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US Initiated Nuclear Proliferation to India

RiazHaq

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The story of how India acquired nuclear weapons gets almost no attention in the Western media as they continue to focus on nuclear proliferation by Pakistan's AQ Khan.

The nuclear proliferation narrative in the mainstream American and European media begins with A.Q. Khan's network rather than the actors in North America and Europe as the original proliferators of nuclear weapons equipment, materials and technology to India in 1960s and 1970s.

The real story, as recounted by Paul Leventhal of The Nuclear Control Institute, begins with the US and Canada supplying nuclear reactors and fuel to India in 1960s. As the story unfolds, we learn that the spent fuel from Canadian Cirus reactor was reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium using a reprocessing plant provided by an American-European consortium, and later used to explode India's first atom bomb at Pokhran in 1974. This is the key event in South Asia that led to Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear weapons culminating in nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan in 1998.

Here are some key excerpts from Paul Leventhal's presentation to Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington DC on December 19, 2005:

CIRUS (Canadian reactor supplied to India) holds a very special place in nonproliferation history and the development of US nonproliferation policy. This needs to be understood if we are to do the right thing in working out a new nuclear relationship with India.

My own personal involvement in this history and policy began with a telephone call I received 31 years ago on a May morning in 1974 when I was a young staffer on the U.S. Senate Government Operations Committee. It was from a Congressional liaison officer of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission who said he was calling to inform me that India had just conducted a nuclear test and to assure me that "the United States had absolutely nothing to do with it."

At that time, I was working on legislation to reorganize the AEC into separate regulatory and promotional agencies. I had begun investigating the weapons potential of nuclear materials being used in the U.S. Atoms for Peace program, both at home and abroad. The official wanted me to know there was no need to consider remedial legislation on nuclear exports because the plutonium used in India's test came not from the safeguarded nuclear power plant at Tarapur, supplied by the United States, but from the unsafeguarded Cirus research reactor near Bombay, supplied by Canada. "This is a Canadian problem, not ours," he said.

It took me two years to discover that the information provided me that day was false. The United States, in fact, had supplied the essential heavy-water component that made the Cirus reactor operable, but decided to cover up the American supplier role and let Canada "take the fall" for the Indian test. Canada promptly cut off nuclear exports to India, but the United States did not.

In 1976, when the Senate committee uncovered the U.S. heavy-water export to India and confronted the State Department on it, the government's response was another falsehood: the heavy water supplied by the U.S., it said, had leaked from the reactor at a rate of 10% a year, and had totally depleted over 10 years by the time India produced the plutonium for its test.

But the committee learned from Canada that the actual heavy-water loss rate at Cirus was less than 1% a year, and we learned from junior-high-school arithmetic that even a 10%- a-year loss rate doesn't equal 100% after 10 years. Actually, more than 90% of the original U.S. heavy water was still in the Cirus reactor after 10 years, even if it took India a decade to produce the test plutonium---itself a highly fanciful notion.

We also learned that the reprocessing plant where India had extracted the plutonium from Cirus spent fuel, described as "indigenous" in official U.S. and Indian documents, in fact had been supplied by an elaborate and secret consortium of U.S. and European companies.

Faced with this blatant example of the Executive Branch taking Congress for the fool, the Senate committee drafted and Congress eventually enacted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. And the rest, as they say, is history.


Paul Leventhal's story about India's diversion of civilian nuclear programs to build weapons is corroborated by other sources such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Wisconsin Project.

Unfortunately, not much has changed in Washington since 1974 as the duplicitous US policy of "non-proliferation" continues to this day. Washington never talks about the Israeli nuclear weapons and the US administration continues to raise objections to the Chinese sale of nuclear power plants to Pakistan which is suffering from crippling energy deficits. Meanwhile, the 2009 US-India nuclear deal legitimizes India as a nuclear weapons state and encourages continuing Indian buildup of its nuclear arsenal even as the US targets Iran for its alleged efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Haq's Musings: US Proliferated Nukes to India
 
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The bottom line is that we've got nukes and we've got delivery systems
 
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neither India nor Israel send their citizens to do terrorist attacks on different countries and than label them as non state actors,its very likely that if in future any of the terrorist organization gets hands on the nuclear weapon we can trace it back to pakistan !

so yes world talk about A.Q khan network only !
 
