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...In 1956 Canada provided India with a 40 megawatt "Canadian-Indian Reactor, U.S." (CIRUS) research reactor near Mumbai. The United States supplied the heavy water necessary to control nuclear fission. In 1959 Canada sold a 125-megawatt nuclear reactor to Pakistan and then in 1964, sold them a "CANada Deuterium Uranium" (CANDU) reactor. In 1971, Canada constructed a 137-megawatt CANDU heavy-water nuclear reactor at Karachi, Pakistan. Canada also included heavy water and a heavy water production facility as part of the deal. Three years later, in 1974, India detonated its first nuclear device, nicknamed the "Smiling Buddha," at Pokhran, Rajasthan, using plutonium from the CIRUS reactor. Turns out, Canada's reactors are just great at producing weapons-grade plutonium. Canada did not bother to ask India to comply with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards nor for any accounting of the amount of plutonium the CIRUS produced. India claims that its agreement with Canada did not preclude the use of CIRUS-produced plutonium for "peaceful" nuclear explosions. India described its Smiling Buddha blast as a "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion," but predictably, as soon as Pakistan saw that India had the Bomb, it put its shiny new CANDU reactor to work developing its own nuclear weapons. Canada is clearly a major proliferator of nuclear weaponry and is completely complicit in the nuclear arming of both Pakistan and India.

On May 11 and 13, 1998, India carried out five nuclear tests at Pokhran. Two weeks later, on May 28 and 29, 1998, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Pakistan had conducted five nuclear tests at its base in Baluchistan and had "settled the score with India." The people of the world can thank Canada for this most dangerous nuclear brinkmanship parlay ever. With its monumental stupidity exposed for all the world to see, after India's 1974 blast Canada slunk out of the India CANDU project leaving Indian scientists to handle, maintain, repair and operate the nukes on their own. Canada abruptly stopped supplying uranium to Pakistan in 1976, and then slunk out of its Pakistan project. If India and Pakistan ever nuke it out, or if ever those CANDUs should snafu, Canada will have an horrific culpability on its hands. ...

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http://www.counterpunch.org/lee02272006.html

I don't expect a major (meltdown like) safety problem with the CANDUs. I am assuming that both the Indian and Pakistani nuclear operators are at least halway competent. I worked on Darlington and the safety features of CANDUs are pretty good. To start with it takes a lot longer for them to melt after a loss of coolant accident than the light water reactor at Three Mile Island or the graphite reactor at Chernobyl. Then there are two separate shutdown systems with three control systems each, and then there is the vacuum containment. It would take a long term decline in operation to get a major failure.

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OTTAWA -- The federal government's decision to resume nuclear co-operation with India is being denounced by former Canadian arms control negotiators and by Lloyd Axworthy, who was the foreign affairs minister when Ottawa first imposed a strict moratorium on such collaboration seven years ago.

Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said yesterday Ottawa is reversing its policy and is now ready to supply India with dual-use technology that can be used in civilian nuclear facilities.

Mr. Pettigrew also said Canada is exploring the possibility of nuclear power reactor sales to India.

The announcement was made at a joint news conference with Indian Foreign Minister K. Natwar Singh, and follows by two months a similar move by the United States.

Canada had imposed the moratorium on nuclear co-operation in 1998 when India tested nuclear warheads.

Mr. Axworthy said yesterday that Ottawa's decision is a "sad mistake" that undermines international efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

"Canada is abandoning its 40- to 50-year traditional diplomatic approach in how to deal with the dangers of nuclear weapons," Mr. Axworthy said in an interview.

[snip]

Mr. Pettigrew said the dual-use items Canada will begin to supply to India will be kept under strict international safeguards to make sure they are not used in India's nuclear weapons program.

India has separated its civilian and nuclear weapons programs and has put the civilian program under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, the minister noted.

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When Pettigrew spoke, India had only committed to fully separating civilian and military programs--it hadn't been done and still hasn't.

Check out this recent Indian statement, which is hardly as comforting as the former foreign affairs minister would like us to believe:

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The Separation Plan that is being outlined is not only consistent with the imperatives of national security, it also protects our vital research and development interests. We have ensured that our three-stage nuclear programme will not be undermined or hindered by external interference. In fact our three stage programme will continue to receive the full support of the government, including the construction of the necessary new facilities. We will offer to place under safeguards only those facilities that can be identified as civilian without damaging our deterrence potential or restricting our R&D effort, or in any way compromising our autonomy of developing our three stage nuclear programme. In this process, the Department of Atomic Energy has been involved at every stage, and the separation plan has been drawn up with their inputs.

Therefore our proposed Separation Plan entails identifying in phases, a number of our thermal nuclear reactors as civilian facilities to be placed under IAEA safeguards, amounting to roughly 65% of the total installed thermal nuclear power capacity, by the end of the separation plan. A list of some other DAE facilities may be added to the list of facilities within the civilian domain. The Separation Plan will create a clearly defined civilian domain, where IAEA safeguards apply. On our part, we are committed not to divert any nuclear material intended for the civilian domain from designated civilian use or for export to third countries without safeguards.

