Deal with Canada brings more uranium to India
The nuclear deal that Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently formalised with Canada is a landmark one for two reasons. It ends a three-decade-long dispute with that country, and is another big step towards the normalisation of India's status as a nuclear power. Canada was one of the first countries to supply India with nuclear technology back in the 1950s. It gave us CIRUS — which stands for Canada-India Reactor, US — a research nuclear reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre which also used American heavy water. CIRUS was used to produce some of the weapons-grade plutonium that fuelled India's first nuclear test in 1974, prompting Canada to snap nuclear ties with India.
Other world powers also imposed economic sanctions, and India was shut out of the nuclear trade, among others things, for the next three decades. The situation began to change slowly but steadily after the Nuclear Suppliers Group, in 2005, made a rare exception for India, allowing it to engage in nuclear commerce despite not being a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, which New Delhi rightly argues is discriminatory in nature. The waiver paved the way for a historic deal with the US, which would take at least another decade to be implemented but was, nonetheless, of tremendous symbolic value. Along with the NSG waiver, the deal was the first major acknowledgement that, even though India hadn't signed the NPT, it was still a responsible nuclear power that would neither sell nuclear technology in the open market nor would press the red button with blatant disregard for human life.
India's deal with Canada now is yet another endorsement of this belief. It builds on a 2013 agreement that allowed Canadian businesses to sell nuclear material to with India under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. After two years of discussions on technical and commercial details, the new deal paves the way for Canadian producer Cameco Corp to supply 3.22 million kilos of uranium to India over the next five years. Canada is the world's largest supplier of uranium, followed by Kazakhstan and Australia. Together, these three countries account for over 60 per cent of global uranium production, and India now has supply agreements with all three.
Uranium from Kazakhstan has been fuelling India's nuclear plants for years now, while the deal with Australia came through in 2014. Notably, Australia was also, for many years, reluctant to do nuclear commerce. But now, Canberra also acknowledges India's stellar nuclear credentials. Currently, India also imports uranium from Russia and France, and has similar agreements with Mongolia, Namibia and Argentina. Additionally, it also has deals with the UK and South Korea that cover other aspects of nuclear trade and a third one with Japan is under negotiation.
India has 21 operational nuclear reactors and six more are under construction. It generates about 5,000 megawatts of nuclear energy, which is just about three per cent of the total energy basket. The Modi Government, which has made clean energy as well as increased economic activity its primary focus areas, plans to ramp up production by 14 times over the next two decade. For this, it will require foreign fuel and technology.