THE US-INDIA NUCLEAR DEAL AND ITS BACKSIDE - An Additional Critique
By Peter Custers
1. Introduction
This essay discusses the hazardous and wasteful implications of the US-India nuclear deal beyond its implications for the nuclear arms’ race in the subcontinent. Most of the key objections against the deal that have been put forward by progressive opponents of the deal in India and internationally, have addressed the fact that it legitimizes India’s status as a nuclear weapons’ state, and that it will enable India to expand its production of weapons’ grade plutonium. Already, India is estimated to possess a suficient amount of plutonium for the manufacturing of at least a hundred atomic bombs. Since India reportedly has agreed to place only 14 out of its 22 civilian reactors under the IAEA’s inspection regime, it is free to produce in the remaining 8 reactors another 200 kilograms of weapons’ grade plutonium per year (1). Thus, fears that the controversial deal will enhance the danger of a nuclear conflagration in South Asia appear to be well grounded, - even if we leave aside all other interrelated objections that have been raised.
In this essay, the spotlights will not be put on India’s past and future plans for production of weapons’ grade plutonium and nuclear bombs, but on two other major questions. For the US-India nuclear deal needs to be also and fiercely questioned with regard to its ostensible aims, i.e. the vast expansion in the production of nuclear energy. Whereas a more then 10-fold increase in generation of nuclear energy, as foreseen, may help to overcome India’s rapidly growing energy needs, - the side-effects in terms of generation of nuclear waste are so ponderous, that from this perspective too, implementation of the deal needs to be pre-empted. Moreover, as reported briefly in India’s national press in September last, when the signing of the deal was being debated, - there is a little discussed ‘backside’ to the nuclear deal, being the US’s additional commercial objectives. For the US is poised to lobby aggressively, so as to capture a larger share of India’s arms’ imports than it has held up until now.
The conceptual approach proposed so as to address these combined issued, is a holistic view on waste. Whereas ‘social’ waste and ‘non-commodity’ waste are rarely juxtaposed in public debate, - the US nuclear deal and its backside offer an occasion to do precisely this. For as the below cited data on the generation of waste in the nuclear production chain show, - the US-India nuclear deal is bound to result in huge quantities and extremely dangerous waste, which cannot be sold on the market but needs to be put aside, at great risks to humans and our environment. Again, the importation of expensive armament systems entails the waste of vast economic resources that could be used towards relieving India’s persistent mass poverty, hence should be considered importation of social waste. Moreover, the issues regarding generation of ‘social’ and ‘non—commodity’ waste can also be posed in relation to the manufacturing of weapons’grade plutonium and atomic weapons; this will help strengthen principled opposition against the recently signed deal (2).
2. The Nuclear Deal: Importation of Nuclear Technology and and Importation of US Armament Systems
As starting point for my discussion I will take two newspaper articles published in the Times of India on September 11 last. One of these highlighted the business prospects of the US-India nuclear deal via the sale of nuclear production technology, and via the importation and the construction of nuclear reactors in India. The second article discussed the aspiration of the US in terms of expanded exports of armament systems to India. To take the article on plans for expansion of nuclear energy production first, - it spoke very glowingly about the size of business that will be generated, mentioning a figure of 40 Billion US Dollars worth of orders Indian and foreign enterprises stand to receive, and hailing the deal as a ‘project’ having a financial size of Rupees 2.4 lakh crore. Under the deal, a reported 24 light-water reactors will be imported from abroad and installed along India’s coasts (!). India plans to build a further 12 indigenous nuclear plants, consisting of pressurized heavy water reactors. At no point in the article are the implications of the nuclear deal in terms of generation of additional nuclear waste discussed (3)!
In another article published in the Times of India on the very same day, the secondary objectives of the US, which traditionally is not a major seller of military hardware to India, are described. The article delineates the huge size of India’s overall arms’ imports. It states that since the Kargil conflict, India has spent a ‘whopping’ $ 25 Billion on imports of weaponry. The country is ‘poised’ to spend another $ 30 Billion on such purchases over the next 5-6 years (!). Thus, the US is vying to capture a whole series of arms’ orders which India intends to place on the world market for arms. Indian import plans reportedly include a $ 170 million plan for the buying of anti-ship Harpoon missiles, a Rs 42.000 Crore project for the purchase of multi-role combat aircraft, and purchases of 197 light utility and observation helicopters worth another Rs 3.000 Crore. A deal mentioned that has already been clinched, and has been sent for approval to the US Congress, is the arms’ deal – described as India’s ‘biggest ever’ with the US – for the purchase of 8 Boeing reconnaissance aircraft, estimated to cost no less than RS 8.500 Crore. At no point in the article is it explained that such lavish spending on arms’ imports represents a form of social waste, and that the same financial resources could well be spent on alleviating the massive poverty that still exists in India (4).
