Daniel Cassman

March 17, 2009   |   Print   |   Back to Library   |   

Nuclear Technology Transfers: An analysis of their effectiveness in India

Introduction

It is a well-established but often overlooked fact that the Manhattan Project took the shortest time to build a nuclear bomb of any nuclear weapons program. Despite the dissemination of nuclear knowledge and technological advances over the past sixty years, every other nuclear weapons program has taken at least twice as long.1 There could be a number of reasons for this anomaly; for example, the scientists at Los Alamos were some of the most brilliant the world has ever seen, and the United States invested incredible human and economic resources in the program. But these explanations do not tell the whole story. The Soviet program—which also included brilliant scientists and even had access to an American design—took six years to the Manhattan Project’s three.

Another important factor that may help explain the difficulties experienced in so many nuclear programs is the high requirement for tacit knowledge in nuclear technology. MacKenzie and Spinardi (1995) define tacit knowledge as knowledge that “has not been . . . formulated explicitly, and, therefore, cannot effectively be stored or transferred entirely by impersonal means.”2 Nuclear devices in particular demand a high degree of tacit knowledge. Both the relatively simple gun-type uranium bomb and the implosion-type plutonium bomb require tacit knowledge of (among other things) gun or explosive design and refining uranium or casting plutonium.3 Tacit knowledge may help to explain the lengths of post-Manhattan Project nuclear programs. If it is difficult to transfer some nuclear knowledge without direct mentorship, then other programs had to reinvent that knowledge themselves despite the spread of nuclear technology. As a result, obtaining plans, blueprints, or even parts of a nuclear device may have a limited impact on a country’s ability to build the device. Relying on such designs may actually slow or confuse the process of creating a nuclear device.4

One way to test this claim is to examine the history of nuclear technology transfers from one country to another. If the claim about tacit knowledge is correct, then a country that imports nuclear technology should be reliant on foreign sources for assistance in building and maintaining its nuclear infrastructure. For both peaceful and military applications, foreign technological assistance should translate poorly into indigenous nuclear capability. For the purposes of this paper, I use the words “technology” and “transfer” to refer to objects, such as blueprints, components or complete nuclear devices—the explicit aspects of nuclear knowledge. I use “knowledge” and “mentorship” to refer to the tacit aspects of nuclear knowledge. The history of nuclear technology contains many examples of technology transfers, secret and public, legal and illicit. My contention is that transferring nuclear technology from one country to another is ineffective in improving the receiving country’s indigenous nuclear capabilities.

To evaluate this claim, I examine the history of India’s nuclear program. Since little information is publicly available on the specifics of nuclear weapons technology transfers, I focus primarily on the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology and include information on nuclear weapons wherever it is available. India received assistance for its nuclear program from a number of sources during the first two decades of its nuclear program. However, when India’s suppliers withdrew support, India found itself unable to use the foreign technology effectively and had to rebuild its nuclear capability indigenously. India made key breakthroughs with indigenous research and developed an indigenous program during a period when it received little foreign assistance. India’s progress in developing nuclear technology (both peaceful and military) does not correlate with the foreign assistance India received, indicating that such assistance is of limited value.

1954 - 1965: Bhaba and the Search for Assistance from Abroad

During the period between 1954 and 1965, India seriously began developing its nuclear program. It received generous foreign assistance, mostly in the form of nuclear reactors, from Britain, Canada, and the United States. Despite the technology transfers, however, India developed remarkably little indigenous nuclear capability during this period.

In November of 1954, Homi Bhaba, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) outlined a plan for the development of India’s nuclear infrastructure. The plan involved three stages and focused on Indian nuclear self-sufficiency. In the first phase, India would build nuclear plants that ran on natural uranium with Canadian help. The second two stages were designed to produce plutonium reactors that could run on the byproducts of the stage one reactors and breeder reactors that generated uranium-233. This focus on fuel generation was supposed to overcome India’s lack of uranium reserves.5 The central focus of Bhaba’s plan was Indian self-sufficiency, which underscores India’s inability to develop indigenous nuclear capability while it received nuclear technology transfers.

