INDO-FRENCH DEAL GIVES ASSURANCE OF LIFETIME SUPPLY OF NUCLEAR FUEL FOR FRENCH REACTORS

 The Indo-French Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, signed by the two countries in Paris on September 30, 2008, explicitly allows for reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from French nuclear reactors under safeguards, and gives an assurance of lifetime supply of nuclear fuel for these reactors.

 Significantly, the agreement does not explicitly bar the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies, the so-called ENR technologies or Sensitive Nuclear Technologies. Transfer of these to India from the United States requires a special amendment to the India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (the 123 Agreement) and congressional approval of the same.

 French nuclear supplier Areva has been allotted the nuclear project site at Jaitapur in Maharashtra to initially build two power plants based on Areva’s EPR1600 light water reactors. The India-specific waiver of the nuclear transfer guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was issued on September 6, 2008.

 These aspects of the Indo-French agreement have now become clear after the document became public subsequent to its approval by the French Senate (the upper chamber) on October 15, 2009. The agreement still needs the approval of the Parliament’s lower chamber, the National Assembly, for its final ratification. The Assembly, according to the French Embassy’s press information officer Allen Perier, took up the review of the Agreement on October 28. It is hoped that this should happen by the end of November and the agreement should enter into force by the end of the year.

 Now that India has unconditional reprocessing rights from both Russia and France — except for requiring that reprocessing be done under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — the U.S. would seem to be at a disadvantage vis-À-vis these two.