Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Fast Breeder: NPA Strategery

In the NPA fantasy view, the fast breeder is a weapons production facility.

To understand the root of this fantasy view, you have to grasp that in the US, an astoundingly large number of scientists have devoted their lives to building weapons. Every single item of their genius has been enslaved by a war machine that constantly churns out a new and devastating weapon each day. So it becomes very difficult for such people to think that anything does not have a weapons use.

The NPA closely associate with the nuclear weapons community and to them all nuclear activities are essentially weapons related and because America carried out nuclear weapons related activities under the guise of civilian research and funded critical weapons related sectors under innocuous budget headers... India "must be doing the same thing". There is a natural tendency in this community to over project the weapons angle to everything.

The American intelligence community as a whole seems less prone to this especially these days... perhaps there is some memory of the failure of Sept 11 and the more recent failure to adequately examine the Iraqi WMD evidence? who knows... but it seems all too easy in the case of India to use the suggestion of WMD activities by India to get IAEA inspectors in there and we all know these IAEA missions are fig leaf for intelligence collection activities by the US.

In theory it is possible to transmute anything into anything else, however it is simply not possible to this economically. India's breeder reactors are an attempt to get an idea of what can be done economically. This is the only information worth protecting there.

The US currently lags the world in civilian nuclear technology. Though it is many light years ahead of the world in making things like nuclear weapons, it has to import breeder technology and fissile material refining technology. There is considerable interest in the US to find out what India has figured out in field of economical breeder operations and despite all that you may want to believe about Americans, they will not hesitate to copy India's technology and mass produce it. India lags the world in mass production, otherwise we would have hundreds of nuclear reactors and breeders by now... and if the Americans get their hands on it, they will deprive India of markets.

Please understand, India can compete with US in certain fields and it is impossible of anyone in India, even the most foreign educated economist to ignore this. This is why every article on the "Rise of India and China" in the lay press in the West speaks with such an obvious sense of alarm.

In Iraq, the WMD allegation was used to gain the US intelligence agencies access to Iraq. When the agencies could find no evidence of WMD production. The US knew it was safe to invade Iraq. The international inspection regime was used to get the US a way to securing it interests.

It is not different in the case of the fast breeders, only the interests are not about seizing India's oil. It is about seizing the fruits of India's intellectual exertion.

21 Comments:

At 7:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

You are either playing a game or displaying your ignorance of the FBR program. How can you discount its weapons potential with a straight face? Blaming it on NPA-think does not constitute an informed analysis.

 
At 10:12 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi m,
1)this is continuing with the elephant analogy as nitin there mentioned that grass does get trampled. In this case grass indeed will be pakistan if they continue to frustrate our effors in securing oil from ME or CA.

2)The first official confirmation of wide gulf between US & India is out: Listen to Pranab Mukherjee interview to KT. At this hour one should not get bitter, but calmy think as to where we went right/wrong and one best needs to be done in the present time as well as plan for the future.

 
At 11:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi m,
this and 2nd post are mine.
Don't you think that GOI had actually calculated this scenario where NPA will make a mess out of the deal. RS,SS,SSM,MKN,JND,PM,MMS have decades of experience behind them. One has to go deeper to understand GOI strategies.

 
At 5:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi m,
Iraq will be America's Afghanistan rather than America's vietnam.Many reasons
1)Dollar meltdown 2)Another term widely popularly know as 'M3'
Look at this article http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/11dollar.htm
2)Correct me if the above written is wrong

 
At 7:22 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Hi Anonymous,

I am not playing any games, and in all modesty, I can't claim to be ignorant either.

There is quite simply no military activity at the FBR. The FBR is all about demonstrating the commercial viability of MOX fuel based power solutions in India.

To those that think of power only in weapons terms - hard power, that doesn't sound like much but those who understand the true meaning of power... that is everything - soft power.

The FBR program is the proverbial "kick in the nuts" to the carbon fuels price control mafias. Any demonstration of the viability of this in a place like a flea-bitten poverty-ridden India, will act as a lightning rod for third world resentment against carbon fuel pricing.

The NPA are professional liars guided in their thinking by America's vast number of bomb makers. The bomb makers only think something is useful if you can kill someone with it and so the NPA are saying that the FBR is a weapons program.

Most Indians who worship the US today don't recall what some of America's finest minds told India's leaders in the 60s, that it would be better of cause famines and kill off large parts of the Indian population and in doing so create a more manageable society.