Beginning in 1955, India started importing nuclear technology. The Apsara reactor, which went critical in 1956, was based on British designs and burned imported enriched uranium.6 Apsara did provide Indian scientists with experience maintaining reactors, but “the AEC was not much closer to developing indigenous capacity for building a nuclear power reactor.”7 Importing the British design meant that Indian scientists had learned much less about building nuclear reactors than they might have had they designed the reactor themselves. Work also began on the Canadian-Indian Reactor, U.S. (CIRUS). Canada built the reactor, and Indian technicians created the fuel rods. The reactor was operational in 1960, and it generated large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.8

The United States also assisted India in the early stages of its nuclear development. In 1958, India began work on the Phoenix plutonium extraction plant. It was based on the American Purex plutonium extraction technique, which had been declassified as part of the short-lived Atoms for Peace effort.9 An American firm provided blueprints, though Indian engineers modified the plans. The United States also constructed two light water reactors at Tarapur in 1961.10 In 1964, India produced its first weapons-grade plutonium using plutonium from the CIRUS reactor reprocessed at Phoenix.11

There is no doubt that foreign assistance was critical for India’s acquisition of nuclear power and fissile materials. Encouraged by this success, Bhaba told an American diplomat in 1965 that India could produce a nuclear explosive in eighteen months, or in six months with an American blueprint.12 Bhaba boasted of India’s indigenous capability, pointing to the Trombay plutonium reprocessing plant, which employed 1,550 scientists and 7,000 engineers. He called Trombay “the largest scientific and technical institution in the country” and claimed that it was based on indigenous “design and construction”.13 Had Bhaba been correct, then his evidence would suggest that foreign assistance contributed greatly to India’s indigenous nuclear capability. However, Bhaba’s assessment of India’s nuclear program was entirely inaccurate.

Bhaba intensely exaggerated both India’s peaceful nuclear technology capabilities and its progress towards an explosive. In 1965, the plant manager at Trombay reported that the facility was “wholly dependent on the availability and utilization of fittings and supplies from the USA or elsewhere. In fact the plant is now down for a month or two awaiting foreign parts and supplies.”14 Similarly, Bhaba overstated India’s capability to build a nuclear explosive. A few years earlier, the United States had considered helping India produce a nuclear explosion before China. However, the plan was scrapped in part because India would require “considerable technical assistance.”15 After the 1964 Chinese test, the United States again considered helping India, this time by providing a Plowshare nuclear device that India could detonate as if Indian scientists had built it.16 Again the plans were canceled, this time because “all her neighbors would know and claim that India had not developed such a sophisticated device . . . India’s own capabilities for Plowshare and its application are rather long-term.”17

The status of India’s nuclear program in 1965 demonstrates two key points about the transfer of nuclear technology. First, despite ample foreign assistance in the form of four reactors and a plutonium extraction plant, India had very limited indigenous peaceful nuclear capability. Trombay’s reliance on foreign parts and fittings—and its shutdown due to their absence—demonstrates that India was in no position to develop the nuclear fuel cycle on its own. Second, the transfer of nuclear knowledge to India had not generated progress towards a nuclear explosive. Bhaba’s boasts notwithstanding, the United States had determined that helping India produce a nuclear explosive in such a short time was unfeasible, and India’s neighbors knew that India was not capable of producing such a device. India’s attempts to produce a nuclear explosive over the next decade would confirm that India was not close to achieving a nuclear explosion in 1965. Despite Bhaba’s heavy emphasis on self-sufficiency, India failed to produce a native nuclear capability. This failure was a result of technological imports that prevented Indian scientists and engineers from learning each step of designing, building, and maintaining nuclear devices and facilities.

1965 - 1974: Towards a Peaceful Nuclear Explosive

From 1965 to 1974, India actively pursued a nuclear explosive. Foreign nuclear assistance continued to follow to India during this period, but India’s indigenous nuclear capacity was still constrained by its technology imports.

It was in 1965 that Indian scientists first began trying to design a nuclear explosive.18 In 1967, the new AEC chairman Vikram Sarabhai stopped authorized development of nuclear explosives.19 However, Indian nuclear scientists continued their work without official authorization. Indeed Perkovich (1999) writes that, in early 1968, “Scientists at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre initiated the most concerted effort yet to develop nuclear explosives.”20 It was a difficult problem; despite foreign assistance and Bhaba’s claims, India did not have the technological background necessary to make nuclear explosives.

