Why was the solution not simple and obvious?

A crucial question when thinking about why the reaction to the Indian test was what it was, is why it was not something small, simple, and obvious. What did the Indian atomic establishment actually do that the existing system could not deal with? When Canada agreed to supply a CIRUS reactor to India in 1955, the reactor from which spent fuel was reprocessed into plutonium used in the 1974 explosion, the expectations regarding safeguards were different. The agreement between Canada and India included only bilateral safeguards, and "Ottawa attached no strict safeguards on how the plutonium produced by the reactor would be used, other than obtaining a commitment by India in a secret annex to the treaty that the reactor and resultant fissile materials would be used only for peaceful purposes" (Perkovich 1999: 27)

We can see a similar attitude towards safeguards in the agreement that the US supply heavy water to India in 1956, subsequently used in the CIRUS reactor, which had no formal safeguards whatsoever.

However, because the potential for diversion and other proliferation activities was obvious to many involved, an entire system of safeguards including the IAEA was created and widely instituted in between 1955 and 1974. So an entirely reasonable reaction to the Indian test could have been to point out the distinction between the unsafeguarded, or inadequately safeguarded, CIRUS reactor and all of the other safeguarded reactors from which fuel had not been diverted. The lesson might have been that safeguards were very important and should be part of nuclear supply agreements in the future so as to avoid what happened in the Indian case, which could be described as an exploitation of the lack of safeguards. Of course, by 1974 this was already a default position, as enshrined in the NPT, such as in Article III.

Another potential feature of the Indian situation that could have been identified as the key proliferation concern could have been the fact that the CIRUS reactor was a heavy-water moderated reactor using natural uranium (U-238) to produce plutonium. This type of reactor produces twice as much plutonium per megawatt-day, with a higher proportion of weapons-usable Pu239 (as opposed to other isotopes, especially Pu240), than does a standard light water moderated reactor (Feiveson et al 2014: 35). Given this, one potential reaction might have been to demonize heavy-water moderated reactors as opposed to supposedly “proliferation-resistant” reactors.

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George Perkovich 1999. India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation, University of California Press.

Feiveson, Harold A., Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, and Frank N. Von Hippel. Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation . MIT Press, 2014.

Observable Implications - Media Rhetoric

One of the observable implications of the claim that India’s ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ (PNE) caused various other processes and events is based on the idea that the PNE is linked in some way to the thinking surrounding decisionmaking. An interesting example of how it might be linked comes from a 1976 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Norman Gall about the Brazil-West Germany nuclear deal. Gall covers a lot of ground and makes numerous claims of causation and justification (journalistically) but two claims are relevant to the PNE. In one he states that:

The Brazil-German agreement was negotiated in the months following the Indian nuclear explosion of May 1974. That event had a special psychological impact among developing countries, particularly Brazil and Argentina, the rival “near-nuclear” neighbors who both have refused to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A New York Times editorial headlined "Nuclear Madness" spearheaded U.S. reaction to the deal. It called the agreement a “reckless move that could set off a nuclear arms race in Latin America, trigger the nuclear arming of a half-dozen nations elsewhere and endanger the security of the United States and the world as a whole”

Here Gall is arguing not only that the PNE is evidence or proof that developing countries might acquire a nuclear weapons capability but that the PNE actually spurred them on, increasing the probability of their doing so. This is classic “domino theory” thinking. Similarly, at another point in the article, Gall argues that

“The Indian nuclear explosion of May 1974 had a major impact both in Argentina and Brazil. For some time these two countries had viewed each other’s activities in the nuclear field with suspicion. After May 1974 it became a topic of common table talk among the elites of both countries to speculate about who would get the bomb first.”

However, this is not the only use that Gall makes of the PNE. He also deploys the Indian example as a proof-of-concept, that is, as an example of how proliferation might occur through seemingly innocent nominally civilian activities. This description highlights certain aspects of the process, creating an implicit schema for thinking about how civilian nuclear assistance could be repurposed for military use.