One has use ones brain to see this for what it is.

 
At 7:47 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Hi Anonymous,

I cannot truly say what the government did and did not include in its evaluation of the July 18th agreement.

It is possible that they anticipated the NPA mess and deliberately did this to flush out the NPA for what they are.

Or it is possible as everyone seems to be more keen to think these days, that the Government was simply incompetent and took the Americans at the word.

Someone with greater access to the deal makers when it all went down could tell you something. I was only allowed a very limited exposure - quite understandable given the circumstances and I do admit I did not see anything unviable in what was being said and except for the "trust" word which is always difficult, there was little that seemed like it could go wrong.

I had no way to predict the manner in which the public mood would swing against President Bush or that he would have trouble controlling the parliament like he did.

I still believe that President Bush is a upright person, and the allegations being made against him, that he deliberately betrayed the Prime Minister's trust are unfounded. So much gets put about by motivated interests these days and one can't be sure of anything. Given how people are writing tell all books lately I would not be surprised if a best seller emerged that came out suggesting the exact thing that I find hard to believe.
For years we were told that if someone called "Bush" says yes, then America will make it happen regardless of the cost. This does not appear to be the case anymore.

I am sure the reasons for the failure of the deal will be intensively analysed in India. I cannot say which way the tide of that discussion will turn and neither I imagine can the Americans despite their information dominance over India. They will desperately try to influence that debate in any way they can and make sure it does not compromise their interests. A great war... perhaps the greatest kind of war... a war of information is on the verge of breaking out.

The manner in which the nuclear deal has progressed exposes the schizophrenic side of American international policy making. It is the weak underbelly of international politics, when groups with different aspirations try to huddle under the same national policy canopy. This is a side the highly image conscious Americans are most uncomfortable showing to the world. It is the one side of their national character that they don't want people poking around it. And why just them, no one wants to look like they simply can't "get their shit together".

Though I confess, to voyeurs in the Indian national security community, this is a visual feast.

 
At 7:51 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Hi Anonymous,

This is an interesting article.

 
At 8:33 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

Thanks for the sermon. But, returning to the point, the only useful sentence in that reply is this:

"There is quite simply no military activity at the FBR."

Why are you so sure?

 
At 12:33 PM, Blogger maverick said...

Anonymous,

I am sure because the government's utterances have followed an extremely consistent tone. They have repeatedly stated that the FBR was a civilian research program and the only reason it was being co-housed with the rest of the strategic complex was that the technology was IPR sensitive.

Also the NPA are bunch of compulsive liars and it was they who floated this U-233 bomb idea. It was only when I made a careful list of which NPA touted this, that I was able to discern who the true paymasters might be. Until they exposed themselves in this fashion, I was rather clueless as to who exactly was behind all this opposition to the deal. The appearance of the U-233 bomb conspiracy pointed a finger at exactly who inside the US was pushing for the failure of the deal.

To reinforce the point about the civilian nature of the FBR, our negotiators expressed no reservations to suggestions that we open the breeder to monitoring *once* we had achieved full commercial operations. A number of intermediaries in the deal publicly stated that it was unlikely that the GoI would oppose inspections once the FBRs were being filled with MOX elements made from imported fuels. However until the anti-IPR theft measures were put in place, there was no question of letting any international teams in there.

I have no reason to believe either of these people were lying. You want to prove it wrong, please go ahead, though I assume from your conduct so far, you have no hard proof of this as you would have relased it already.

By contrast the negotiators and the intermediaries indicated that reactors at trombay complex were off bounds as they were part of the "strategic programme". They expressed no reluctance in admitting that or hiding anything about it. Equally clear were the discussions on the future of India's Credible Minimum Deterrence regime. These discussions were deliberately held at a place the US would find friendly, and no objections were made when known Pakistani agents presented themselves at this venue in the guise of being American interlocuters.

This kind of openness evoked considerable but silent outrage inside the Indian national security community. When pushed on the matter, the standard line taken by the intermediaries was that such an admittance was consistent with what the PM promised the President; that the DAE would segregate weapons and non weapons activity and by admitting to where the program existed, the DAE was carrying out an effective separation.

The inability of the US to be satisfied with a level of transparency that far exceeds what most Nuclear Weapons States have permitted, strongly suggests an ulterior motive on the part of the US. Or perhaps the American perception of what India is saying has been shaped by Pakistani sponsorred agent provocatuers posing as American experts. Either ways the American dissatifaction with the Indian efforts and proposals exposed the weakest part of their policy structure - the complete lack of ability to achieve an internal consensus on this matter.