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Too bad. Its politics i guess. India suffered the same at the hands of US during the 1971 war, when it had embargoes weapons to India but continued its supply to Pakistan. Every country will try and take steps that satisfies its interest. Sometimes its India at the receiving end and sometimes it is Pakistan. That is the reality that we all have to live with.
 
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neither India nor Israel send their citizens to do terrorist attacks on different countries and than label them as non state actors,its very likely that if in future any of the terrorist organization gets hands on the nuclear weapon we can trace it back to pakistan !

so yes world talk about A.Q khan network only !

This will land u in trouble.
 
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Guys plz ask him for the Op for a reputed source before debating ...this guy is notorious for advertising his own blog which is nothing but a hurriedly written nationalistic cr@p..
 
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US and Canada supplied us nuclear reactors for civilian and research use. It was before NPT and there was no restrictions. We used them to make a bomb (never stole) because we were threatened by China and US at the time. But we never proliferated or our technology to other countries for money or ummah. Same can't be said about Pakistan, which was intent on selling the technology to most rogue states in the world.

I guess OP needs to understand what proliferation means in English.
 
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Bottom line is west are hypocrites when they say they can hold nukes but look for excuses why other countries cant. They should be ignored. every sovn country has the right to nukes and nuclear energy. Who made whites and west god?
 
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The story of how India acquired nuclear weapons gets almost no attention in the Western media as they continue to focus on nuclear proliferation by Pakistan's AQ Khan.


You really want to compare our nation's nuclear program with a man who peddled nuclear weapons like candy to dictatorial regimes and Al Qaeda?:no:

Plus it was China that first supplied unprocessed uranium pellets to India.Guess your research didn't throw light on that eh?
 
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You really want to compare our nation's nuclear program with a man who peddled nuclear weapons like candy to dictatorial regimes and Al Qaeda?:no:

Plus it was China that first supplied unprocessed uranium pellets to India.Guess your research didn't throw light on that eh?

But when you condemn people like khan you are playing into the hands of those that say only west has the right to decide who can and can not have nukes. Why Why? Who made them god?
 
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But when you condemn people like khan you are playing into the hands of those that say only west has the right to decide who can and can not have nukes. Why Why? Who made them god?

They have signed the NPT and the conditions are obligatory on them to not make nukes. They have voluntarily signed the Treaty which allows IAEA to inspect their Nuclear reactors.
 
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neither India nor Israel send their citizens to do terrorist attacks on different countries and than label them as non state actors,its very likely that if in future any of the terrorist organization gets hands on the nuclear weapon we can trace it back to pakistan !

so yes world talk about A.Q khan network only !
Itching to troll ? Soviets nukes were the most unsafe ones to land in the hand of terrorist organization after the dissolution of USSR so there is no reason to blame Pakistan ... Everyone got nukes by stealing , this is no secret ... No one has indigenous nukes in the world ! But the interesting thing is the hypocrisy of the West ... If a country can have it , so can the neighbor ... West isn't God to be worthy of deciding who has the right to have nukes !
 
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But when you condemn people like khan you are playing into the hands of those that say only west has the right to decide who can and can not have nukes. Why Why? Who made them god?

The west isn't god Aryan but you seriously cannot expect nations like Iran or Al Qaeda to show maturity in dealing with nuclear weapons.The nuclear stance between India and Pakistan is far more sophisticated and based of maturity,Give the same toys to children like Iran or worse;terrorists who wouldn't shy away from using them....the world becomes a infinitely more dangerous place to live in.
 
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Here's the link to a 1992 article titled "India's Silent Bomb" by David Albright published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which clearly says that the plutonium for India's first bomb in 1974 came from Canada's CIRUS reactor:

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - Google Books

Then there's another quote from Paul Leventhal, Nuclear Control Institute, about US's secret help that led to India's 1974 nuclear test, with the US being a proliferator:

"We also learned that the reprocessing plant where India had extracted the plutonium from Cirus spent fuel, described as "indigenous" in official U.S. and Indian documents, in fact had been supplied by an elaborate and secret consortium of U.S. and European companies.

Faced with this blatant example of the Executive Branch taking Congress for the fool, the Senate committee drafted and Congress eventually enacted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. And the rest, as they say, is history."

CIRUS Reactor's Role in a US-India Nuclear
 
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