Nuclear power, The Economist declared in 2001, is “more likely to be remembered as too
costly to matter”, very much in contrast to the 1954 prediction by early advocates that atomic
electricity would be “too cheap to meter”. But, in recent years, there has been much talk
about a revival of nuclear energy as a means of reducing the global production of fossil
fuels. As a forthcoming book by one of the authors will show, this is not a credible solution for
dealing with the problem of climate change. Within the time frame that is relevant to meeting
the emission targets set by climate scientists, expanding nuclear energy sufficiently to make
a significant dent in carbon emissions is simply infeasible. Nevertheless, the opening
provided by climate change concerns has been exploited by the global nuclear industry to
get government support for new reactor construction, much of this in Asia.
If history is any guide, it is more than likely that this expansion of nuclear capabilities will also
lead to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Right after the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US Report on the International Control of Atomic
Energy from 1946 explicitly pointed out: “the development of atomic energy for peaceful
purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course
interchangeable and interdependent.” Nearly 80 years after that report, this fundamental fact
has not changed. The best-known example of a civilian nuclear energy programme that
transformed into a nuclear weapons project is of course India.
A ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosion
One landmark in that transformation became apparent 50 years ago. On the morning of May,
18, 1974, All India Radio announced: “At 8:05 a.m. this morning, India successfully
conducted an underground nuclear explosion for peaceful purposes at a carefully chosen
site in western India”. There was much riding on that claim about “peaceful purposes”, which
was very different from how the 1998 tests were announced. In the latter instance, the official
statement from the government explicitly talked about the role of the tests in “a weaponised
nuclear programme”.
One reason for invoking the idea of a peaceful purpose was history. Since Independence,
India had established a reputation as a leader among the non-aligned countries, especially
under the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was very vocal about the dangers
associated with nuclear weapons and had made several proposals for nuclear disarmament
and restraint. This included, most prominently, what eventually became the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty. In a statement to the Lok Sabha in April 1954, he called on the nuclear
weapon states to negotiate: “Some sort of what may be called ‘Standstill Agreement’, in
respect at least, of these explosions…” In 1957, while inaugurating the Apsara reactor in
Trombay, he assured the world that India would never use atomic energy for evil purposes
“whatever might happen and whatever might be the circumstances.” There is little doubt that
Nehru would have considered exploding a nuclear device as the use of atomic energy for an
immoral purpose.
Things started changing soon after his death. On October 4, 1964, nearly two
weeks before the first Chinese nuclear weapon test, Homi Bhabha, the architect of India’s
nuclear programme, declared that India could make an atom bomb within 18 months of a
decision to do so. His advocacy, among other political pressures, led Prime Minister Lal
Bahadur Shastri, to essentially sanction work towards what was called a peaceful nuclear
explosion (PNE). During his speech at the Lok Sabha on November 27, 1964, Shastri
credited Homi Bhabha with convincing him about developing “nuclear devices” to build “big
tunnels” and “wipe out mountains for development parks.”
The momentum set off by that announcement was what finally led to the 1974 explosion.
Coined during the Cold War, the term “peaceful nuclear explosion” was a way for nuclear
weapons laboratories in the United States and the Soviet Union to recast developing
weapons of mass destruction that could kill millions of people as something that had
constructive purposes. That mischaracterisation was borrowed by leaders of India’s Atomic
Energy Commission to dress up their shift from an agency set up to generate cheap
electricity—a goal it has failed at from its inception all the way until today—into one
designing nuclear weapons.
The other reason for terming the test ‘peaceful’ was the source of the plutonium that
exploded. This plutonium was produced in CIRUS, a nuclear reactor supplied by Canada as
part of the Colombo plan; the agreement between the countries required that the
government of India “ensure that the reactor and any products resulting from its use will be
employed for peaceful purposes only.” CIRUS also used heavy water supplied by the US,
again under the condition that the products of the reactor would be put to peaceful use only.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi examines a piece of rock at the nuclear test site in Pokhran on
Dec. 22, 1974. | Photo Credit: AP
Technically, there is no inherent difference between what one does to set off a “peaceful”
nuclear explosive and what one does to explode a nuclear weapon. By terming the explosion
as serving a peaceful purpose, Indian leaders were trying to square that circle.
The US did not buy this interpretation. As a cable from the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence and Research pointed out, as early as 1970, the US embassy in New Delhi had
told the Indian government that the US maintained that “the technology for the construction
of any nuclear explosive device is indistinguishable from the technology involved in a nuclear
explosive weapon” and that “the use of the plutonium for any nuclear explosive device,
whatever the device was intended for, would be incompatible with the guarantee of peaceful
uses.”