I never did understand the coolness of the Pakistanis to the India-US nuclear deal. I sensed a seething anger that was boiling away under the surface but on the face of it, the fear of Abbaji, kept the Pakistanis in line.

 
At 12:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

Another long rambling post from you, with one relevant paragraph:


"Also the NPA are bunch of compulsive liars and it was they who floated this U-233 bomb idea. It was only when I made a careful list of which NPA touted this, that I was able to discern who the true paymasters might be. Until they exposed themselves in this fashion, I was rather clueless as to who exactly was behind all this opposition to the deal. The appearance of the U-233 bomb conspiracy pointed a finger at exactly who inside the US was pushing for the failure of the deal."

The U-233 bomb idea is approximately 60 years old and in that sense, it predates you, me and any "compulsive liars" as well. But, since you have narrowed down exactly who started this, why not post the names instead of rambling replies.

My point was that a military component of the FBR program can not be discounted regardless of what statements are made by whom and in which country. It is a simple fact.

Try to refute the fact rather than rant.

 
At 5:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous (the first and later),
By logical extension of this argument *any* nuclear reactor could be used for weapons production, no? If one expects that India is going to commit through treaty or otherwise that the ability to produce nuclear weapons of any sort will be permanently forsworn for a deal of this sort, then I think this is an impossible expectation.

 
At 6:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anamak,

India is not expected to forswear anything. In fact, a clear separation plan was agreed upon in which the FBRs were placed on the military side.

In any other scenario, this would have indicated that FBRs were indeed military. However, in India's case, the stated need for placing them on the military side is ostensibly to protect the intellectual property. This is an understandable stand, but it is far from stating categorically that the FBRs are NOT military.

That is all I wished to point out. I have no problem with all the abuse piled upon "NPA", but an occasional acknowledgment of fact would be appreciated.

 
At 7:39 PM, Blogger maverick said...

maverick said...
Anonymous,

There is *no* fact here to be discounted.

There is no military significance to our Fast Breeders.

The only thing that is sustaining this lie that the Fast Breeders are part of a military option is an NPA perpetrated fiction.

Barring the fantastically stupid and extremely gullible no one takes this U-233 suggestion seriously.

Anyone with the slightest amount of sense can tell that the we are not going to invest billions of dollars in a fast breeder reactor to make U-233 for bombs when we can easily make sufficient quantities of Plutonium with our existing facilities.

The FBR is only under guard for IPR reasons. When the proposed import of FBRs to the US from Europe is concluded, the US rush to stick their hands up India's FBR will end and the NPA will talk about India using its Thorium breeders to make Unobtainium, that fantastically dangerous nuclear substance that can be used to make 1 billion gigaton bombs.

Permit me a small ramble... at a press conference addressed by one of the intermediaries one of the people in the audience stood up and asked the speaker, if there was anything in "Hindu" religion that would prevent the Indians from using the fissile material that India is supplied under this deal against the US?

At that point many people in the audience that did not know who he really was rolled their eyes and said to themselves, ah another bible clutching fanatic!... most missed the significance of what the gentleman was asking... that is was they any reason at all India would not use this material against the US..

The man was reflecting a very deep-seated fear in US psychology - that someone would do unto them... what they did unto Japan. The NPA feed on this fear and are experts at inventing reasons to fear the Indian program. This proposed FBR weapons use is nothing more than the NPA's fear mongering.

Once the FBRs' IPR sensitivity declines (for example if India puts in place anti-theft measures) the FBR program will be just another reactor and at that point if it is fueled with imported fuels, it will be put before the IAEA, just like all of India's power producing CANDUs are.

 
At 7:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

You really are clueless about nuclear matters. Let's examine your rant:

"Barring the fantastically stupid and extremely gullible no one takes this U-233 suggestion seriously."

As far as I can tell, you are the one who raised this U-233 bogey and are not flailing your arms denying it. Get a clue. Calling yourself stupid and gullible is not very useful among grown-ups.

The FBR's military potential is in breeding of Plutonium. So please stuff this U-233 rant and pay attention, please.

 
At 9:29 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Anonymous,

Little knowledge my friend is a very dangerous thing.

You seem extra ordinarily keen to miss my point. I am repeating it below in the hope I finally get through to you.