Foreign assistance continued during the years leading up to India’s first nuclear explosion. In 1966, the United States, Canada, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreed to supply plutonium to India. Canada also contracted with India to design and build the RAPS-II reactor at Rajasthan.21 These projects continued through the date of the explosion.

India made two major breakthroughs over the next few years prompted by indigenous research. First, Rajagopala Chidambaram derived the equation of state of plutonium. He did not have much to work with—there was “very little known in the open literature” about the subject.22 Second was the indigenously constructed Purnima reactor. Purnima was small reactor of unique Indian design created to determine the fast fission cross-section of plutonium-239. Nuclear weapons states had published fast fission cross-section data, but Indian scientists feared that the data were misinformation, so they built the Purnima reactor to verify the data themselves.23 The decision to design and build a complex reactor to verify readily available information further emphasizes the importance of developing tacit knowledge for nuclear technology. Doing the experiments themselves ensured Indian scientists that their data was right, even though they could have imported the research more cheaply and easily.

As India drew closer to a nuclear explosive capability, it encountered more difficulties. Indian scientists realized that for India to attain a nuclear arsenal, it would need to increase its heavy water production so it could produce more plutonium. That process required “the overcoming of technological hurdles that, as it turned out, India would find it exceedingly difficult to do.”24 Another problem involved casting polonium for the neutron initiator. The polonium needed to be arrayed so that it would mix with beryllium at exactly the right time. An AEC official reported that “everything we used to array the polonium got chewed up . . . finally we made it work.”25 India’s problems with casting polonium are an excellent example of the difficulty of transferring tacit knowledge. Casting polonium was a process that required significant amounts of hands-on trial and error—it was a process that India needed to develop indigenously.

In 1974, India detonated a “peaceful nuclear explosion” (PNE). In 1965, Bhaba had estimated that India could produce an explosion in a year and a half. It had taken nine years, despite the nuclear technology lavished upon India by America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This assistance had certainly helped in terms of fissile material production; the reactors and reprocessing facilities provided to India could have produced enough plutonium for an explosive by June of 1965 and enough for a small stockpile by 1967.26 Nevertheless, India found it difficult to convert the foreign-supplied technology to an indigenous capability. India’s ability to produce and maintain its own nuclear facilities was severely limited, as the international response to the PNE would demonstrate over the next few years. Key elements of the explosive device had to be developed independent of foreign assistance, for example Chidambaram’s derivation of the equation of state of plutonium, the research on fast fission cross-section data at Purnima, and casting polonium arrays. India’s development of a nuclear explosive demonstrates the necessity of indigenous technological development and the limited value of technology transfers.

An Indigenous Nuclear Program (1974 - 1988)

After 1974, most of India’s nuclear technology imports ceased abruptly. The cessation of foreign assistance was a disaster for the Indian nuclear establishment, which was incapable of operating or maintaining the technology it had imported. India had to build indigenously all the tacit knowledge it had bypassed via importation. Though it took over a decade, India succeeded admirably, achieving the most advanced nuclear capabilities of any developing nation.

The years following India’s PNE were marked by an international tightening of nonproliferation controls, some of which was a directly response to the explosion. Immediately after the detonation, Canada froze all assistance to India on the Rajasthan II reactor and the Kota heavy-water plant.27 The United States cut off some of its exports to India, and prompted other nations to agree not to export certain nuclear technologies to India.28 Even with Canadian help, Indian nuclear scientists and engineers had had severe difficulties building and operating heavy-water plants; once the Canadians suspended their support, their difficulties grew much worse.29 By 1980, India’s heavy-water plants were at least five years behind schedule, construction of new reactors was also moving slowly, and a dangerous accident occurred at the Tarapur II reactor just days after a leading scientist declared facility completely safe.30 Despite a large budget for nuclear power projects, nuclear plants at Tarapur and Rajasthan operated at 54 percent capacity in 1981, and they shut down frequently..31 Part of the problem was faulty Canadian designs and components for the RAPS-I reactor..32 The state of India’s nuclear establishment in the early 1980s demonstrates that India was unable to operate its imported nuclear technology efficiently. India’s difficulties had grown worse since the end of foreign support, revealing that the transfers of nuclear technology to India had helped build at best a limited indigenous nuclear capability.

