Sunday, September 14, 2008

N-Powering India: India-US Nuclear Deal

6 September 2008, A historic day came when NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) gave its nod to India-US Nuclear deal. With this nod India’s Nuclear isolation of 34 years has been over. This deal says, India will have uninterrupted supply of Nuclear Fuel for its US-made nuclear reactors. India and the US will agree to transfer nuclear material, non-nuclear material, equipment and components. US will support/help India in developing strategic reserves of nuclear fuel to guard against future disruption of nuclear supply using its international 'Big Brother' role. In case of disruption, US and India will jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries (NSG) to include nations like Russia, France and the UK to pursue such measures to restore fuel supply.

But this deal is not only about Nuclear Fuel but there are many other advantages of this deal which will make huge impact on both US and India’s economy and it will help India to put it’s economic growth in the second gear. Indian government and the opposition is emphasizing on Energy production with this Nuclear Fuel but this deal is not limited to provide only Nuclear Fuel but it is of providing Nuclear technology which was not accessible to India. Access to these nuclear technologies will help Indian companies to reach on another level.

Biggest beneficiary of this deal is IT and Software industry as a relaxation in global technology rules gives India access to much more advanced tech, spelling a quantum leap for the IT companies of the country. Indian companies now have to reinvent the wheel. For instance access to high-performance computing systems — a lot of which are currently denied to India under various export control regimes will put Indian software and IT R&D in a different league. HPC systems have contributed to leading-edge developments in such diverse applications as weapons design, integrated-circuit simulation, automobile crash simulation, seismic prospecting, and drug design.

Weather analysis and forecasting will benefit with this deal as it has nuclear application which has been denied to India will be easily available. Digital phosphor oscilloscopes, which are indispensable for oil refineries and electronics industry, also have a nuclear role and are currently barred — but will now be available. Filamentary poles, important for making tennis rackets, golf clubs and fishing poles, are also inaccessible because they can be used for uranium enrichment. Compressors, testing systems, furnaces for power generation, mining equipment, high-voltage power supplies, industrial and scientific equipment like heat exchangers, piping, fittings, valves, measuring and calibrating equipment... Many of these have applications in different sectors and access to them would give Indian manufacturing a huge boost.

There is also technology and scientific research that relates to civilian applications in medicine, radiology and industry. Communications switching equipment, certain types of electronic equipment, lower speed photography equipment, pressure-measuring instruments, and numerically controlled machine tools — much of all this is currently out of bounds for India's knowledge economy.

In the field of medicine, X-ray imagers that use cobalt-60 may soon become accessible. So will specialized equipment for oil and gas exploration. Nuclear well-logging is used by advanced countries to help predict the commercial viability of new and existing oil and gas wells, and it could become available in India as well.

Nuclear deal will help India’s defense program as it gets a free hand to purchase previously restricted conventional weapons, most notably Israel's Arrow missile defense system, and partially US-funded program. The Arrow interceptor is a Category I missile capable of delivering a 500-kg payload to a range of 300 km. Also denied to India are ocean surveillance systems and satellite systems for electronic reconnaissance, navigation, military meteorology, and nuclear explosion detection. But the doors are slowly opening.

Indian companies or research entities would like to participate in global projects like Eureka in the EU for market-oriented R&D in robotics, environment technology, agriculture, bio-sciences etc, but a lot of those technologies are currently denied to India. When the denial veil is lifted in one sector it also has a ripple effect in other sectors.

The possibilities are immense in emerging scientific disciplines like nanotechnology and synthetic biology that draw upon many other branches of science, all of which are controlled technologies. The nuclear deal will not suddenly land all these technologies on India's doorstep, but what is important is that people will not turn away Indians automatically. The playing field will become a little less skewed against India.

After this deal when other countries when other countries want to build nuclear reactors in India, it will be Indian companies like L&T and BHEL that will get the contracts for the components. Indian companies will become component providers and vendors to these projects. India will become a nuclear energy components provider but I will take few years. According to L&T sources they have already started working on this component and now they have all technologies to start production.

This Nuclear deal will help India in many ways but it will take some time but the US will see its immediate effect. This nuclear deal is worth 6.4Billion which will help US economy to stabilize. If India purchases 1 nuclear reactor it will generate 5000 direct jobs and more than 10000 indirect jobs in US which will help its economy. India is planning for 14 civilian nuclear reactors this will help many people in US to get job and help government to tackle this crisis situation persists in US.

We hope that Indian government will use this deal to its full extent and allow Indian companies to scale new heights.