Sure there is Pu-239, U-235 and U-233 in fuel elements of any reactor but in the FBR there is also sufficient quantities of other nasty things that make getting only the weapons related fissile material out very costly. Even the mere cost of handling spent fuel bundles from the FBR in a safe way is quite prohibitive at the present time and will be justifiable if we can get enough electricity out of the next stage. This is what Dr. Kakodkar was talking about when he mentioned proliferation resistance of India's fuel cycle.

Leaving out economics, anything can be used to make weapons grade material. You can breed all sorts of things in a reactor, you just can't extract them from there in any levels of purity by ways that make economic sense!

Sure if you are driven by a fear of being nuked by your own shadow.. as America is, then you ignore economics to make as many bombs as you can, perhaps even more bombs then you can actually safely store. However if you are like India which has no such fears, then you don't waste time and effort on economically unviable rubbish and you stick with what you know works and works cheaply.

The NPA brought up the idea that the FBR could be used as a tool to make U-233 for bombs. This was part of their fear mongering strategy. The idea that you can actually extract weapons grade Plutonium from the FBR is simply another one of their stories.

We have other places where we can make sufficient plutonium quite economically.

The only reason that we keep the FBR from prying eyes is IPR sensitivity.

If the program becomes mature enough to address that sensitivity, I have difficulty seeing why the government will not reconsider its position.

The NPA profit from making it look
that everything India does has a weapons use and is somehow inherently destablising to the India-Pakistan nuclear situation.
They are targetting the FBR program with all sorts pseudo science. It behooves us all to separate this rubbish from real science.

 
At 10:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

Pick a side -- your latest rant is insulting to Indian scientists. In fact, it comes out like you are an NPA after all. LOL.

Your incompetence in matters nuclear is getting exposed. All your posts are non -technical and full of silly bile. Get a clue.

 
At 7:08 AM, Blogger maverick said...

My dear Anonymous friend,

As I said earlier, I can claim to be many things, but I cannot claim to be ignorant on some things. I am trying to communicate here with a non-technical audience and that is why I have left the technical things out of it.

One of the biggest hurdles in the way of exploitation of nuclear fuels is the inability to **economically** separate isotopes of interest.

There are schemes and proposals to do it, but these only work on paper not in the real world.

If you are the United States and you have 5-10 GWe of power sitting around, you may be able to solve this problem in a brute-force fashion. However if you are India, and there is a power shortage, then you do not have the luxury of such incompetence.

However America is soon going to run out of such luxuries. This is forcing them to look for other ideas on isotope separation. India has spent decades on this problem and has more knowledge about it than anyone else. India is the logical place for Americans to go.

There is no way to economically separate Pu-239 from an FBR spent fuel rod due to the presence of a number of other isotopes which make even handling the fuel very difficult. This is why a number of NPA sponsorred suggestions on "spent fuel incinerators" involved using an ADS to deliberately change the isotope ratios and render the fissile material "unrecoverable".

The economics of reprocessing CANDU fuel rods is far more sustainable in the Indian context.

The Indian efforts at isotope separation on the commericial scale have focussed on the recovery of sufficient fissile material for use in post-FBR stages for energy production. We have not expended our efforts in trying to remove Pu-239 from a mass of metal that spits out huge amounts of gamma radiation. With our knowledge we are closer perhaps then any other to actually separating U-233 on a commericial scale however we are well aware of the IPR sensitivity of such knowledge and why the US of all countries would be willing to give an arm and a leg to get it.

The NPA's allegations of a military use for the FBR are nothing more than fishing trips aimed at deducing the exact nature of India's knowledge and capabilities in isotope separation.

Ofcourse some well-meaning people who want to see a strong India, especially Indian scientists and expats unfamiliar with the details of isotope separation are often led to believe that we have a way of doing something this dramatic. One should be forgiven for harbouring such misconceptions, but such expats and scientists, will do well to remember that nuclear science in the US is dominated by bombmakers and the relentless pursuit of weapons has caused unbelievable stagnation on this field there. Surely the US does not expect India to follow in their misguided footsteps, especially when from day one, we have been cautioning them against the development of these weapons?

Today the NPA and their friends in the science community are keen to get their hands on what India knows. Unfortunately, in the eagerness they forget that the greatest nuclear secret is the very idea that something can be done. When you just *give* that away by saying something utterly stupid to show you are smarter than the Indians, you put the world as whole at risk.

