I am fed up. Of self-proclaimed experts and the general public ranting about loss of sovereignty and against the nuclear deal. Of bloggers asking stupid, rhetorical questions without really understanding the meaning or import of the deal to modern India. I am trying, yet again on this blog to clarify certain doubts and uncertainties regarding the deal and its repercussions on India’s future.

Two posts, on different blogs, hit a nerve. Both ask some good questions, but also some extremely stupid ones. I am going to try and answer these questions as best as I can. Before I move on, let me say that I am not an expert. But, I am not an ignorant fool either. In fact, I am one of the millions of thinking, educated Indians who think the nuclear deal is a good thing. So, let’s go on.

Let’s look at what Barbarindians says.

We need nuclear power. We need electric power.

Yes, we need electricity. I agree we must reform the energy sector well enough to be able to generate enough electricity to power India. I also agree that we must produce enough to be able to exchange these with electricity. But, for this to happen, we need to look at alternative sources of energy. Nuclear fuel is one of the alternatives.

India’s Nuclear isolation (apartheid) will end:

In case you did not read the newspaper today, it has already ended. The NSG has approved the waiver. Australia self-righteously declared it would not trade with a non-signatory to the NPT, but the rest of the world will. So there! Much as we try and convince ourselves that it has nothing to do with energy, the fact remains that we will only get the uranium required for our nuclear power stations if we import them.

The other things are not really worth discussing. He is being sarcastic in some, reasonable in others and absolutely right in the rest. So, I am quite happy he is thinking straight.

On to Reality Check India. The arguments here are stupider. One, What is wrong with coal based thermal plants?

Huh? Must I really repeat? Coal is a non-renewable source of energy. As is uranium. But we require a few thousand tonnes of coal while we require only a few kilos of uranium for the same output. So, uranium will last longer. Got it? Coal is also highly polluting. Mining safety is a huge problem. People are dying everyday the the Neyveli Lignite mines and elsewhere. And maintenance is high-cost.

I pay Rs 3.50 per KwH (unit) for thermal and hydro power today. The estimate for nuclear power is Rs 16 per unit. Farmers will expect free nuclear power too (esp the big ones). They need to power their A/Cs and 5 KW pumpsets. Who is going to foot the bill ?

Power is heavily subsidised. You pay only Rs. 3.50 because the government, and in turn the taxpayers, foot the rest of the bill. In other words, you foot the rest of the bill too. Free power (thermal, nuclear, hydel or natural gas) is wrong. It must stop at some point. We can stop free power to the farmers even without the nuclear power. It requires political will and not a nuclear deal.

I dearly hope they have war-gamed the scenario where Pakistan decides to test. In the Lok Sabha debates, I heard Pranab Mukherjee thunder “We dont need nuclear weapons to win a war”. Childlike innocence wins wars, perhaps?

What the hell? Haven’t you figured it out yet? Nuclear weapons win no wars. They only destroy. We need a credible nuclear deterrent, not enough arms to destroy the planet several times over.

Finally, I do not think we have reached the dead end for thermal power (coal and gas plants). For comparison, coal makes up 70% of Chinas power. These are not old plants either, they upped their thermal capacity by 20%+ just in 2007-08.

We have not. And yes, China’s power is largely coal-based. But, why does that matter to us? China is facing a shortage too. And they have no problems getting uranium ever. They are a signatory to the NPT. India is different. And for comparison, every year about a thousand people are executed (shot dead by armed police). India should follow suit right? Frankly, such comparisons are neither appropriate nor relevant. Each country is different. India must increase the share of nuclear power in total electricity generation. For a better tomorrow.

As with Barbarindians, here too are some relevant arguments. Whatever be the reasons for my not agreeing with them, the post themselves are eminently readable. At least, they present a non-political view of the issue.

Ok. Here we go! I am probably going to get a lot of criticism on this, but I have to say it. The Left Front, its leaders, its politics, its ideology; they all anger, disgust and even infuriate me rather regularly. Its attitude towards the Nuclear Deal is a case in point. The Left Front, led by Bardhan, Karat, et.al have successfully held a nation to ransom, time and again. They opposed the oil price hike, when the only way to save the public-sector oil companies from sinking was to increase the price. They opposed disinvestment, opening up of sectors such as insurance, aviation, and retail marketing to foreign investment. In fact, they have opposed almost all essential second-generation reforms that will become indispensable, sooner rather than later, for India to sustain the current growth rate. They have single-handedly succeeded in halting, or at least slowing down India’s economic growth by this opposition.

And no, they have not done all this by sitting in the opposition. They have simply blackmailed an invertebrate government, dependent on its support, to get what they want: economic stagnation so that they can conveniently blame "capitalism" for everything from rising food prices to global warming. And frankly, I have had enough. I wish to see the Left go back to where it belongs: the opposition. I would, of course like to see it being confined to the "dustbin of history," as Acorn puts it so beautifully at NationalInterest. But, I suppose that is a bit too much to hope for given that our Indian voters never actually think before voting.

