Quantum politics

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Sep 11th 2008 | DELHI
From The Economist print edition

Celebrating a diplomatic triumph


AT THE atomic level, the laws of classical physics bend in intriguing ways. On September 6th, the world’s nuclear rules proved equally pliable. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-nation cartel that limits trade in nuclear materials and technology, passed a “waiver”, allowing it to do business with India (see article). Only five other countries (America, Britain, China, France and Russia) both enjoy the privileges of nuclear commerce and have nuclear weapons. And unlike India, those other five have all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (although America and China have yet to ratify the latter).

The deal is still to be approved by America’s Congress. But the waiver will allow India to import uranium for its nuclear reactors, which will need roughly double the uranium its own mines can supply. This in turn will enable India to devote more of its domestic uranium to weapons-building. In addition, the deal should eventually let India buy “dual-use” technology, of use in the nuclear industry and beyond.

For India, this is all welcome. But what most impressed the country’s commentators is the deal’s symbolism, not its utility. The world’s nuclear club bent its rules to accommodate India. Much as this irks foreign critics of the deal, it delights many Indians, who see it as confirmation of the country’s new status in the world.

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“If the Beijing Olympics was China’s coming-out party, the NSG waiver was India’s,” wrote the Times of India, the country’s best-selling English-language newspaper. America brought its diplomatic muscle to bear on India’s behalf, elbowing aside the “nuclear nobodies”, such as Austria, New Zealand and Ireland and a score of others who objected to the deal, and even overcoming China’s last-minute quibbles. This diplomatic coup was all the more notable because India is the reason the cartel exists. It was formed to prevent a repeat of India’s 1974 nuclear test, which exploited the civilian nuclear help India received under America’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative. This was, the Times said, a “delicious irony”. Tastier still was the distance the deal puts between India and its rival Pakistan. The deal has “de-hyphenated” the Indo-Pakistan nuclear conundrum, the newspaper said.

Amid the trumpets, some grace-notes of nostalgia could also be heard. For the past 50 years, India has harboured dreams of nuclear self-sufficiency. Short of uranium, it possesses about a third of the world’s known deposits of thorium, which can be turned into nuclear fuel if irradiated. In theory, according to Charles Ferguson of America’s Council on Foreign Relations, these deposits could yield 155,502 gigawatt-years of electrical energy, more than 14 times the wattage India could extract from its coal deposits.

Unfortunately, the dream remains distant. Before it can exploit its thorium, to name only one obstacle, India must first breed plutonium at a viable cost and scale. John Stephenson and Peter Tynan of Dalberg, an American consultancy, do not expect much from thorium before 2050 at best. In the meantime, India hopes its new licence to import uranium will allow it to quintuple its nuclear-generated electricity by 2020. But even that will meet only 5% of its projected demand, according to Mr Ferguson. India cannot fulfil its nuclear aspirations without foreign help, and its nuclear plans, even if realised, can meet only a fraction of its vast energy needs. Some constraints, sadly, do not yield to either diplomatic or atomic power.