India's Continuous Nuclear Conundrum

India's path for nuclear plans has been full of many complicated decisions and speed bumps.

In 2008, Bush signed a nuclear deal with India which allowed civilian nuclear trade with India, and

in 2010, France signed a nuclear deal with India to build two reactors in India at a cost of $9.3 billion.

This occurred a few months before India and Japan signed trade deals to boost trade and investment. (this playing a role to counter China's anti-Japanese movement) However, Japan wanted India to commit to ending nuclear tests and India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

One month post-Fukushima, violent protests (one man killed, many injured) rose in areas of India where power plant proposals were being made. (Jaithapur, West India) Many farms and neighborhoods are being taken over and hurting the agricultural and farming economy.

Australia being India's main supplier of Uranium (as well as China), now sees its opportunity to refuse to sell it to them as a means of getting India to sign the NPT. Although India does not disagree with the treaty, they see that it would be unwise to do so because the other countries that haven't signed will have an upper hand. "The issue is, above all, one of strategic common sense: China, which went to war with India in 1962, has nuclear weapons pointed at it, making it irresponsible to sign a treaty that would disarm India unilaterally."


(All information taken from english.aljazeera.net)

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/20111011113454624274.html


-karin..again.