During the same period, India’s perceptions of Pakistan also prompted India to improve its nuclear capabilities. Most observers at the time (both in India and in the United States) believed Pakistan was pursuing a nuclear weapon.33 This belief prompted a growing push for a weapons program and highlighted the need to build up India’s civilian nuclear program, which was not producing enough weapons-grade plutonium to keep up with Pakistan.34 India was forced to develop a truly indigenous nuclear establishment, something it had not needed to do before the 1974 PNE.

Work began on a nuclear weapon, and by 1982, Indian engineers had designed a nuclear explosive that weighed around 200 kilograms. This lighter explosive was much more suited to weapons than the 1,000-kilogram device detonated in 1974.35 The program was still struggling with the cancellation of technology transfers, as the United States remained committed to a policy not to supply India with any technology that would help the bomb program.36 Thus, India was forced to improve its nuclear capacity independent of foreign assistance.

India started indigenizing its nuclear capabilities with earnest, first with two nuclear reactors at the Madras Atomic Power Station (known as MAPS-1 & 2). The MAPS reactors were based on the Canadian RAPS units, but Indian engineers significantly improved the old Canadian designs.37 The first MAPS reactor came online in 1984 and the second in 1986. These were no doubt important successes, but both reactors soon experienced structural failures and were de-rated for safety reasons.38 The MAPS reactors demonstrate the trial and error necessary to get nuclear technology right. After a decade of struggling with the RAPS reactors without Canadian assistance, Indian scientists managed to design some important improvements to the reactors. However, perhaps because they had not developed the tacit knowledge involved, the Indians were unable to make the design work properly the first time.

Drawing on their experience with the MAPS reactors, Indian scientists and engineers continued to improve their reactor designs. Two new reactors (NAPS-1 and NAPS-2) were to be installed at the Narora Atomic Power Station, and both NAPS reactors were to have important safety improvements over previous versions.39 NAPS-1 came online in 1991 and NAPS-2 in 1992.

Meanwhile, the Indian nuclear establishment was also working on a Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR), a key part of the final stage of the plan Bhaba had outlined in 1954. The French had discussed collaborating with India on the project as early as 1968, but the French withdrew their support after the PNE, with construction still in the very early stages.40 The technological requirements of the FBTR—including higher operating temperatures and more complex equipment than other reactors—presented a serious challenge for the Indian nuclear establishment in the absence of foreign support or imports.41 After eleven years of “coordinated national effort” India managed to bring the reactor online in 1985, but it was shut down soon thereafter due to a fuel handling accident. Indian engineers managed to design and build the tools necessary to fix the reactor, and it was running again in 1989.42 American analysts estimated that the reactor was eighty percent indigenously built, and it was a major achievement; India was only the seventh nation in the world to deploy a fast breeder.43

As India improved its peaceful nuclear infrastructure, its scientists were also continuing their work on a nuclear weapon. These efforts drew almost entirely on native resources, with two exceptions. First, India still lacked the capacity to produce enough heavy water for its plutonium-generating reactors. To procure enough heavy water, India smuggled Chinese heavy water into the country through a German intermediary.44 Second, India needed beryllium for a neutron reflector around the plutonium core of the bomb, which would increase the yield. India possessed beryllium reserves but found that buying German beryllium was “simpler and quicker” than developing the infrastructure necessary to extract its own reserves.45 These examples are noted for completeness, but they had little effect on India’s technological capabilities, as India already had the technology necessary to utilize the heavy water, and it developed the technology to use the beryllium indigenously. Importing raw materials to use in conjunction with indigenous technology should not be confused with a technological transfer. After overcoming these obstacles, India managed to build a nuclear weapon around 1988.46

India’s experience building an indigenous nuclear program during this period outlines the effects of technology transfers very effectively. After 1974, India’s nuclear establishment struggled mightily in the sudden absence of foreign assistance. Technology transfers over the previous twenty years failed to build much of an indigenous capacity. Then, when India first tried to build the 220 MWe MAPS reactors based on Canadian designs, structural failures forced them to de-rate the reactors to 170 MWe. On their second attempt, with the NAPS reactors, India successfully built a pair of 220 MWe reactors. Despite years of technological assistance, India still had to learn the process of building reactors by trial and error. Indeed, as late as 1981, India’s nuclear reactors were less cost-effective than thermal power stations.47 By 1985, India’s reactors were “increasingly viable and economical.”48