Officially, of course, the US- India nuclear deal and the listed plans to import armaments are no interconnected issues. The arms’ purchases do not directly form part of the agreement surrounding importation of nuclear technology. And yet it is probably correct to see the US’s hopes to overtake other foreign suppliers of arms to India as a backside of the nuclear deal, as is indeed hinted at in the article of the Times of India. In any case, juxtaposition of the two issues enables us to look more holistically at the wasteful implications of the Indian government’s behavior, than a focus on the US-India nuclear deal alone would allow us to do. Hence, below I am going to address both the generation of nuclear waste that will occur in consequence of the nuclear deal, and India’s arms’ imports, in order to show the full extent of waste creation that is involved.
3. The Generation of Hazardous Waste in the Nuclear Production Chain
Let’s take the issue of nuclear waste generation first. I do not possess comprehensive data on the nuclear waste that has been generated by nuclear production in India so far. Nor am I in a position to give a precise assessment regarding the waste that importation and construction of new reactors will result in. However, the experience of nuclear production worldwide is unequivocal: nuclear waste emerges at each and every link in the nuclear production chain, starting from the very first stage, i.e. that of uranium mining and milling, and lasting up to the stage where nuclear fuel elements are treated in reprocessing facilities. An important source for my own understanding of these issues is the book ‘Nuclear Wastelands’, written by a group of scientists led by the US-based Indian academician Arjun Makhijani, which book primarily reviews waste generation by nuclear-military production facilities (5). From this and other sources, I have selected three cases of waste generation, namely: the waste tailings that emerge after uranium is mined and milled; the depreciated fuel elements which themselves are a form of nuclear waste; and the high-level waste that needs to be put aside when former nuclear fuel elements are reprocessed.
Uranium mining is, of course, the very first stage in the whole nuclear production chain. As known, such mining is also undertaken in India, and would likely be intensified in consequence of the US-India nuclear deal. When uranium ore is mined and uranium is prepared and enriched, towards employment as raw material for making nuclear fuel elements, a truly huge amount hazardous material in the form of mill tailings is left behind, - tailings which do contain radioactive substances and are therefore hazardous for humans and for nature. Speaking in volume terms, these tailings reportedly constitute 95 percent of all the nuclear waste that is generated in the nuclear production chain. Among the radioactive substances found in the mill tailings are for instance radium-226 and thorium-230, which latter radioactive element has a half-life of 76 thousand years, meaning that it will take that many years before half of the radioactivity contained in the thorium will have decayed. By mining uranium and by creating the tailings, capitalist entrepreneurs are not just burdening our children and grand children with the consequences of uranium extraction, but future generations for an almost indefinite period of time to come. The damaging consequences of uranium mining have been recorded well in the US, where nuclear production historically started. Here, tailing dams have turned into slurry after downpours of rain. Between 1955 and 1977 a total of fifteen tailing dams have broken. In one such case, the river Rio Puerco was flooded with 94 million gallons of tailing liquids, resulting in the contamination of a long stretch of the river (6).
Another stage in the nuclear production chain known to generate dangerous waste, is the stage where nuclear energy is produced in reactors. Surely, the production of nuclear energy can be seen as a contribution to human welfare, if purely looked at from the perspective of energy generation. Yet the hazardous implications from employment of the nuclear fuel rods in the reactors are multifarious. A section of the rods needs to be taken out regularly, as the nuclear fuel elements can be utilized for only three years. Now in the parlance of economic theory the fuel elements once taken out are considered ´depreciated means of production´. They simply have lost all the value that has been transferred to the new commodity, the nuclear energy. Yet the fuel elements undoubtedly are a form of hazardous waste. Speaking in quantitative terms, the size of this waste seems small. Yet the radioactivity contained in the spent fuel elements is truly intense. The radioactive elements present in this nuclear waste include uranium, strontium-90, caesium-137 and plutonium. Of these, plutonium is entirely the outcome of human production; as such it does not exist in nature. It is known to be the very most toxic substance on earth, its half-life being exceedingly long. The half-life of plutonium-239 is 24.400 years, that of plutonium-242 as much as 380.000 years. Even micro-gram quantities of plutonium, when inhaled by humans, are known to result in fatal cancers (7). Hence, the expansion in construction and utilisation of nuclear reactors worldwide is a reason for grave concerns. Each additional nuclear reactor generates spent nuclear fuel rods containing various forms of high-level waste.