But, do the politicians of the Left actually believe the crap they say? Sadly enough, they do. Nobody can doubt their personal integrity, (well…most of them…) but their ideology gets in the way of clear thinking too often. They are fully aware that globalisation is here to stay and there is no way we can become protectionist again, but they do not want to believe it. Time and again, they lean towards a Russia that is incapable of giving anything more than moral support, and a China that is getting increasingly menacing. One key point is their insistence on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline as an alternative to the deal. They criticised the Indian Government that voted against Iran on the nuclear issue, but opposed both Pokhran I and II, on the grounds that India was attracting sanctions unnecessarily. So Iran can make a bomb, but India should not? As if that is not enough, Prakash Karat actually said that he and his party wanted India to snap strategic ties with the US because such a union would mean that it would "counter-balance and encircle" China. Thanks to Nita for the link. I mean, can this get any worse? So, this actually means a "national" political party would rather ensure China’s welfare than India’s? Why are we still voting for such people? Is it not time to unceremoniously throw out such a party? I disagree with Nita there. They don’t belong in the opposition either. They belong to a "dustbin of History" as I said earlier.

I have said it once, and I say it again: it is in India’s interest to foster a reciprocal strategic relationship with the US. There is a very important reason for that. China, by pursuing an active "String of Pearls" strategy is gradually, but surely encircling India. Don’t understand what that means? Let me explain. China is establishing its bases, military or commercial, in the seas surrounding India. The first of them is the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which is strategically located between three important regions: oil-rich Middle East, highly-populated South Asia and the newly-developing Central Asia. Any gas pipeline from Iran via Pakistan can and will be accessible to the Chinese. The second pearl is the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh, which they are actively funding. The third is the Coco Islands that our esteemed first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru generously gave away to Myanmar, situated about 80 nautical miles east of the Myanmarese Coast. China now has a naval base on the Coco Islands. And, these Communists are worried about China being encircled??? I am sorry, but I do not approve of this ideology. I fail to understand how your political ideology can be directly in conflict with your country’s national security.

There is no way the Communists deserve any sympathy or understanding for their handling of the Nuclear Deal issue. They only deserve to be unilaterally criticised for what they have done.

I was both surprised, and rather disappointed to see Brahma Chellaney, eminent Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, an independent, privately funded think-tank, and member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the Foreign Minister of India, write against the nuclear deal. In his recent article titled, "Too much hot air in nuke deal," published in the Economic Times (link to his blog), he argues that "a major myth propagated is that greater nuclear-generated electricity will help reduce India’s oil-import dependency." I find it impossible to accept most of the reasons Chellaney puts forward against the deal.

Let me start with the first argument. He argues that,

"The link between nuclear power and oil is specious. In the years ahead, the world could move toward electric vehicles and even use grid power to make hydrogen for the fuel-cell vehicles of the future… But today, greater nuclear-generated electricity is not going to really reduce any country’s oil needs, certainly not India’s. In fact, with little overlap in the oil and nuclear global-market structures, nuclear power now competes principally against coal, natural gas and renewables."

I beg to differ. Nuclear fuel does not compete with renewables. Indeed, it competes with coal and natural gas. But coal and natural gas, like oil, are non-renewable sources of energy. According to a report on the CSLF site, about 30% of India’s energy needs are met by oil, and more than 60% of that oil is imported. Also, India is the sixth largest consumer of petroleum in the world, accounting for about 2.9% of the total world consumption of oil. This may not seem like a lot, given that per capita consumption is far lower than that of developed countries. It is indeed distressing that nearly 30% of total energy required is supplied by oil. What will happen when the world runs out of oil? Too scary to imagine, right? The same report states that about 70% of electricity generated is by use of coal. What happens when there is no coal left? Chellaney’s argument that the world’s uranium reserves will last just another 85 years is difficult to believe. He cites an IAEA report, which he claims forecasts the amount of uranium available. A detailed reading of the report reveals that Chellaney, in fact, has not revealed all the details of the report. A press communiqué by the IAEA states that,

"Based on the 2006 nuclear electricity generation rate and current technology, the identified resource base will remain sufficient for 100 years. However, total world uranium resources are dynamic and related to commodity prices. The uranium industry has reacted to recent increases in the price of uranium by launching major new investments in exploration, which can be expected to lead to further additions to the uranium resource base. Worldwide exploration expenditures in 2006 totalled over USD 774 million, an increase of over 250% compared to 2004. Expenditures in 2007, for which data are not yet final, are expected to match those in 2006."

The overall tone of the communiqué is rather optimistic and is conveyed succinctly by the title,

"Uranium resources sufficient to meet projected nuclear energy requirements long into the future."

A second fact that must be considered is the quantity of uranium required in reactors. We are talking about a few kilograms of uranium, whereas in the case of coal, it is closer to a few million metric tonnes. That should give us some idea about the feasibility of using uranium as primary fuel for nuclear reactors. Also, Chellaney keeps talking about why nuclear fuel will not reduce India’s oil imports. It will not. I agree. But if we, as citizens and thinking individuals, bother to look beyond the next few general elections and into the future, we will see that nuclear energy is the way to go. Of course, nuclear fuel will not make our cars run on hydrogen. But, at least we will not be paying through our nose for thermal energy, especially since coal reserves are fast declining. In a century or two, there will be no coal left to exploit.

For more information on the situation of nuclear fuel in India, see this report. One fact cannot be ignored. India has not signed the NPT, and for good reason. If it wishes to gain access to uranium reserves elsewhere, it must sign the deal. India has vast reserves of thorium. Even if we do develop indigenous technology, we need uranium to kick-start the reaction. To cut a long story short, we need uranium. And to get that uranium, we need the deal. Can it get any clearer? It is frustrating to see "experts" being so short-sighted.