India is the third-largest energy-consuming country in the world, with a rapidly growing population and major developing industries. A significant amount (80 to 85 percent) of India’s needed energy comes from coal and crude oil, which are nonrenewable energy sources and more cost-effective than wind and solar. To acquire cleaner and cheaper energy, India sees nuclear energy as the best available option.

India intends to produce 100 gigawatts of electricity solely from nuclear power by 2047. The uranium deal with Canada, therefore, will help to fuel India’s existing fleet of pressurized heavy-water reactors. However, the uranium supplied under this deal has the potential to aid civilian purposes, but it also can serve military purposes. While keeping the contentious past of India’s uranium misuse, one can predict that India can divert this material to military purposes as it has done by managing to divert plutonium produced in the CIRUS (Canada-India Reactor Utility Services) reactor.

The CIRUS reactor was a 40-megawatt heavy-water research reactor that Canada supplied to India in the 1950s for peaceful purposes. It later produced weapons-grade plutonium for the 1974 “Smiling Buddha” test and enough material for dozens of warheads by the time it shut down in 2010. India’s Dhruva reactor, modelled on CIRUS, has operated since 1985 and continues to produce 20–25 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually outside full safeguards. Canada no longer builds reactors in India and will only supply uranium for safeguarded civil reactors. Still, this agreement can free up India’s domestic uranium holdings for its unsafeguarded, military-linked facilities.

As a signatory to the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Canada was shocked to discover its reactor supported the Indian nuclear weapons program, ending a nuclear relationship with India that had been ongoing since the 1950s. However, Canada quietly restarted a relationship with India in 1989 at the behest of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the CANDU Owners Group.

Although still staunchly opposing proliferation, Canada has relaxed certain restrictions in its relations with India to expand overall trade between the two countries to $30 billion by 2030. This was likely one such response to smooth over numerous diplomatic disputes between the two countries, resulting from allegations that India had been involved in the death of a Canadian citizen. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and Sikh separatist activist, was shot and killed outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia in June 2023. A few months after Nijjar’s assassination, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said agencies were investigating “credible allegations” of possible involvement by Indian government agents.

Despite India and Canada expelling each other’s diplomats after the killing, the new uranium deal shows that economic interests generally outweigh political interests over time. The uranium agreement further illustrates the double standard in many global nuclear arrangements: many large countries often temporarily or permanently suspend or relax the rules for their favored trading partners. Although India is not a signatory to the NPT, it has received support from many states to join the multinational Nuclear Suppliers Group.

India is also pursuing thorium and small-modular reactors (SMRs) to tap its vast thorium reserves in its three-stage nuclear program. While thorium is touted as more proliferation-resistant—thorium itself is non-fissile and only breeds the fissile isotope uranium-233 while in the reactor core— India’s reprocessing expertise and unsafeguarded facilities could extract the material from spent fuel for military users. SMRs will increase risk through mass deployment across Indian sites that have spotty oversight being a non-NPT state; therefore, expanding dual-use options rather than limiting them.

Even though the new uranium agreement between New Delhi and Ottawa aims to enhance India’s energy policy, several challenges and concerns remain regarding stability in South Asia. Namely, India is continuing to develop its nuclear arsenal. The international community should play a role in promoting greater balance: real non-proliferation means the equal and consistent application of non-proliferation policies, not the selective and convenient exemptions granted to India. By fostering greater equality among states, the risks associated with an unstable nuclear order can be reduced.

Musavir Hameed Barech is currently serving as Research Officer at Balochistan Think Tank Network, Quetta, Pakistan. He can be reached at his email: musavirkhan88@gmail.com. The views of the author are his own.

India and Canada Thaw Frosty Relationship to Push Uranium Deal was originally published on Global Security Review.

A driving factor is the rising nuclear threat posed by China, North Korea, and Russia. Such a threat requires effective nuclear deterrence. Another concern is continuing doubts as to whether America’s extended deterrence is reliable in a serious international crisis or a major shooting war.

