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India Joins Nuclear Market
figona brings news that India will be allowed to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). A waiver was approved yesterday that provided an exception to the requirements that India sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. This means India will be able to buy nuclear fuel from the world market and purchase reactors from the US, France, and Russia; something it has been unable to do since it began nuclear testing in 1974 (which inspired the creation of the NSG). The waiver does not include terms to cut off access if India resumes nuclear testing, but the US Congress drafted a letter stating their willingness to do so. Opponents of the waiver have called it a "non-proliferation disaster."
How many minutes until Pakistan demands the same treatment?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
As a U.S. citizen, I must say that I am utterly embarrased at the actions of my government. On the one hand, there's no way that they'll let Iran or North Korea even so much as attempt to build a reactor, but as soon as India wants on the scene, oh well, no problem. After all, we wouldn't want them to cut us off from that practically free labor force, right?
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Any danger the arsenal represents probably wouldn't even double if it increased 100 fold. Nuclear fuel is something the world needs right now, if all the hype about global warming is as bad as they say it is. Not only that, but cheaper nuclear fuel -> cheaper power -> better economy -> less poverty.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
India is already capable of building nuclear weapons, and are (theoretically) more than able to sell that tech to the highest bidders if they desired (I honestly don't see them doing so - just saying they can).
I'd be a hell of a lot more worried about Iran (which has arguably sponsored terrorism) than India (which has been nothing but friendly towards anyone who isn't Pakistan, and the latter for obvious reasons). While yes things may change, I just don't see India as being the type to sell nuclear anything, to anyone, in the foreseeable future.
Iran OTOH? Well, what are the non-proliferation folks doing about that? Not much, from the looks of it. If they want to concentrate their efforts in any particular direction, I'd have them staring a bit more to the west of India...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'll bet it looks like the Johnson Smith catalog.
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Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I read first "Indiana Jones Nukes Market" Must have been the economy news from last week and CNN story "U.S. seizes two mortgage giants" which popped up just before.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is built on three pillars; non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful use of nuclear technology. Only the third has had any real success; proliferation continues, with Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea having gained nukes and South Africa, Libya and Iran having got most of the way. Existing nuclear powers have yet to disarm in any significant way, with the Brits making the most progress (fewest nukes out of any of the official powers) and we've still voted to renew our "deterrent".
The only thing remaining in the NPT for non-nuclear nations is some help on power generation. I can't see it lasting long; we may see countries withdrawing en masse in the future.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
*bzzzt* - Russia was admitted to the original Non-Prof club during the Cold War by treaty, when they had a nuclear weapons fleet that matched the US'. When the Cold War ended, they had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads (up to many multiple megatons for some of 'em) and a damaged economic infrastructure (at the time) that lent itself all too easily towards selling a few of the warheads on the down-low.
We basically got very nice with Russia to prevent some jackass from buying/stealing a nuke or two and then using them somewhere else.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
People in the US especially seem to think of India in terms of snake charmers and cheap IT, forgetting that we are the second largest nation on earth, with genuine security concerns.
With China sitting to our east and making noises (usually, very loud noises) and a particularly unstable Pakistan to the west who got most of their nuclear tech from China, we really don't have a choice.
Besides which, far too many other pieces of tech cannot be sold to India because they may kinda sorta have some possible application in one corner of the fine art of nuclear weapons manufacture. This can finally stop now.
Finally, the whole deal means that we can now start having safety equipment for our nuclear program, which we haven't been able to obtain for years now.
Anyway, you probably don't know the amount of flak the government has taken over this deal... There's talk from lots of sides about "selling our sovereignty", because there will now be periodic inspections of all nuclear facilities by the IAEA.
Anyway, Arbitrarily restricting possession of nuclear weapons to those nations that tested before 1967 is not exactly a solid foundation for the NPT. It should have been quite blindingly obvious right back then that several nations, even reasonably stable ones, would have severe reservations about such an imbalanced treaty.
Anyone know why India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? I'm not sure if this makes a significant difference or not but it's strange that India wouldn't join it and give some measure of assurance to other countries who could be supplying the technology. There must be a good reason why though.
