An Indian nuclear expert said India is not likely to commit much in terms of enhancing nuclear security at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, considering that in its view the U.S. and Russia are not doing enough to subsequently reduce nuclear materials.

“I don’t think it’s going to do very much at this summit. Since the last summit, they have started an international center but that’s easy,” Ramamurti Rajaraman, co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, told The Korea Herald. The IPFM is a group of independent nuclear experts which annually releases a global fissile material report.

Relatively new nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan which only have a nuclear weapons’ history of 10-15 years tend not to reveal details of their nuclear development, citing the U.S. and Russia’s secretive behavior when they had only being developing nuclear weapons for 10 years, said Rajaraman, who is also emeritus professor at Jawaharllal Nehru University in India.

“It takes time for (such) countries to develop nuclear confidence. You have to see them in the context of where they are,” he said.

In terms of nuclear safety, however, India may announce a new measure to enhance the independence of regulators of atomic energy reactors, Rajaraman said.

“India’s regulators so far have been part of the nuclear power establishment, so they basically come from the same building. They’re trying to find ways and means of a more independent regulatory mechanism and they may announce it.”

Rajaraman is also vice president of the Indian National Science Academy. He has taught and conducted research in physics for four decades at Cornell University, Stanford University, MIT and CERN, Geneva.

He warned that nuclear terrorism is not a fantasy but a real possibility, citing a huge amount of highly enriched uranium and plutonium possibly lying hidden around the world.

According to the IPFM report, there are an estimated 1,600 tons of HEU and 500 tons of plutonium in the world. It takes only five kilograms to make a nuclear bomb.

The grave concern is that the world still does not know how much nuclear material is hidden, Rajaraman said.

“Securing includes getting hold of all the materials, what is where, so that you will know when something is stolen. This is a very dangerous situation,” he said.

The “quasi-civilian” sectors such as the nuclear submarine sector are also tricky, he said.

Nuclear submarines, while not nuclear weapons, operate on HEU.

Obama’s vision of securing all nuclear material by 2014 is not achievable within just two years, but achieving the goal even within 10 years would be an achievement, he noted.


By Kim Yoon-mi
(yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)