Two long years of hard negotiations and diplomacy is coming to nought if India fails to forge the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement by not taking steps to operationalize the deal. The Left parties of the coalition government are insisting on withdrawal of the Government from the deal, unexpectedly at the last minute. By doing so, the nuclear power scenario in India is going to take a beating. The country may not be able to contribute even the 2-3% of the total electricity generated. The Indian community in US seems to be very unhappy with this development. According to them, the deal is more beneficial to India than to US, which of course is debatable. It is more of a business deal for US. The deal is of billions of dollars worth to US, in terms of selling reactors, reactor components, nuclear fuel and other high tech equipments.
It is extremely difficult for India to prosper in nuclear ventures being isolated from other resourceful countries. Power from thorium fuel cycle is still a few years away. The country should go all out for mining uranium from the newly found deposits in the north eastern state of Meghalaya, to fuel its PHWRs. What about utilization of depleted uranium stock? Fissile material percentage in depleted uranium need to be compensated by addition of other fissile actinide materials.
Meanwhile, why not try to negotiate with other interested countries for similar agreement without compromising on the reprocessing rights and the right to test nuclear devises. Why US alone? There are 44 other friendly countries such as France, Russia, and Australia to negotiate in the 45 nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
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It is incorrect to say that India has benefited more from the deal. USA is benefiting as much form the deal as India is.
The deal is an amalgamation of variety of aspects, not fuel alone.
A detailed analysis is available on www.opinionsnolongerlocked.blogspot.com
check it out
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