The third distinct stage in the chain of nuclear production I wish to refer to, is the stage of reprocessing. For decades, policymakers in the West have tried to make the public believe that they had solved the above-sketched issue of dangerous waste, i.e. the issue of spent fuel elements. They did so by arguing that these fuel rods can well be reprocessed, i.e. they may be treated chemically in reprocessing facilities so as to re-use the uranium and use the fresh plutonium for ´productive´ ends, towards the manufacturing of new fuel elements. Yet it is at the stage of reprocessing that problems really pile up. First, it is at this stage that high-level waste comes into existence as a distinct category of waste, since the chemical treatment of the fuel rods does not only help to separate out uranium and plutonium, but also results in high-level waste elements that need to be put aside. The latter counts for uranium-236, to be distinguished from uranium-235, incorporated in the fuel elements. Uranium-236, mind you, has a half-life of 24.2 million years. Again, there is the radioactive element jodium-129 which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. These are time-scales which as humans we can hardly visualise, but which make the consequences of nuclear production that much graver. The high-level waste in liquid form put aside after the chemical treatment of the fuel rods is commonly stored in tanks.
Now, the risks involved in such storage can be visualized through the accidents that have taken place in nuclear-military production facilities in both the US and the former Soviet Union. The Hanford nuclear complex in the US is the complex where the US used to manufacture its military plutonium. Here, high-level waste in liquid form was stored in 117 stainless steel tanks, each containing half a million gallons of waste. In 1973, a leakage was discovered which had caused a massive dissipation of radioactivity into Hanford’s subsoil (8). But the most dramatic example of an accident with high level radioactive waste has been reported from the former Soviet Union. In the Cheliabinsk complex, a military-nuclear complex located in the Ural mountains, a tank explosion took place in 1957. The government of the USSR suppressed the news of the accident in name of guarding ‘state secrets’, but Soviet scientists unraveled the accident long before the Gorbachev government instituted an enquiry. Just as in Hanford, the high-level waste from the reprocessing in Cheliabinsk was stored in stainless steel tanks, located in a canyon-shaped area 8 meters under the soil´s surface. Yet the explosion in Cheliabinsk‘s tanks resulted in a massive leakage of radioactivity. A reported 22 million curies of radio-activity were released, 2 million curies in the form of a plume that reached a height of one kilometer above the Cheliabinsk complex. The explosion and the releases of radioactivity destroyed entire eco-systems in the surrounding region. Villages had to be evacuated, rivers and lakes were polluted, and the government had to take draconian measures to contain the danger of the accident for the region’s ecology (9).
Above I have simply summarized data on selected aspects of nuclear waste generation, focusing on waste tailings from uranium mining and milling, on the waste represented by spent nuclear fuel elements, and on the high-level waste that is put aside whenever nuclear fuel rods are reprocessed. Surely, given the risks they represent for humans and for nature surrounding us, there is no way one can belittle the occurrence of multiple waste in the nuclear production chain. Nor can one deny the validity of posing the consequences of the US-India nuclear deal in these terms.
4. India as Importer of Weapons Systems - The Question of Disparate Exchange
I will now turn to the second form of waste I have spoken of at the beginning of this lecture, namely of waste in the social sense of the term. As said, here I will focus on the backside of the US-India nuclear deal which is the US’s eagerness to expand its arms’ sales to India. In this context it is worth recalling the fact that India today heads the list of Southern importers of armament systems. Whereas in the past this position was held by the Middle Eastern oil giant Saudi Arabia, - India has meanwhile displaced the latter country as leading Southern importer, along with China. This may be illustrated with concrete figures. According to a report brought out by the US–based Congressional Research Service (CRS), in 2005 India ranked first among developing nations weapons’ purchasers, in terms of the value of the agreements signed to import weaponry. Further, whereas the total value of Southern arms’ imports in this year was $ 30 Billion, the value of the agreements concluded by India alone was $ 5.4 Billion, meaning that India was set to swallow fully one sixth of the arms’ total! (10) While these data could be biased, they are in fact corroborated by data which have been compiled by the respectable Stockholm based peace research institute SIPRI. In its 2007 annual report, SIPRI offers comprehensive figures for the value of arms’ imports by individual Southern states over a period of 30 years. Again, India heads the list of these totals. This of course does not imply that India has been the leading Southern importer in each and every year. But it does signify that the accumulated arms’ imports of India decade have been so big over the last as to make up for the comparatively ‘smaller’ size of arms’ imports in earlier decades (11).