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I don't quite understand what this is being potrayed the way it is in the media. Especially here at slashdot where I thought it was fair assumption that most of its readers are bit more educated than average bunch that can discern fact from, "fluff". Hence are couple of things for everyone to know: India's first nuclear test was on May 18, 1974, hence a fair assumption it has had a nuclear weapon ever since. India also has a nuclear capable missile atleast since 1988.(lookup Prithvi) This nuclear deal is for fuel for Power plants Part of the deal is an agreement that India will open up its civilian nuclear facilities for inspection (Before this, it was 0 access) India also has approx 25% reserves of Thorium (nuclear fuel of future), so it'd make sense to let it in for current, "Uranium" fuel to somehow guarantee, "Thorium" supply in future. Indian government itself is taking a beating at home because its being seen as a way to suppress India's nuclear ambitions by west. Power(electricity) is one the major problems in current India, and having more of it can only be beneficial to the society at large. On the other hand, only exception I see to all this is that India's Military/Defense/Weapons Nuclear sites are still off-limits to inspections, and this deal can possibly free up more spent nuclear material for India to experiment with. That should have been accounted for in a bit more responsible manner.
I am at loss with words...
Or dont you know the Pakistanis were given their nukes by the Chinese. The country is a feudal military dictatorship. Simply not the kind of society to be able to develop Nukes on their own. They are good enough to take Chinese nukes and rebrand them though.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Read this latest, from the American Institute of Physics: http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_9/47_1.shtml Scroll down to the bottom and look at the bullet points: # In 1982 China's premier Deng Xiaoping began the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and, in time, to other third world countries. Those transfers included blueprints for the ultrasimple CHIC-4 design using highly enriched uranium, first tested by China in 1966. # A Pakistani derivative of CHIC-4 apparently was tested in China on 26 May 1990. --- Why was this published only now? The US has known about this information for quite some time, but sat on it, for security reasons. But now the US is finally telling China that enough is enough, and that it can't expect to wantonly proliferate nuclear weapons technology without facing consequences.
ALL Nuclear powers have first strike policies. ALL OF THEM. Basically, if they are being overrun by another country, they will use them. This include USA, Russia, China, England, France, Israel, and I am quite sure India and Pakistan. In fact, if not for the nukes, I suspect that one of china, India, and Pakistan would have invaded the other by now. As it was, China had no issues with attacking India before they had the bomb. They now do a lot of subtle manipulation esp. on the eastern state, and now on the northerns.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The summary makes it sound like you can't buy nukes until you joing the NSG. How much is it to join the NSG? That depends, how many hookers can you hire for the UN security council?
India has one of the largest resources for thorium. Thorium can be used in an alternative nuclear cycle that is much less wastefull and produces far less highly radioactive waste (not actinides). These reactors would probably not need solid fuel assemblies, like they are used in the west. What is for sale in the west is a technology that produces much more waste, has a risk of being turned into bombs (you can't with thorium) and keeps you dependent on delivery of very expensive fuel assemblies (that is how the nuclear companies make their money).
That last part is probably the intention: keep India (and all other buyers) dependent on a supply that you can take away again. It would be much better if India would sell some thorium reactors to the west, that would save a lot of hazardous waste.
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While intended to be humorous, that title is actually a CRITICAL point. Remember Global Warming and Carbon emissions? Isn't switching to nuclear supposed to be a solution to that problem? How can we do that globally and NOT proliferate?
I suppose it depends on the type of "nuclear". Suppose we required all the Big Oil companies to invest in Nuclear Fusion?
Somehow I read this title not once but twice, and my brain registered:
Indiana Jones Nuclear Market
In this one, the Ruskies are trying to sell their Nukes at an outdoor market in Bangledesh. Riots ensue, hats are lost then recovered, bullwhips are used, snakes cursed. move along.
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, now would it?' -Albert Einstein-
afterwards, that matters.
in u.s. and france, democratic pluralist regimes were established, based on human rights concepts outlined and developed by 18th century enlightenment. (btw, you are still basing your entire society on these even today).
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