It is true that when authoritarian states brandish their nuclear arsenals for coercion, repeatedly threatening nuclear attack, any nation would be concerned and look to its guarantor of security for help. Unfortunately, the United States is proving slow to field the kind of arsenal that can not only deter or defeat aggression against itself, but also provide that same capability for almost three dozen allies.

The US is now in a position where it must modernize and expand its own nuclear arsenal and right-size those numbers to sustain dynamic parity with adversaries. Legally and morally, there is indeed an inescapable duty to deter. For Japan and South Korea, that duty will be met by the United States or themselves.

Nuclear participation by America’s allies in Asia would be in direct contravention to US policy, and would violate both the letter and the spirit of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but it would certainly prove understandable. Australia, Japan, and South Korea all signed the treaty, but a voracious and aggressive China and North Korea are proving a real threat to all three states.

Rather than take a position for or against ally nuclear participation, an overview of the main arguments on both sides of the issue are instructive.

Pros

First, recall that Australia, Japan, and South Korea all have a level of experience with the nuclear issue. Japan, of course, faced atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, as Japan up-arms to deter China and North Korea, Tokyo might decide to field its own nuclear weapons.

Southern and western Australia were the sites of over a dozen British nuclear weapon tests between 1952 and 1963. This is a fact too few understand.

South Korea had its own nuclear weapon research and development program during the Cold War, which was abandoned because of American pressure. South Korea does rely on nuclear power for its generation of electricity.

Second, note that these American allies do possess civilian nuclear power industries, sophisticated militaries, sizable economies, and advanced science and technology capabilities. All three countries could build nuclear weapons in relatively short order. On the positive side, the fielding of Australian, Japanese, and South Korean nuclear forces would make aggression far more complicated for China and North Korea.

The inclusion of allied nuclear forces would disperse and diversify the collective nuclear deterrent available for employment and increase the number of targets China or North Korea must strike in a conflict. Allied nuclear participation is also an alternative to overseas nuclear basing agreements, like those that existed during the Cold War. Given the lack of available American weapons, such an arrangement could prove very beneficial.

Lastly, nuclear participation would put an end to the endless debate over the credibility of  American extended deterrence. Rather, the focus would turn to integrating nuclear forces in the event of a conflict.

Cons

There are some well-known arguments for continued nuclear nonproliferation. They include the longtime prohibition in US policy and the NPT prohibition against it. There are also pragmatic concerns.

First, if a country were to withdraw from the NPT, although allowed by Article X, it would create significant diplomatic tensions between the US and the country withdrawing from the treaty. American sanctions could significantly harm the economy of Australia, Japan, or South Korea.

Second, any democratic state pursuing nuclear weapons would undermine Western efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development. Worse, it could open the floodgates of nuclear proliferation among states that are certain to prove less responsible with those weapons.

Third, China might see the pursuit of nuclear weapons by American allies as a sufficient reason to launch a “defensive” nuclear strike. China’s “active defense” strategy clearly supports the use of preventive attacks.

Fourth, the Nuclear Supplier’s Group would end all support to the civilian nuclear programs of Australia, Japan, and/or South Korea. Such a decision would cause great difficulty for power generators.

Conclusion

For Australia, American promises and the continent’s geographic position may prove sufficient to prevent a move to a nuclear weapons program. For Japan and South Korea, the threat is much closer. How these countries evaluate the threat is yet to be determined. They are signaling the United States that they want stronger assurances of American commitment.

Such assurance will prove difficult for the United States for many reasons. Neither China nor North Korea should take for granted that America’s allies will remain under the nuclear umbrella. It is only because of flagrant aggression that South Korea, and most recently, Japan, are even talking about the need for indigenous nuclear forces.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. Views expressed are his own.

The Pros and Cons of Nuclear Participation in the Pacific was originally published on Global Security Review.