Australia bids nuclear non proliferation goodbye

Should this come to pass, then like the US, this will be an express violation of our obligations under the NPT. Article III states that no state may export “source or special fissionable material”, including uranium, to a non nuclear weapon state that does not accept what are called “full scope safeguards”. These are a system of safeguards that apply to all of a state’s nuclear facilities. Clearly, the deal does not provide for “full scope” safeguards. Fourteen reactors do not make 22.

Moreover, the ways in which the system of safeguards will work in India’s case are shrouded in mystery. The actual content of the safeguards regime is a matter to be worked out between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency. And India has stated that it will not accept the conventional regime that the agency uses to safeguard nuclear materials in non nuclear weapon states.

For instance, usually the IAEA will subject a plutonium reprocessing facility to safeguards and inspection. But India will accept only what it refers to as “campaign safeguards” in its designated civil reprocessing facility. That is, only when material from one of the 14 reactors is present can the IAEA conduct inspections. Full auditing is clearly ruled out. This demonstrates that despite the hype about separating India’s nuclear activities Australian nuclear material would be handled in facilities linked to Delhi’s military program because implicit in the concept of “campaign” safeguards is an acknowledgement of a facilities dual role.

The Sydney Morning Herald report, linked above, states that an Australian-India safeguards deal “will be similar to the deals it has struck with other nations to which it exports uranium”. If so, then Canberra will allow India to engage in plutonium reprocessing safeguarded in the above manner.

This would be reckless because it is acknowledged that plutonium reprocessing facilities cannot be adequately safeguarded in principle using current techniques; “campaign” safeguards further muddy the waters.

Plutonium from nuclear reactors used for generating electricity can be used in nuclear weapons, a position that the government falsely denies, and credible reports suggest that India has tested nuclear weapons using reactor grade, rather than just weapons grade, plutonium. India also uses many reactors moderated by heavy water which act as efficient breeders of plutonium - one of the concerns that many have about Iran’s IR-40 heavy water moderated research reactor.

In fact a sophisticated state such as India can use what are called “boosted fission” nuclear weapons or nuclear primaries to detonate a nuclear warhead. It could use reactor grade plutonium for weapons that would have essentially the same yield and weight as a weapon using weapons grade plutonium, because the neutrons produced in thermonuclear reactions improves the efficiency of fission.

This is a point conceded by the US Department of Energy, “advanced nuclear weapon states such as the United States and Russia, using modern designs, could produce weapons from reactor-grade plutonium having reliable explosive yields, weight, and other characteristics generally comparable to those of weapons made from weapons-grade plutonium” (Department of Energy, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Assessment of Weapons-Usable Fissile Material Storage and Excess Plutonium Disposition Alternatives, pp37-39.)

Both India and Pakistan are engaged in a nuclear arms race that includes expanding their fissile material production for nuclear weapons. Pakistan is expanding its ability to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons and India is working on gas centrifuge technology to produce weapons grade uranium. This will enable Pakistan and India’s nuclear scientists to develop nuclear weapons using cores composed of both weapons grade uranium and plutonium, hence improving the yield-to-weigh ratio of their respective stockpile of nuclear warheads.

This is important because both have been actively working on missile technologies. The development of composite core warheads will enable both Islamabad and Delhi to weaponise a range of ballistic missiles, a dynamic that has expertly been chronicled online.

Exporting uranium to India will facilitate this production further because India simply does not have enough indigenous uranium to both fuel an ambitious nuclear energy expansion plan and engage in an arms race with Pakistan and China. For example, earlier this year India tested the relatively long range Agni II meant to strike Beijing and it has just been revealed that China has deployed the DF-21 solid fueled and relatively accurate ballistic missile at Delingha, within striking distance of Delhi.

Selling uranium to India and China hardly sits well with Canberra’s professed commitment to nuclear non proliferation, especially as the export of uranium to India will tear Australia’s nuclear safeguards policy into shreds. One of the most important pillars of our non-proliferation policy has been that we will only export uranium to states that are a party to the NPT. India is a nuclear weapon state outside of the NPT.

Humanity throughout the nuclear age has had a thin margin of survival provided for by arms control regimes. The government’s position on India is one further example of how Canberra has supported the Bush administration’s systematic unraveling of these regimes and thereby undermined our national security, all at the behest of resource corporations that show no signs of suffering from a shortfall of cash.

This demonstrates a broader point, which is worth reflecting upon. The actions of the government on these issues are a small demonstration that the internal and external construction of society is more configured for narrow short term interests rather than continued human survival, the certainty of which is dependent upon mobilised, social movements being able to constrain state and corporate action.