Hidden Joule

India has signed a safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agreement has been in negotiation since Novenber 2007. On the 1st of August 2008 the IAEA approved the safeguard agreement, which prompted the US to request a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow India to start civilian nuclear trade. This put India in the unique position of being the only country with nuclear weapons, who have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that can engage in nuclear commerce!

Chapelcross Magnox Reactor (demolished) Image-Source: Lynne Kirton

Safeguard agreements are used to guarantee the separation of civilian and military nuclear programmes. They allow the IAEA to make sure, via inspections and accounting practices, that nuclear materials like uranium and plutonium in the civil reactors are never used in military programs.

This is a big step for India, where nuclear reactors are the fourth largest source of electricity. India has 17 nuclear power plants with a capacity of 4,120 megawatts, while six units of 3,160 MW are under construction (Reuters).
India has estimated urainium reserves of between 88 and 112 thousand tonnes but little by way of enrichment programmes. Military enrichment facilities do not have the capacity to enrich enough uranium for use in industrial scale power production. This agreement will give India access to heavy water reactor designs by the likes of Westinghouse (US – recently acquired by Toshiba) and AREVA (France). Although it should be noted that India independantly developed a thorium breeder reactor known as the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor

The French company AREVA have already signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ to supply 2 to 6 reactors with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL)