On the face of it, the US invitation to India to join the so-called Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, is worth considering. Provided Washington manages to clear its own domestic hurdles. The offer was reportedly made last Wednesday during the second meeting between Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and US Undersecretary of Energy David Garman in New Delhi. The idea behind GNEP is to create a new worldwide nuclear power system in which a group
of supplier countries provides nuclear fuel and technology to another set of user countries. The supplier group will use a new generation of nuclear breeder reactors to recycle the large stockpiles of nuclear wastes around the world, including fissile material from atomic warheads. In return, the recipient countries would be provided with modern reactors and the nuclear fuel
to run them. In other words, the GNEP would give energy-starved countries nuclear fuel for generating power, and take back the dangerous nuclear waste.
The express reason for floating the GNEP at this point probably has a lot to do with concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme. Russia’s offer of outsourcing Teheran’s uranium enrichment programme — and thereby controlling the flow of weapons-grade uranium back to Iran — seems to have prompted the GNEP’s launch. The GNEP is supposed to ensure that countries can have access to adequate enriched uranium for ‘peaceful’ purposes. But the project depends on confining the vulnerable stages of the nuclear fuel cycle — uranium enrichment and radioactive waste disposal — to a few exclusive locations in Russia, the US and elsewhere. But how sound is the science behind the idea of breaking down spent fuels?
By its own admission, the US Department of Energy has yet to have ‘proven technologies’ for nuclear plant reprocessing, integral to the fuel supply and handling aspect of the GNEP. So could it be that the Bush administration wants to piggyback the GNEP to return to the uranium-processing research the US gave up decades ago as uneconomical and dangerous? In which case, it won’t be easy for Washington — already under pressure to identify acceptable storage sites for spent fuel generated in the US — to find repositories to store spent fuel under international authority. Looks like Washington could do with some luck on this one.