India's Nuclear Exceptionalism: Fissile Materials, Fuel Cycles, and Safeguards

摘要

In matters of nuclear anxiety, the gap between technical capability and defense activity is often vanishingly thin. A discussion paper by Mansoor Ahmed, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center, examines the "exceptional" and intertwined nature of India's nuclear energy and nuclear weapons programs.The paper details India's existing nuclear arsenal and its potential for expansion, with implications for neighbors Pakistan and China. Due to India's use of pressurized heavy-water reactors, India is capable of producing 1.25 tons of reactor-grade plutonium each year.The unsafeguarded nature of these reactors is problematic, as Ahmed highlights, because reactor-grade plutonium from them is also weapons grade and thus a particular point of contention for neighboring Pakistan when considering agreements such as the proposed fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT).The nature of India's fissile material development program renders progress on an FMCT nearly impossible until there is transparent and verifiable separation of India's civil and military fuel-cycle and reactor programs, according to the paper.