Now, the role which arms’ transfers between North and South hold in the world economy can be assessed from either a Southern or a Northern perspective. If looked at from a Southern perspective, one has to reflect on India’s arms’ imports in terms of disparate exchange. The term disparate exchange heralds the fact that Southern economies, when importing armament systems from the North, are losers. Whereas they import military commodities which from a social point of view should be considered waste, - the Northern states which export the armaments are benefactors, for they directly or indirectly transfer the arms in exchange for raw materials, semi-finished goods and labor- intensive commodities representing wealth (12). To highlight the imperialist nature of this trading mechanism, it needs to be stated that the given trading mechanism was historically instituted by the United States. For when OPEC’s oil-exporting countries in the 1970s decided to take their fate in their own hands, by insisting on the right to fix the international price of crude oil, the US immediately tried to take advantage of the change. It knew of course that increased prices of oil would inter alia result in additional dollar incomes for members of OPEC (13). Hence it feverishly worked to channel such Southern income towards additional imports of weapon systems from the US and other Northern arms’ exporters, and with success (14). Leading oil exporters, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, in the seventies were easily deluded into buying expensive fighter planes and other arms. These Middle Eastern countries then clearly headed the list of Southern importers of weapons’ systems. Today, when India has emerged as a leading Southern arms’ importer, the US is dying to expand its arms’ sales to India, at the expense of the country’s traditional suppliers of arms (15). And whereas it needs to be assessed whether the exports of social waste from the US towards India will be undertaken at the expense of wealth belonging to India’s own population, or rather at the expense of wealth belonging to the people of India and other Southern states combined, - the arms’ transfers are bound to represent further cases of disparate exchange.
India’s massive imports of armament systems can, however, also be analyzed from a Northern perspective. Here we have to understand the fact that the hegemonic power in the world system, ever since the days of British imperialism, has used its leverage as dominant power to export weaponry as a part of macro-economic policymaking. This is true in particular for the presently tottering hegemonic power, the US. Ever since the sixties of the previous century, the US has used its exports of armament systems as a replacement mechanism and as supplement, to ensure that American armament corporations at all times are supplied with orders sufficient in amount to protect their production capacity and guarantee accumulation. For instance, when the US government at the end of the 1980s needed to partly scale down the size of its orders towards monopoly corporations based in the US military sector, - it heavily pushed for expanded exports. It even employed the second Gulf war staged in 1991 towards this end. Moreover, the US’s Ministry of Defense, the Pentagon, itself embraces the economic logic behind armament exports. This is evident, for instance, from statements contained in its 2006 report to the US Congress, the Annual Industrial Capability Report (AICR). As the report states, ´Defense exports play an important economic role in strengthening the US defense industrial base’; ‘about 20 percent (sic) of US weapons systems items are exported…’; and ’sales to foreign customers have frequently been critical to keeping entire production lines open…’ (16). Hence, it is difficult to interpret these sales as necessitated by the US’s ‘security’, when the US Pentagon itself admits to the US Congress that the exports of armament systems represent a key leverage for macro-economic policymaking. The combined historical evidence for the past several decades indicates that exports play an active role towards solving dilemmas in connection with the US’s business cycle, driven as it largely is by military allocations.
5. Conclusions: Juxtaposing Social Waste and Non-Commodity Waste
I will keep my conclusions brief. I have suggested above that the US-India nuclear deal should be analyzed from a holistic perspective, in terms of the wasteful implications which the deal is set to have in two ways. If strictly looked at from a perspective of expanded production of nuclear energy in India, as is the official line of the Indian government, - the deal already needs to be severely criticized. For it will undoubtedly result in vastly increased generation of nuclear waste, which from the standpoint of economic theory is to be considered non-commodity waste. Above I have not presented specific data on the waste which India’s own production of nuclear energy has generated in the past, but have concentrated on international data regarding the generation of waste at three stages in the nuclear production chain, i.e. the stage of uranium mining and milling, the stage of production in nuclear reactors, and the stage of reprocessing of nuclear fuel elements. These general data unequivocally bring out that in assessing the implications of the US-India nuclear deal, the issue of nuclear waste needs to be taken on board.
