Excerpts from an Interview with Prof. R Rajaraman, Emeritus Professor of Physics, School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 19 May 2009

The FMCT debate is fragmented in India. Opinion varies regarding the fissile material stock India possesses. There is a section that believes that signing the FMCT will not affect India because its un-safeguarded reactor capacity is massive and therefore, by the time the treaty comes into effect (say in two years time from the 2010 RevCon), India will have more than adequate stock of plutonium. There is also a section that believes otherwise. What is your take on this? 

There cannot be too much disagreement on how much India will produce. That is pure physics. If one runs a reactor with a certain megawatt capacity at certain efficiency, then automatically physics tells you how much fissile material will be produced. So there is not much room for subjective opinion here, although some people, largely out of ignorance, make it a matter of opinion. 

What can be a matter of opinion is whether the fissile material produced is sufficient or not. Here too, not every aspect is subjective. That you want minimum deterrence by threatening unacceptable damage is not subjective because that is what India has declared in its Nuclear Doctrine. How much damage a weapon dropped on a major city would do is also not very subjective. The tragic examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus the numerous over-the-ground tests give us enough data to estimate the damage. Also, how many weapons you need to possess in order to have certain amount of survivable weapons is also not subjective. These are things that can be calculated by taking the ratios used by the US at various times.

However, what is subjective is how much damage the adversary would consider as unacceptable. Therefore, while how much we are producing is fairly easy to estimate well, how much would be required to shake up the adversary may be subjective.

I personally have argued for years that the fissile material that India already has is more than sufficient for any reasonable requirement of credible minimum deterrence.

Fissile material is classified into two categories – fissile material in weapons and fissile material in headstock, and the quantity of the latter is considered to be important. The P-5 are said to have adequate fissile material in stock and therefore the FMCT will not affect them. Where does India stand on this issue?

The US for instance has declared a certain amount of fissile material as excess of stock, that is, excess stock not needed for weapons. So countries can, if they have a large amount of fissile material, declare the excess and put them under safeguards. India can also do the same; however, it has to decide how many weapons it wants to have. 

Roughly speaking, India has about 50-100 weapons now, or more accurately, about 100 weapons worth of fissile material is there although all of it may not have been assembled as weapons. There is also 12 tons of reactor grade plutonium, which is still lying in the reactors and not reprocessed. In addition to that there is the weapons grade plutonium making reactor - the Fast Breeder Reactor - which is the biggest weapon-making reactor because it produces pure weapons-grade plutonium. What it breeds happens to have a very rich mixture of Pu-239. Here again, physics tells if you run the PFBR reactor at about 70 per cent efficiency, it will produce 100 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year. This has been worked out in detail by Alex Glaser and MV Ramana.

India’s capacity to reprocess is said to be inadequate. How does this affect its position on the FMCT?

I believe the reprocessing capacity we have has been adequate for the weapons-grade material that has been made so far. However, our capacity to reprocess the huge amount of reactor-grade plutonium is not adequate. Our reprocessing units have been running inefficiently. Even if we had no designs to make weapons, we may want to recover the reactor grade plutonium anyway to run breeder reactors for civilian purposes. At present, not all of the 12 tons of reactor grade plutonium that India has is usable. How much of this has been actually reprocessed is confidential, something that the government will not reveal. In a sense, this could affect our position on the FMCT either way. You can take the view that India has more stock than it will ever reprocess and so why not put it under safeguards. The contrary view is that it may all be needed someday for the weapons programme.

The Fast Breeder Reactor Programme is an ambitious project and it is going to expand considerably in the near future. With the possible establishment of the PFBR in Kalpakkam in 2010, India is looking forward to install four additional breeder reactors by 2020. But the credibility of our fast breeder programme is under scrutiny from many quarters. The technology is considered to be nebulous as well as cost-intensive. How far do you think that the FBR programme would influence our decision-making with regard to signing the FMCT?

I don’t think there is any harm in pursuing it at present as long as India can afford it. Whatever money is available to spend on the breeder programme can be used. Partly out of respect for Dr. Bhabha who thought of it, and partly because it is scientifically not a bad idea. But I should mention that many people who know and understand breeders say that this is not going to work, they mean it in a different sense; in an economic sense, it's increased safety problems, the cost of overcoming them, its proliferation dangers and so on. That is why they are against breeders.

If India wants to build breeders, I think it should continue to work on it but, on the side as it were. However, if India had relied solely on breeders as the long-term solution as was the case until the (Indo-US) nuclear deal came, that would have been suicidal because the chances of success are small. A lot of obstacles may have to be overcome and unknown problems will arise. That is not a reason for not going ahead; however, India should not put all its eggs in that Breeder-Thorium cycle basket. One may recall that in the early stages of the debate on the nuclear deal, those who opposed the deal used to say “we have a breeder programme, why do we need uranium?” I am glad that sanity prevailed and the deal was successfully negotiated and signed.


Note: Click here to read the full interview.