Scott Woods,
Graduate Student
Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering Department

On March 2, 2006, President Bush and Prime Minister Singh announced a controversial nuclear deal between the United States and India. Under this deal, the United States promises to sell nuclear fuel and technology to India. In return, India promises to officially declare which of its nuclear sites are civilian and which are for military programs. Furthermore, it promises to put all its civilian nuclear facilities under international safeguards with the IAEA. This deal is regarded as controversial for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the perception that the deal undermines the goals of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is also claimed that this deal will create an arms race in South Asia, as India will now use its own uranium resources to make nuclear weapons instead of fueling power reactors. The Arms Control Association, in its rebuttal to the White House’s fact sheet on this deal, claims that it “would free up India to use its limited domestic reserves of uranium for the sole purpose of building weapons.” This short statement has many elements that must be analyzed to determine its validity. First, what is the state of India’s domestic uranium supplies? Second, how much enrichment capability does India possess? Third, what uses does India have for these resources? Finally, what priorities does it place on each of these uses? India will likely not use these freed up resources for weapons production. Rather, India will use its uranium to create fuel for its long desired nuclear submarine fleet. In fact, having this fleet may actually preclude India from developing many more nuclear weapons.

India’s Domestic Uranium Supplies

It is estimated that India has about 80,000 tonnes of uranium ore within its borders. Not accounting for enrichment losses, this amount corresponds to 16,500 tonnes of 3.5% enriched uranium. Assuming that a large 1,000 MWe reactor uses 25 tonnes of uranium each year, India has enough domestic supplies for 660 reactor*years. Currently, India has plans to annually produce about 20,000 MWe from nuclear reactors by the year 2020. This indicates that India’s uranium resources can only fuel its intended power reactors for about 33 years (660 reactor*years/20 reactors = 33 years).

Obviously, India has a great need for nuclear reactor fuel. One way it is combating its supply shortfall is by developing a thorium-based reactor system. While currently still in development stages, this holds promise for India. Unlike its paltry uranium supplies, India holds about 25% of the world’s thorium reserves. However, it is impossible to determine at this time how long its supplies could fuel its reactor needs, as full scale thorium fuel cycle studies have not been completed.

India’s Enrichment Capabilities

India has two enrichment facilities. One is a pilot scale plant, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center at Trombay, Mumbai, and the other is a full size facility at Rattehalli, near Mysore. It is estimated that the total enrichment capacity of these two sites is only 4,500 separative work units (SWU) per year. (An SWU is a unit of measurement for how much work is expended to produce an enriched product.) Thus, India has enough enrichment capacity to make one full nuclear uranium based weapon each year, but nowhere near the capacity needed to directly fuel its own reactors.

India’s Enriched Uranium Options

Even though India does not have a large enrichment capacity, it still has many options for what to do with it. Of course, it can always add on to its enrichment facilities. Because it uses centrifuge enrichment, it cansimply add more units to its existing cascades in order to increase capacity. This is surely something India is doing.

India can use its uranium enrichment to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon each year. However, it may also choose to use this capacity for research purposes. It will need to use enriched uranium to help develop its thorium-based reactor system. India could also use the capacity to enter the medical isotope field. Technetium99 is the most widely used medical isotope in the world. It is created by bombarding highly enriched uranium (HEU) with neutrons to create a molybdenum-99 fission product. This Mo-99 then decays into Tc-99, which has a half-life of six hours. It is estimated that the worldwide production of Tc-99 uses 85 kg of HEU each year. This is well within India’s enrichment capacity.

Finally, India may choose to use its uranium enrichment capacity to make fuel for its desired nuclear submarine fleet. Currently, India wants to have a fleet of five nuclear submarines. With its current capacity, India could fuel one submarine every three years.

Likelihood of Each Option

It is unlikely that India will use its enrichment capacity to create medical isotopes, as this industry is saturated. India might also use its enrichment capacity to conduct research to further progress its thorium reactor program, but the amount of enriched uranium required for this will be very small. Thus, India will choose between creating more nuclear weapons and creating fuel for its nuclear submarine fleet.

Currently, India’s nuclear weapons are all plutonium-based. Plutonium-based weapons are more desirable than uranium-based weapons because they can have higher yields with a smaller warhead. Thus, it is illogical for India to take a technological step backwards and start producing uranium based weapons. This option makes even less sense when one considers that it can only produce one weapon per year. That is not a high payoff from its scarce resources. Finally, in 2002 India announced plans to construct a 500 MW fast breeder reactor. Once this facility is completed, India will not even need to enrich uranium to create its plutonium. It will be able to use natural or even depleted uranium to do so.

This only leaves one option: producing fuel for its nuclear submarines. With its current enrichment capacity, India cannot fuel its desired fleet of five submarines. India will be able to maintain a full fleet of five submarines only if it can establish an enrichment capacity of 6,000 SWU per year. It only needs to increase its enrichment capacity by 33% to achieve this goal.

Conclusions

Despite many assertions to the contrary, the U.S.-India nuclear deal will not lead to India creating more nuclear weapons. Its current enrichment capacity will not allow for a quick build-up and its arsenal is already established as plutoniumbased. Instead, India will use its freed up resources to create fuel for its long desired nuclear submarine program. With a modest increase in its enrichment capacity, India will be able to continuously fuel a fleet of five submarines indefinitely.

Regardless of the outcome of this nuclear deal, there will still be a nuclear arms buildup in South Asia. However, having a fully operational nuclear submarine force may actually lower the total number of nuclear weapons India determines it needs for a minimal deterrence force. Because these submarines are mobile, stealthy, and virtually invulnerable to nuclear attack as missile launch platforms, India can have a greater confidence in its nuclear arsenal. This greater confidence will lead India to a perceived need for fewer total weapons. However, to realize this, India will have to alter its nuclear posture from “strategically active, but operationally dormant” closer to “actively deployed, but not operationally armed,” much like Great Britain’s current posture. It could still maintain its “no first use” policy, but have a much quicker turnaround time on a retaliatory nuclear strike by having all components ready to assemble and launch on the submarines.