Enabling India to Expand Its Production of Nuclear Weapons and Bomb-grade Material Increases Terrorist Risk
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 9, 2008
CONTACT: Leonor Tomero
Washington, D.C. – As U.S. and Indian officials continue to press for the U.S.-India nuclear trade deal, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation cautioned against the increased risk that terrorists might gain access to nuclear weapons materials in India as a result of the deal.
Responding to a question by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on nuclear terrorism last week, about whether India has rejected offers of nuclear security cooperation, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Director of the Office of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy, stated that "The decisions that states make, in a world where there's an increased dependence on nuclear power and proliferation of nuclear weapons, all will exacerbate the tendencies in the future -- the ability of a terrorist group at some point in time to reach that threshold they may have a mushroom cloud." He added "So my comment would be that certainly India is in the sphere of concern, as any country that has nuclear power and nuclear weapons."
Leonor Tomero, Director of Nuclear Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, noted that "This is a real problem, one that the administration should take seriously, and one that is actually worse than the administration is letting on. It is not just that India is a country with nuclear weapons and nuclear power."
Tomero explained: "Unbelievably, the administration has made concessions to India as part of the deal that will enable India to expand significantly its capability to both produce nuclear weapons and stockpile nuclear weapons-usable material by extracting plutonium from U.S.-origin nuclear fuel. This is a whole new level of increased weapons and material production."
"Moreover, if this nuclear trade deal goes through, it will be much harder to convince other countries to abide by stricter non-proliferation rules and to discourage their acquisition of sensitive fuel cycle technology and expertise that could be used for developing nuclear power but also for making nuclear weapons," Tomero added.
Currently, only France, the United Kingdom, and Japan engage in commercial reprocessing to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Under the 123 U.S.-India agreement for cooperation, the administration authorizes India to reprocess U.S.-origin spent fuel. India in the past used U.S.- and Canadian-supplied technology and material that had been provided for peaceful purposes to make the plutonium that India used for its 1974 nuclear weapon tests.
At the April 2, 2008 Senate hearing, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Charles Allen, who also testified, told members of the Senate Committee "We learned that al-Qaeda wants a weapon to use, not a weapon to sustain and build a stockpile" and that "We do not know what a terrorist plot might look like. There is, however, a choke point in a terrorist effort to develop a nuclear capability. It is impossible to build a nuclear weapon without fissile material."
"At a time when there are warnings that Al Qaeda is seeking to acquire and use a nuclear weapon, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and bomb-grade material should be our number one priority. In this administration's last months, the priority seems to be setting the stage for pouring oil on the fire when it comes to the U.S.-India nuclear deal," said Tomero.
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