Decades later, Canadian leaders avoid acknowledging their role in facilitating what
happened in Pokhran: in October 2022, for example, Canada’s Minister of Natural
Resources claimed “Canada began a legacy of nuclear excellence as the second country
ever to produce nuclear power. Since that time, we have been actively involved in promoting
the peaceful use of nuclear energy around the world.”
Endemic secrecy
The 1974 nuclear test epitomised the secrecy that has been endemic to the nuclear
establishment. In Anand Patwardhan’s prize winning documentary, Jang Aur Aman, Raja
Ramanna, the key scientist responsible for the design of the 1974 nuclear test who went on
to becoming the Atomic Energy Commission’s chairman, can be seen explaining how the
test’s planners took care not to put down any decisions on paper so as to avoid leaks.
Knowledge of the plan to detonate the 1974 PNE was restricted to a very small group of toplevel civil servants and nuclear scientists. The same procedure was followed in the case of
the 1998 nuclear weapons tests. Then Defense Minister, George Fernandes, was reportedly
told only “two days before the event” while the three military chiefs were informed on the day
before.
Secrecy has been a historical feature of the nuclear programme, even about aspects that
have little to do with nuclear weapon tests. As early as 1948, when the bill enabling
the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission was tabled at the Constituent Assembly,
Nehru was challenged on the imposition of secrecy. In response to one member of the
Assembly pointing out how in Britain’s Atomic Energy Act 1946, secrecy is restricted only to
defense purposes and demanding to know if in the Indian case secrecy was insisted upon
even for research for peaceful purposes, Nehru publicly admitted: “I do not know how to
distinguish between the two [peaceful and military uses of atomic energy].”
Secrecy has more than one benefit. It was quickly realised by the nuclear babus that a veil of
official secrecy has institutional advantages as well, in particular the containing of adverse
information, whether about nuclear explosives or setbacks in the “civilian” nuclear energy
system. And this is true elsewhere as well. Analyst and disarmament activist Andrew
Lichterman has argued that in states with nuclear technology, the “powerful tools of
nationalism and ‘national security’ secrecy can be used to facilitate the extraction of wealth
from the rest of society and prevent scrutiny of national nuclear enterprises that whether in
first generation nuclear powers or post-colonial states have been rife with technical
problems, corruption, and widespread, intractable environmental impacts”. For citizens, then,
the state’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy results in diminished
democracy.
Social movements
Like any techno-political event, the 1974 PNE had a number of consequences. Many have
written about the international sanctions against India. But what might be even more
significant are the social movements against the government’s nuclear policies and projects
that became far more common after the test. Since then, there has been significant
opposition, including some successful ones, to every new nuclear reactor and uranium
mining project that has been planned or constructed.
Among the more sustained of these movements was the one against the Kaiga reactors in
Karnataka, which became the first to mount a legal challenge in the country against a
nuclear power project when the Samaj Parivartana Samudaya, a grassroots group from
Dharwad, filed a public interest litigation case that went up to the Supreme Court. In May
1993, the Supreme Court issued a lukewarm directive requesting the nuclear establishment
to “take cognizance of…. the petitions submitted on the question of re-siting the Kaiga plant.”
Following the test, also, a number of critical scholars and journalists started closely
examining the nuclear programme. Praful Bidwai and Dhirendra Sharma, to name the two
most prominent of those, were instrumental in publicly highlighting the gap between official
claims and the actual performance of the nuclear programme. Of particular importance are
Bidwai’s 1978 article in Business India titled ‘Nuclear Power in India—A white elephant?’ and
Sharma’s 1983 book India’s Nuclear Estate. Those and other writings painted a damning
picture of a secretive and largely unaccountable government programme with a massive
budget that claimed indigeneity and self-reliance but was heavily dependent on external
technology transfers.
Other activists have focused their attention on the numerous local communities that suffer
injury due to the everyday workings of the nuclear programme. Injuries include toxic radiation
exposure and forced displacement for the purpose of building new reactor complexes. These
“atomic publics” have only grown in number and scale since that time. The victims of nuclear
power, in other words, are not only those who suffer the direct impact of a bomb or explosion.
Numerous communities that have been made marginal and silenced by the “slow violence”
that is endemic to the everyday functioning of an unwelcome nuclear programme. Such
social movements are our chief hope for a future free from the nuclear danger. At the dawn of
the atomic age, Albert Einstein explained the basic predicament thus: “Through the release of
atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since
prehistoric man’s discovery of fire. This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the
outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms” and went on to explain “there is no possibility of
control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the
world.” That is as true today as it was in 1947.
Itty Abrahamis a professor in Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in
Society, and the author of The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the
Postcolonial State.
M.V. Ramana is professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at
the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Canada, and
the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India and the forthcoming
Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.