People's Democracy

YECHURY IN UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY

India Can’t Join Discriminatory NPT

Addressing the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on October 31, on behalf of the Indian delegation, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury defended the Indian government’s as well as the party’s stand of not joining the discriminatory NPT treaty.

He also pleaded that the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) must function according to its own constitution adopted by the founding members without giving any chance to any power to misuse it.

In context of the September vote against Iran, Yechury, who is also a member of Rajya Sabha, cautioned the organisation not to be influenced by any form of pressure and suggested that it should not go beyond its well laid legal obligations while dealing with the nations.

Being a technical body, he asserted, the IAEA must not be an instrument in the hands of any member nation to pursue its foreign policy by other means. He was obviously referring to the USA that is using the IAEA to continue its arm twisting tactics while dealing with certain nations.

He suggested that IAEA chief El Baradei recognise the concerns of the southern hemisphere while dealing with their nuclear development. The full text of the speech as follows.

LET me take this opportunity to convey our heartiest congratulations to Dr Mohamed El Baradei, director general, IAEA, and under his able leadership, the International Atomic Energy Agency for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. As a founder member of IAEA, India cherishes the recognition by the Nobel committee of an outstanding contribution to world peace and security. We are confident that, as a distinguished son of a developing country, Dr El Baradei will continue to understand the South’s problems as well as its aspirations. An essential feature of the centrality of the IAEA in advancing the peaceful use of nuclear energy is that problems that may arise in this regard have to be addressed and resolved within the IAEA.   

During the course of these deliberations, Mr President, we heard the suggestion that countries that have not joined the NPT, should do so. In this context, I wish to reiterate that India is strongly committed to disarmament and non-proliferation.  However, asking us to join the NPT is like tilting at windmills. India continues to regard the NPT as a deeply flawed and discriminatory treaty.

Confidence in the IAEA is based on traditions of expertise, professional competence, objective standards and impartial action. It is important that non-discrimination should remain a vital consideration; the scope of instruments should not be sought to be redefined without formally amending them; goal posts should not be selectively shifted beyond legal obligations. We are also not in favour of member states using technical bodies for conducting foreign policy by other means, since this is contrary to the charter of such bodies, just as we are not in favour of the UN Security Council arrogating to itself legislative and judicial powers since these are never mandated by the charter and sometimes violative of jus cogens. 

The issues relating to global climate change, sustainability of energy resources while meeting the ever increasing energy needs to support economic development and concerns regarding escalating trends in fuel prices, point to the inevitability of nuclear power. Global nuclear renaissance is now a reality.

India which constitutes one-sixth of the global population is on a rapid economic growth path. A recent study has revealed that we will need to augment our electricity generation nearly ten-fold in the next four to five decades. This would be a significant fraction of global electricity generation. A large fraction of this energy coming from nuclear power would be of immense benefit, in the context of environment and sustainability concerns, for India as well as for the rest of the world. Nuclear energy is thus an important and inevitable option for India. As a part of realising this objective, we have been pursuing a self-reliant indigenous nuclear power programme. This programme is designed to realise our long term energy requirements utilising our vast thorium resources. This is of crucial importance to us as our uranium resources are modest.

We look forward to a rapid growth in nuclear power generation capacity in India, based on full international civilian nuclear cooperation, as we continue our efforts to develop appropriate indigenous technologies towards realisation of the ultimate goal of large-scale utilisation of thorium for energy production not only in the form of electricity but also as hydrogen. We expect that the unique case of India as a responsible country with advanced nuclear technologies developed in a self-reliant manner, its large scale energy requirements which have ramifications in terms of protecting the global climate, ensuring sustainability of energy resources and restraining escalating spiral of fuel prices, its impeccable record in terms of non-proliferation of WMD and related technologies and adherence to all its international commitments would, by example, contribute to finally extinguishing restrictive technology regimes. India’s willingness to advance civilian nuclear energy cooperation with international partners is based on the principles of sovereign equality and non-discrimination and consistent with our national policy of maintaining the integrity of our three-stage nuclear energy programme, and ensuring the full autonomy of our nuclear programme.

I would like to highlight some of the recent developments in India. The first 540 MWe pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) unit at Tarapur has commenced commercial operations about 7 months ahead of schedule. Unit 1 of Kakrapar atomic power station has been operating continuously for more than a year. This is an Indian record. We have now embarked on the development of fast breeder reactor (FBR) based second stage of our programme with the start of construction of the 500 MWe prototype fast breeder reactor launched in October last year. The indigenously developed unique plutonium rich mixed carbide fuel used in the fast breeder test reactor (FBTR) has performed extremely well crossing a burn-up of 1,48,000 MWd/t, without a single fuel pin failure. One of the important achievements during the year was closing of the fuel cycle of FBTR. The FBTR fuel discharged at 1,00,000 MWd/t has been successfully reprocessed.  This is the first time that the plutonium rich carbide fuel has been reprocessed anywhere in the world.

Construction of five PHWRs is progressing on schedule. These, along with the two 1000 MWe light water reactors presently under construction at Kudankulam in collaboration with Russian Federation, would contribute 3420 MWe additional carbon free electricity to the Indian grids in about 3 years time.

We have taken up development of sites for new nuclear power units and have commenced work to identify additional sites for further expansion of the programme.

The design of advanced heavy water reactor, an innovative Indian design aimed at moving further on thorium utilisation route, is under regulatory review. We intend to proceed further to take up its construction after the review process is complete.  Work on development of a compact high temperature rector with the aim of producing hydrogen, which could be the most important energy carrier in the future as well as development of accelerator driven systems that could sustain growth with thorium systems and enable incineration of long lived radioactive wastes is progressing well.  The development of laser-based uranium-233 clean-up system, a crucial elements in thorium utilisation programme, has made significant progress.  The steady state superconducting tokamak (SST-1) would soon see the first plasma shot. We are looking forward to joining the international thermonuclear energy reactor (ITER) project involving nuclear fusion as a full partner.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is playing a vital role in the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology in a safe and secure manner. As in the past, we have been working in close partnership with the agency. Our experts are involved actively in the agency’s international project on innovative nuclear reactors and fuel cycles (INPRO). India has committed itself to carrying out an INPRO joint study for an assessment of an innovative nuclear energy system based on high temperature reactors for the production of hydrogen using the INPRO methodology.

India continued to offer training facilities, fellowships, scientific visits etc and provide the services of our experts to other countries through the agency. In the area of nuclear safety and security, India ratified the convention on nuclear safety and participated in the third review meeting of the contracting parties held in April as an observer. We also took active part in the amendment process to the convention on physical protection of nuclear materials. India, United States and IAEA have established a regional radiological security partnership programme (RRSP). Under this framework, India offered to provide infrastructure and expertise on a regular basis for conducting international training courses in India under the aegis of IAEA, on issues relating to the security of radioactive sources and materials as also for locating orphan radioactive sources in countries which are unable to effectively deal with these and which seek assistance from the IAEA.

Mr President, I wish to conclude by reiterating that the agency is a unique multidisciplinary organisation in the UN family together we should ensure that it grows from strength to strength.