US grants India reprocessing concessions

India has secured significant concessions in the reprocessing accord, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The agreement, negotiated for over nine months, lays out conditions to safeguard against diversion of American nuclear fuel. New Delhi has negotiated long and hard to ensure the procedures for reprocessing spent fuel from the US don’t clash with its sovereignty.

The reprocessing will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. “Indians did not want direct American oversight with an American flag on them. It is a symbolic, sovereignty issue for Indians,” a US source familiar with the negotiations told the Post. The US follows this model only with Europe and Japan.

Another thorny issue that slowed negotiations was that India insisted on having more than one reprocessing plant, saying it was risky to transport fuel from one place to another through densely populated regions. American negotiators initially resisted, but the Indian argument prevailed, said the Post. Under the agreement, India will construct new facilities for reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel under IAEA safeguards.

The US State Department and India’s Department of Atomic Energy released a statement announcing the deal on Monday but the details were not made public. With the reprocessing deal in the bag, PM Manmohan Singh will have one less thing to worry about during his visit to Washington to attend a nuclear summit hosted by president Obama on April 12.

Even though civil nuclear energy co-operation is expected to give a fillip to US-India ties, David Coleman Headley haunts the ambience surrounding the prime minister’s Washington visit. Singh’s personal prestige and robust enthusiasm for a US-centric foreign policy received a devastating blow when the FBI’s plea bargain deal unfolded in the week the PM had earmarked for tabling the nuclear liability bill. 

Singh is now facing a whole lot of political trouble in trying to pass the controversial nuclear-liability law which sets a Rs500-crore cap on compensation in case of a nuclear accident. The opposition has lambasted the government for setting such a low ceiling on compensation, pointing to the magnitude of horrors unleashed by the Bhopal gas leak. 

Although the India-US nuclear deal was signed in 2008, and two sites have been identified by India for US reactors, no American company has signed contracts.