Yet if we are to assess the full extent of waste generation implied by the US-India nuclear deal, we also need to reflect on the backside of the deal. There needs to be, it seems, greater awareness of the fact that the US does not just intend to use the deal to promote the export of nuclear production technology towards India. The US also is keenly interested in greatly expanding its sales of armaments to India, in view of the fact that India is one of the global South’s leading arms’ importers, along with China. Here again, my data regarding the loss of wealth implied by these deals for India and the South are incomplete. Thus, further research on Indian armament imports should bring out how they express disparate exchange. They may lead to loss of wealth for the people of India alone - or ultimate lead to replication of disparate exchange via parallel exports of conventional arms by India to other countries of the global South. In any case, such research would have to focus on the precise way in which foreign currency towards payment of these imports is generated. In order to make a holistic assessment of the US-India nuclear deal and the mentioned arms’ deals, we need to juxtapose ‘non-commodity’ waste and ‘social’ waste.
Revised text of a lecture given at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, on September the 17th, 2008; Peter Custers is an affiliated researcher of the International Institute for Asian Studies (I.I.A.S.), Leiden, the Netherlands, and is the author of ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism. Nuclear and Military Production and Critical Economic Theory’ (Tulika Publishers, New Delhi, India, 2007)
Website: www.petercusters.nl
References:
(1) see e.g. Praful Bidwai, ‘Manmohan’s False Nuclear Move’ (19 July, 2008 – www.cndpindia.org/ ); also Zia Mian and M.V.Ramana, ‘Going MAD: Ten Years of the Bomb in South Asia’ (July 29, 2008 – www.cndpindia.org/);
(2) for a full discussion, see Peter Custers, Questioning Globalized Militarism. Nuclear and Military Production and Critical Economic Theory (Tulika Publishers, New Delhi, India, 2007);
(3) Srinivas Laxman, ‘N-Trade: It’s a $ 40 Billion Opportunity’ (Times of India, New Delhi, September 11, 2008, p.15); for other estimates regarding the business prospects of the deal, see J.Sri Raman, ‘How India’s ‘Waiver’ Has Won’ (September 9, 2008 – www.cndpindia.org/ );
(4) Rajat Pandit, ‘In Defence, US Wants to be India’s Partner No.1’ (Times of India, New Delhi,
September 11, 2008, p.13);
(5) Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu and Katherine Yih (eds.), Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and its Health and Environmental Effects (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1995);
(6) Katherine Yih, Albert Donnay, Annalee Yassi, A.James Ruttenber and Scott Saleska,
´Úranium Mining and Milling for Military Purposes´ , in Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu and Katherine Yih (1995), op.cit., p.121;
(7) for details on the health and environmental hazards of plutonium production and use, see notably Frank Barnaby, Nuclear Legacy: Democracy in a Plutonium Economy (Cornerhouse Briefing Paper No.2, Sturminster, Newton, United Kingdom, November 1997);
(8) see on the leakages of nuclear waste at the Hanford complex, see for instance Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska, ´The Production of Nuclear Weapons and Environmental Hazards´ (in Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu and Katherine Yih (1995), op.cit., p.44);
(9) on the Cheliabinsk catastrophe, see for instance Zhores Medvedev, Nuclear Disaster in the Urals (Vintage Books, London, United Kingdom, 1980); also Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu and Katherine Yih (1995), op.cit., p.335;
(10) Richard Grimmett, ‘Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005’ (Congressional Research Service (CRS), The Library of Congress, Washington, USA, October 23, 2006);
(11) for Sipri´s most recent data, see Paul Holtom, Mark Bromley and Pieter D.Wezeman, ´International Arms Transfers´ (Chapter 7 of the SIPRI Yearbook 2008: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Stockholm, Sweden, 2008, p.293);
(12) an exposition regarding the trading mechanism of disparate exchange between North and South is stated in Peter Custers (2007), op.cit., Part Three, Chapter Nineteen: ´Unequal Exchange versus Disparate Exchange. A Theoretical Comparison. Succession and Coexistence of Two Imperialist Trading Mechanisms´ (p.309);
(13) for the views of US State Department officials regarding the implications of the historical price increases decided upon by OPEC in 1973, see Pierre Terzian, OPEC: The Inside Story (Zed Books, London, 1985);
(14) see e.g. Anthony Sampson, The Arms Bazaar (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1977); and Russell Warren Howe, Weapons. The Shattering Truth About the International Game of Power, Money and Arms (Abacus, London, 1980);
(15) for India´s primary dependence on arms´ supplies from Russia, see e.g. Paul Holtom, Mark Bromley and Pieter D.Wezeman (2008), op.cit., p.300;
(16) Office of the Undersecretary of Defence, Annual Industrial Capability Report (A.I.C.R. - (US Pentagon, Washington D.C., USA, February, 2006).
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