - wait for it - you guessed it Question Number 1

This deal is a stinker - it will dis-incentivise our Thorium program and create American jobs. Of course - it will also create Indian kick-backs - secretly put away in Swiss Banks. some families have to "sacrifice" and stay rich!

"All War is based on deception" : Sun Tzu

Aptly sums up the Chinese strategy towards a gullible India. Also the fact that India has a plethora of "Useful Idiots" right from chacha Nehru onwards helps. Although I do not support the nuke deal, I am still posting this article by G.Parthasarathy from the Pioneer, as it shows the Chinese to be the slithery snakes that they really are.

Jimmy Carter Condemns 123 Deal

Former US President Jimmy Carter, one of the posterboys for Atlanticists/Trilateralists, strongly condemns the nuclear waiver for India in an op-ed piece. The mild-mannered genteel southerner seems to think that the world will go to hell in a handbasket if India's nuclear ambitions are left unchecked.

Power Flows from the Barrel of GDP

India's great leap forward in GDP has given it the credibility to move international alignments, says K Subrahmanyam.

India to Deal With France, Russia First

India will not wait around for the US Congress to debate passage of the 123 Deal, and will instead sign reactor deals with France and Russia first. India is also leery of new doubts on the question of US fuel supply assurances. Meanwhile, France has said it will provide fuel supply assurances to India, and is offering its latest state-of-the-art EPR reactor to India, which it is also building in China and Finland. This reactor design has power output that is scaleable into the multi-gigawatt range, as well as strong safety characteristics. Finally, India will have access to the same latest and greatest technology that China gets from the world.

Opportunity for Nuclear Exports

SK Jain, the NPCIL chairman, has pointed out the opportunity for India to now engage in nuclear exports. India doesn't have to merely become a pure buyer of foreign nuclear tech, but can even go in for tie-ups and joint production partnerships, using its own cost advantages to offer superior value and to accelerate our learning curve. As has been discussed before, Indian companies are rising faster than China's, because whereas Chinese co's had to claw their way up at home first before going abroad, Indian ones are going for global M&As to find whichever path is most efficient for them. Intertwining our supply chains makes it harder for others to extricate themselves from their relationships with us, and gives us more leverage with them as well.

What the Critics Are Saying

Here's a piece from Michael Krepon, who as we know is no friend of India.