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Link.

Also, the Indians have made it clear that they'll be deciding by themselves which plants count as civilian and which count as nuclear and, what's more, as the statement points out, fewer than 2/3 of their reactors will be under IAEA safeguards.

(I apologize if that statement sounds like I think the Indians are especially guilty of nuclear wrongdoing. I don't. In fact, I think all of the existing nuclear powers are guilty of such wrongdoing, as are those nations--like Canada--which claim the right to be defended by nuclear weapons while criticizing others for advancing the same claim.)

There's good information on this subject over at The Arms Control Wonk's blog. Here's what the Wonk had to say in his comments section about CANDUs and the military Indian nuclear program:

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India largely uses the CIRUS and Dhruva research reactors to produce military plutonium -- although David Albright reports "suspicions remain that India may have used some of the plutonium produced in its Candu power reactors in its nuclear weapons program."

India has no reason not to safeguard all the commercial-scale power reactors, unless India wants to increase its plutonium production above, say, 20 kg annually without having to build a new research reactor.

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Finally, I think it's also worth pointing out that the Liberal government was likely under instructions from Washington to make this move. When Bush signed his deal with the Indians in July of 2005, he made it clear he would be asking other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to fall in line. Six weeks later and--surprise!--Pierre Pettigrew of Canada has a policy reversal to announce.

It looks like the most Canada was willing to do here was ask a few questions of the US in a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group:

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In what has turned out to be a domestically divisive declaration for his government, Singh told Bush that India would separate its civilian nuclear program from its military counterpart and permit international oversight of nonmilitary facilities. He also reaffirmed existing Indian policies to institute tighter export controls, adhere to a nuclear-testing moratorium, and support negotiating a treaty to end the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons.

Some NSG members, such as Canada, questioned why the United States did not obtain more from India, particularly a pledge to cease production of bomb-making materials. France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have publicly announced an end to such production, and China is understood to have also followed suit. Indian officials maintain their country will do no less and no more than these five states.

Similarly, other NSG countries knocked the arrangement for not getting India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear testing. However, the Bush administration also opposes the accord, which will not enter into force until the United States, India, and nine other specific countries ratify it.

Still, the critical issue determining whether the nuclear trade door will be opened wider for India is if it enacts a “credible split of its civilian and military” nuclear programs, one diplomat of an NSG member told Arms Control Today Oct. 20.

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Shameful conduct from the former minister of foreign affairs.

Barely a peep was heard from the Canadian government when the US adminstration walked away from the ABM treaty. We've also knowingly undermined the Geneva Conventions and the Torture Convention by our handing over of Afghani detainees to American forces, some of whom have been implicated in prisoner abuse. And we also abet the Bush administration's weakening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by this sketchy deal with India.

Not a proud record for Canada in recent years.

[ 01 March 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]

Today, the Globe published both a story and an editorial on the recent US-India nuclear deal advanced by President Bush: no mention in either of Ottawa's about-face on the same issue last September, under likely direction from Washington (though the editorial did mention that 'it is believed' India was 'helped along' towards nuclear weapons by a Canadian reactor).

While both of these Globe pieces glaringly omit any mention of Canada's current bad policy on this subject, the editorial in particular is a model of confusion and ill-informed claptrap:

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There are good, pragmatic reasons to treat India differently. First, it is a democracy. Washington can do business with India's representative government in a way it cannot with the untrustworthy theocrats who rule Iran. In return for access to U.S. nuclear-power fuel and technology, India has agreed to separate its weapons program from its power program and to open the power side to international inspectors. That is a major concession from a country that has jealously guarded its nuclear independence and never signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The critics say forgiving India for its nuclear breakout will encourage other countries to buck the West's anti-proliferation efforts. If India can get away with it over time, those countries might say, maybe we can too. But the Indian breakout is a fact of life. India first set off a "peaceful" nuclear device in 1974 (helped along, it is believed, by a Canadian-built reactor). Its refusal to sign the NPT meant that it could not be held to international rules. Thanks to the U.S.-India deal, the international community can now get a look at India's nuclear program and help to ensure its technology does not spread to other, more threatening countries. In fact, as a side benefit of the deal, India has recently joined with the United States and other countries to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

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And who says the governments of 'representative democracies' are inherently trustworthy anyway? I could name a few that have been less than trustworthy in recent years, including on matters having to do with weapons of mass destruction. How trustworthy is, say, France's commitment to the NPT when Chirac threatens to nuke countries sponsoring terrorist attacks, while signing the same kind of dubious deal with India as Bush?

In fact, Chirac's recent comments--when recalled in the light of this editorial--show you just how ideologically blinkered the Globe's editorialists are when they speak of 'other, more threatening countries' (i.e. not countries that have threatened to use the nukes they actually have, but countries not yet having nukes, but receiving repeated conventional and nuclear threats from those of us wearing the white hats).

Leaving aside the total non-reply to the criticism about weakening the NPT by creating these side deals ('it's a fact of life,' says the Globe, failing to recall that new 'facts of life' were exactly the basis for eventually tearing up the ABM treaty to pursue dangerous and wasteful missile defence plans), we should remember that the inspection regime touted here by the Globe will be inadequate at best.

