http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704508904575192793726876892.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopBucket#articleTabs%3Darticle * OPINION INDIA
* APRIL 19, 2010, 10:46 A.M. ET
Insuring India's Nuclear Power
By HENRY SOKOLSKI
New Delhi wants to repay Washington for lifting an international civilian nuclear suppliers' embargo on nuclear exports to India by making it possible for American firms to bid on Indian nuclear power plant construction projects. There is only one problem: Indians are now reluctant to pony up the level of nuclear-accident immunity that American nuclear vendors are demanding before they'll bid.
It's easy to understand why. On Dec. 2, 1984, thousands of Indians were killed when a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal accidentally released toxins that poisoned half a million people. Some casualty estimates exceed 20,000 dead. The Indian government demanded $3.3 billion in damages from the U.S.-based company, but eventually settled for just $470 million. Civil and criminal cases are still on file in the Manhattan U.S. District Court. A quarter century later, no one has yet been prosecuted.
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Under U.S. nuclear accident liability laws, U.S. nuclear operators are forced to buy roughly $300 million in coverage and could be forced to pay another $10 billion for offsite damages for any single nuclear accident in the U.S. Why then, ask opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist Party leaders, does the proposed Indian legislation only force Indian nuclear operators to pay $100 million? Does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh believe that an Indian life is worth only one one-hundredth of an American life? If nuclear power is as safe as its backers claim, why should the Indian government impose any liability caps on nuclear accident insurance, much less caps that are so low?
Indeed, Prakash Karat, secretary of the Communist Part of India, is curious why the proposed nuclear liability limits are necessary at all. He notes that other nuclear suppliers, including France and Russia, don't require them. These states are willing to back their reactor exports with their governments' full faith and sovereign credit. Satisfying the U.S. demands, then, comes at a high cost: Presumably, passage of the bill would force Indians legally to forego not only suing U.S. nuclear vendors for offsite damages, but would cut off their legal right to the unlimited coverage other nuclear suppliers would otherwise afford.
It's hard to figure why Indians should pay this price when they already may have gained as much from the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal as they ever will. The international embargo previously imposed on civilian nuclear fuels and technologies to India was lifted as a condition for bringing the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear cooperative agreement into force. Now India has unlimited access to cheap uranium fuel along with foreign nuclear hardware and expertise. Under a separate understanding just initialed between India and the U.S., India can chemically separate nuclear weapons-usable plutonium from U.S. reactor fuels, and may be able to continue to do so even if it decides to resume nuclear testing. Even if India never implements this agreement, it sets a precedent for all other nuclear suppliers that is quite advantageous to India.
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