Until the Brazil-German deal was negotiated, there had been little official concern or public discussion as to the economic wisdom and military implications of the drive to export, and even give away, nuclear reactors. The plutonium for India's 1974 explosion was diverted from the unsafeguarded "Cirus" research reactor donated by Canada in 1956, for which the AEC supplied heavy water. India's first nuclear power plant, built by General Electric, was financed with a $74 million U.S. foreign aid loan at 0.75 percent interest over 30 years, after a 10-year initial grace period, with additional support coming from the AEC and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

With her own scientific community building on the technological base provided by the United States and Canada, India has created an immense network of nuclear facilities of all types, including her own plants for producing heavy water and for separating plutonium. The "Cirus" reactor located at the Trombay laboratories, near Bombay, alone employs 10,400 persons, including 2,400 scientists.

During construction of the plutonium separation facility at Trombay, senior Indian scientists repeatedly visited the AEC reprocessing plant in Idaho under the "Atoms for Peace" program, for extensive interviews, with staff members on the technical problems of extracting plutonium from spent fuel. Today, India manufactures her own rockets and solid fuel propellant, and plans to launch rockets by 1979 capable of putting a 1,200-kilogram payload into orbit, or of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in Asia.

India's example has not been lost on other ascendant powers.

Here various aspects of what could be thought of as civilian activity, like research reactors, power reactors, a scientific community of nuclear experts, plants for fuel recycling and moderator production, are all directly associated with the India’s capability to “deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in Asia”.

[This section also emphasizes the Canadian and US role in providing the funding, technology, and expertise to India for its nuclear activities.]

These two types of usage, proof-of-concept and domino, are also evident in the New York Times editorial that Gall quotes.

The German sale only requires inspection of equipment and materials provided by West Germany, Bonn has acknowledged. Once Brazil masters German technology, it will be able to duplicate German equipment and make nuclear explosives free of international supervision, much as India did.

…If half a dozen such countries follow India into the nuclear club, pressure will undoubtedly grow in Japan, West Germany and other nuclear capable but politically inhibited countries to do the same.

That the Indian PNE is used in these ways is suggestive evidence that it affected thinking on these matters. These examples are not by themselves proof that the reaction to the Brazil-West Germany deal would have been any different had the PNE not occurred, but they are consistent with the claim that the PNE shaped the reaction in identifiable and recurrent directions.
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Norman Gall, 1976. Atoms for Brazil, dangers for all, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June, pp. 4-10

Editorial, Nuclear Madness, New York Times, June 13 1975, p. 36.

India diverted fuel from a Canadian research reactor

In 1955 Canada agreed to build the Canadian-Indian Reactor, U.S. or (CIRUS) in Trombay, India. This was a heavy-water moderated, light water cooled research reactor, modeled on the Canadian NRX reactor. This design uses natural uranium as fuel, because heavy water slows down neutrons enabling them to react with the small amounts of U235 in natural uranium. Canada agreed to supply half of the initial natural uranium with India using indigenously mined uranium for the rest. Also, in 1956, the U.S. agreed to supply India 18.9 metric tons of heavy water, which was used in this reactor.

In the mid 1950s, there was no such thing as safeguards. The IAEA was not established until 1957, and besides, partly due to the intervention of Homi Bhabha, the father of the Indian nuclear program (Perkovich 1999: 28), the proposal that fissionable materials be deposited with the agency and then only transferred to states under safeguards was rejected. Instead, the IAEA only applied safeguards to fissionable materials that were part of agency-aided projects. This meant that states could run parallel programs that were not subject to safeguards.

In 1961, India began construction of the Phoenix plutonium reprocessing plant in Trombay. In 1964, the first spent fuel from the CIRUS reactor was reprocessed in this plant, producing plutonium with a high proportion of Pu239 that could easily be made into a nuclear bomb (Perkovich 1999:64).

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George Perkovich 1999. India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation, University of California Press.