Bad enough that the Canadian government largely escapes scrutiny as it undermines the international non-proliferation regime in order to please Washington and the domestic nuclear industry, but we also have to put up with the Globe working overtime to manufucature highly enriched consent with misleading editorials like this one.

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India insisted ... that whatever nuclear reactors were built in the future, did not come to be questioned.

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http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/mar/02bush50.htm

Business as usual.

Look at the South American portion of this map. Argentina, which by now exports some nuclear technology, has also been helped by Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/03/02/20060302-nukedeal.html

Until 1984, Canada had some "Genie" nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles stored on three air bases (Comox, Trenton, and Chatham). Scroll down to "Deployment".

They were for use, in theory, by the CF-101 "Voodoo" fighter jets which were phased out and replaced by the CF-18s. At this point the Genie missiles were shipped back to the US.

They were taken out of service, I think, not because of any anti-nuclear-weapons principles (the Trudeau Government, after all, agreed to flight test Cruise missiles in Alberta, though not of course to any warhead explosions), but because they were obsolete. The "unguided" missiles, supposed to be used against Soviet bombers, had a range of 6 miles, but a "yield" of something like 5.5 kilotons, or half that of the Hiroshima bomb.

It was like you said.

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Worldwatch Institute: March 3, 2006 U.S. - India Nuclear Deal: Reckless on Every Score

The security risks inherent in the nuclear cooperation agreement reached yesterday between President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh far outweigh the energy benefits of the deal, according to researchers at the Worldwatch Institute. Spending the same money on new, clean energy options would provide greater energy security without increasing the risk that terrorists will get their hands on new nuclear arsenals.

The deal, if supported by the U.S. Congress, will undermine international non-proliferation efforts at a critical time. "It's now going to be tough to argue that Iran and North Korea should be denied nuclear technology while India—which has failed to even join the Non-Proliferation Treaty—is given the same technology on a silver platter," said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.

Proponents claim that nuclear power will be India's ticket to energy security and prosperity in this energy-starved country of 1.1 billion people. India currently relies on large quantities of dirty, low-grade domestic coal and expensive oil imports to supply its power needs. Blackouts are a chronic problem in many regions and threaten to constrain booming industrial development.

But according to Worldwatch's 2006 State of the World report, nuclear power is not India's best option. Nuclear power provides only 3 percent of the country's electricity today, and even if the 30 new nuclear plants the government hopes to build are actually completed over the next two decades (India has consistently fallen short on its past nuclear ambition) nuclear would still provide only 5 percent of the country's electricity and 2 percent of its total energy.

In Chapter 1: China, India, and the New World Order, Flavin and Worldwatch research director Gary Gardner offer another solution: "Renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, and biomass are far more practical energy options for China and India. Both countries have vast land areas that contain a large dispersed and diverse portfolio of renewable energy sources that are attracting foreign and domestic investment as well as political interest."

Globally, the nuclear construction business has been in decline for more than two decades, and in terms of new plants, it is now a dead industry in most nations, including the United States. Worldwide, nuclear power is growing at less than 1 percent per year. By contrast, renewable energy—wind, solar, and biofuels—is on a growth surge, averaging annual expansion rates of 25-35 percent, as President Bush noted enthusiastically in speeches in Colorado and Michigan last week.

Worldwide nuclear power generation increased by a mere 2 percent in 2004 (see Vital Signs 2005 for stocks of enriched uranium and plutonium; the rest of the document is not free.) http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/vs/2005
while renewables surged. Grid-connected solar photovoltaic power grew in existing capacity by 60 percent per year from 2000-2004, and wind power capacity came in second, experiencing a global growth rate of 28 percent per year. Investment in the world's renewable energy sector reached $30 billion in 2004, according to the "Renewables 2005: Global Status Report"

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http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2005/11/06

Also, here's part of an e-mail to MacKay on the topic:

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Dear Minister MacKay,

I write to ask you to reconsider Canada's policy of nuclear cooperation with India.

Last fall, Liberal foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew announced Canada would be changing its position to permit further nuclear cooperation with India, despite the fact India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Given Canada's nuclear history with India (India secretly used Canadian technology to become a nuclear weapons power), and given our current position on Iran's potential nuclear programs, it seems hypocritical for us to say Iran must meet all of its NPT obligations while rewarding India for flouting the NPT.

Nuclear weapons proliferation represents a major threat to the survival of the human race: the fewer nuclear weapons the better, it has been said. Experienced observers have convincingly argued that increased Canadian nuclear cooperation with India will lead to the further nuclearization of the Indian subcontinent.

Please assure me that you and your government, having taken into account the arguments put forward by the Arms Control Association and others, will adopt a truly 'conservative' position and reduce any and all Canadian participation in the nuclear arms race.

Sincerely,

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Originally posted by Cougyr:
Boy, I am paranoid. My first reaction is that Bush is arranging to move his nuclear weapon manufacture off-shore.

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Why are the INC and its Stalinist allies so pro-Washington?

Oh wait...