My dear anonymous friend, I ask you what concievable advantage was gained by the release of the idea that U-233 could be used to make a bomb? India never said anything of the sort nor did it express the intention of even doing anything remotely like that. Why release this information to the general public?

Similarly why even suggest that the FBR can be used to make weapons grade Pu? Sure India can't do such a thing economically, but what about another country? one with a lot of high technology and a very strong tradition of pursuing breeder technology? will this be out of their grasp? One which has a very serious beef with the US? or am I expected to go on pretending that they only arrested those scientists because there was a "fuel related accident" at the facility?

In their eagerness to destroy the India-US nuclear deal the NPA are endangering the security of the world as a whole. The NPA may be going insane at the prospect of losing their funding, but the rest of us can't be expected to lose our heads as well.

No Indian scientists are far from incompetent, they are in fact much smarter than you would give them credit for.

 
At 9:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,

You tend to wrap a lot of unrelated sermon around a wrong technical point. This trick is not working. But seeing that you will not change your tactics, I will make some final remarks. You are welcome to hoodwing the readership of your blog.

Creation of transuranic nuclei in any reactor is a function of burn up. If FBRs are run at low burn up, separation of Pu-239 is no different than the PUREX process India already has mastered. This can not be refuted and I can see that you are not even trying.

The U-233 bogey is something that you have created so it is not my task to defend it.

There are definitely some IPR issues related to separation of U-233 from a mix of Th-232 and Pa-234/233. The difficulties are well known and if India has developed a process that is excellent news for the entire planet. However, all of that stuff is not relevant to the issue of FBR's military potential which is where this discussion started. You have danced around the issue and you know it.

Good luck!

 
At 7:07 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Dear Anonymous,

There are things you can read on wikipedia and then there are things you cannot. Usually the most obvious is what is left out of wikipedia.

I realise my mistake now, I am leaving out the obvious when I converse with you. It seems you miss the obvious with alarming frequency.

To me it is obvious that India's scientists are not stupid but perhaps I should have mentioned another corollary of that obvious fact the very beginning that... any country that is serious about developing FBR technology for energy production can't run the test platforms and prototypes on a short fuel cycle. They have to leave the rods in and see how they work a longer timescale. The FBR unlike the CANDU is not a proven technology, it is known to be difficult to work with.

In fact if you look through the documentation released by the FBTR programme the emphasis from the very beginning in all the technical documents is on achieving the **highest possible** burn with the rods. Ofcourse given that much of the available documentation on other FBR programs shows that unanticipated problems show up over longer timescales, any proof of reliability of the reactor requires longer fuel cycles.

If the rods stay in longer than a certain amount, then the proportions of Pu-241 and actinides make Pu-239 recovery beyond India's economic means, it may not be beyond the means of a country like Germany, Japan, China or America.

There is a very sound economic argument which drives India towards a CANDU based Pu-239 extraction.

For example, if India is willing to stop electricity production at all its CANDUs pull out the rods and use them to make Pu-239, then that is possible too. This would be an extremely cheap way of getting a hold of a lot of Pu, very quickly.

As the development of the FBR was driven by a desire to build an energy solution for the future, it is not possible to economically justify its use for Pu-239 production.

This is consistently the line taken by all GoI negotiators at all levels and by Indian ministers in parliament.

I do not forsee this changing and insisting that it change only seems to play into a game to destabilise the entire negotiating posture of the GoI. If I was in the government I would find it very difficult to like that sort of behaviour, espcially since there is considerable frustration over the amount of poking and proding by the US to try and push this deal through. But since I am not in the GoI, I could not possibly tell you how they will recieve your peculiar point of view... i.e. India does things that make no economic sense. When an economist leads the country, then ... you might see why such thinking is unwelcome at 7RCR.

I note that you are very keen to prove three things:

1) That I am trying to "hoodwink" people.

2) That you know that India's FBRs have a "military purpose".

3) Economics is somehow irrelevant in all this.

Why are you keen to do such things?

 
At 11:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi m,
This is what kgoan has to say on BR forum concerning the Indo-US nuclear deal. You knew all along but refused to acknowledge it in public.
-----------------------------------
Hullo folks got an email about the little kerfuffle here.

JUmraoji, just for the record: I don't post as much because my current job makes it impossible. This is not a time issue. You all know how the forum gets read by some strange people. Well, turns out that can bite you in the @ss when your current job involves the type of things we talk about on the forum.

(Matter of fact, I think I sent an email to both JEM and Shiv about this about a year or so ago, while discussing something else, as to why I don't post as much anymore. - So there is definitely no issue with admins!)

Re: The deal:

*Every* single issue on this deal is about constraining the growth in our *usable* power potential down the line.

EVERYTHING is about that.

How? They want us to be an obedient servant like Japan and Britain or a loud-mouthed "employee" type like France. No one serious in Dilli's terribly interested in that as far as I can tell. Not even those the forum likes to tar as "sell-outs".

Here's how this game works:

Think of the patent regime. How does the US get India to pass a patent law that benefits the west against our own interests?

Simple really, they *don't*. They get GoI to pass a patent law that benefits a few *Indian* companies - like say Dr Reddys. (Just anexample. I have no problem with the good Drs labs!)

The law says that Indian multinationals are protected. But in reality, given the power and size differential of Indian versus global companies in pharmeceuticals, the law actually acts to protect the wests monopoly far more than it protects India.

But it *does* protect the one or two Indian players in the game.

This is nothing more than sophisticated variation on the Bombay club rules of yesteryear. The variation says that these new laws will certainly protect the new Bombay Club members - but because of the effects of globalisation, they do *NOT* benefit the country. The Bombay Club does well. The Wests multinationals do better.

And the country pays for it because it constrains *our* power potential to a few "inner sanctum" types who're closely linked to the west. (Historical note: This is one of the reasons the Indira-ji finally smashed the Indian banking cartel and nationalised the lot).

That same scheme is back again.

Our counter *cannot* be nationalisation of course. That succeeded politically but failed economically. Our counter simply *must* do both - succeed both politically and economically.

That's what the nuke deal long term issues are about.

The arguments within GoI seem to me to center around this issue: Those who argue that the economics must predominate and those who argue for the political/military/tech side. GoI's job is to make sure one doesn't undermine the other.

Some people (within and outside GoI) are worried we'll repeat Indiraji's mistake but inverted - she succeeded politically but failed economically with the banking issue - the fear is that we'll succeed economically and find our selves constrained politically - which is what the US/West wants.

What BR *seriously* needs to watch for is which *Indian private companies" get into the nuclear act. i.e. Whether these will be formed into a Bombay Club cartel closely linked to the west. This is what the US is pushing for.

This is also one of those quiet unstated reasons why GoI has gone so slow on private players in the defence field. None of them are big enough or have the technological base to *maintain* independence from western corporations.

And that's the core issue with the US. The US wants to impose constraints that will act to ensure that our future tech and therefore our future energy independence is Western controlled - with a nice "Indian face" on it.

Examples:

1. Some sh!t kicking western company magically claims a patent on using Thorium for power and all of a sudden we're locked out unless we pay the West for the "privilege" of using our own tech.

2. Some environmental regulations on radiation hazards targeting our nuclear energy program unless we agree to certain "rules".

3. International insurance and financial rules on who pays in case of a nuclear accident where radioactivity crosses borders making our nuclear energy program prohibitively expensive - without Western support.

The idea is to hedge us with these rules and regulations. There are some who may say - agree to anything, and then break it whenever we need to and tell them to fuk off when we're strong enough.

KS *may* be one of those. But the problem with this is globalisation. i.e. That any agreement will automatically create a strong *economic* constituency *within* India whose interests make braeaking such an agreement politically impossible down the track.

Think Japan. Can they seriously even sneeze at the US when *all* their shining companies depend on the US? Conversely, how many US companies depend on their life, and therefore the US' economic strength, on the Japanese market?

Who therefore has the power dominance in the relationship? The US is total. Japan is zilch.

Japan demonstrates what it seems that GoI is trying to avoid. Economic success with political castration.

There is a lot to this nuke issue other than the nukes themselves.

The US is also gambling on our weakness in our high tech mass manufacturing base to try and push a whole lot of sh!te down our throats. It doesn't help that our IT-vity loudmouths have given the US the impression that we'll need them more they'll ever need us - as the Chinese and Japanese do.

The US is making a mistake. Like the blindspot in that Thorium article that Shiv pointed out - like the cluelessness that Ramana pointed out about India and Islam It maybe based on the usual Western racism.supriority complex, but they simply don't grok what's happening in India.

But if they keep this bullsh!te on this deal going on long enough - they're going to find out sooner rather than later.
--------------------------------

 
At 12:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi m,
sorry,it should have been "refused to talk it in public" rather than "acknowledge it in public".

 

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