The FBTR is another good example of India’s vastly improved nuclear abilities. At first India received assistance from the French on the project, but when that support was withdrawn India at first struggled to continue construction of the reactor. The effort paid off. The result of eleven years of work was that in 1985 India was able to deploy, using almost entirely indigenous production, technology that existed in only a handful of countries in the world. When the FBTR broke down, India was able to produce the tools to fix it. Because of its nuclear development during the period 1974-1988, India today is the “only developing nation to have indigenously developed, demonstrated, and deployed a wide range of scientific capabilities and technologies in the civilian aspects of nuclear science and technology.”49 Ending the importation of nuclear technology prompted India to develop its indigenous nuclear capabilities.

Conclusion

The history of India’s nuclear programs demonstrates the difficulties involved in transferring nuclear technology. During the first ten years that India pursued nuclear technology, it benefited from foreign-built and designed reactors and reprocessing facilities. But the importation of this technology meant that India did not build an indigenous nuclear establishment capable of maintaining or replicating its existing facilities. India continued to receive technology transfers as it pursued a nuclear explosive. However, it still had to make key breakthroughs without help. After India tested a nuclear explosive, most of its foreign assistance evaporated. Over the next seven years, India’s nuclear program suffered dramatically. Decades of technological transfers had failed to produce an indigenous capability. Indian scientists and engineers had difficulty maintaining and expanding their nuclear infrastructure. Beginning in the early 1980s, India had started to develop an indigenous nuclear capability, as evidenced by the progress it made developing the MAPS and NAPS reactors. It was also during this period that India built a nuclear weapon, indicating that foreign assistance was not necessary for India to develop the technology indigenously.

The lessons from India’s experience suggest that importing advanced nuclear technology does little to improve a nation’s long-term nuclear capabilities. This finding implies that illicit nuclear technology networks may be less effective in helping states improve their nuclear programs than previously thought. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that importing nuclear technology retards a nation’s indigenous nuclear capability over a long period. In the short-term, a country might bypass entirely some of the tacit knowledge required to build a nuclear device. For instance, by importing weapons grade fissile material, a nuclear weapons aspirant could potentially skip all of the tacit knowledge required to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium. A crash program to build a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible is a prime example. If the goal were speed and not long-term sustainability of the nuclear program, importing advanced nuclear technology would be very useful.

A number of factors might explain the variances in India’s indigenous nuclear capability. The level of resources devoted to the nuclear programs certainly had an impact, and therefore politicians’ decisions had some influence as well. But these alternatives have little power to explain the general trend that India’s indigenous nuclear capability developed only once technology transfers to India had stopped. The importance of tacit knowledge provides a clear explanation. During the period 1954 to 1974, India built its infrastructure using imported technology. As a result, India’s scientists and engineers failed to develop the tacit knowledge required to build or maintain that technology. When India’s benefactors withdrew their support following the PNE, the nuclear establishment suffered while it sought to learn the tacit knowledge it had bypassed. As India developed this tacit knowledge, its indigenous capabilities steadily improved. It was able to construct more and more complex reactors, and eventually a nuclear weapon. In India’s case, nuclear technological assistance impeded the development of an indigenous nuclear capability.

References
  1. ^ Alexander H. Montgomery and Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Predicting Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 2 (2009): Table 1.
  2. ^ Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 1 (1995): 45.
  3. ^ Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 1 (1995): 55-57.
  4. ^ Alexander Montgomery, “The Politics of Nuclear Proliferation” (Seminar at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, February 23).
  5. ^ Adinarayantampi Gopalakrishnan, “Evolution of the Indian Nuclear Power Program,” Annual Review of Energy & the Environment 27, no. 1 (2002): 372.
  6. ^ Isaac Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (London, Zed Books, 1998), 84-85.
  7. ^ Isaac Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (London, Zed Books, 1998), 86.
  8. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 28.
  9. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 28.
  10. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 52.
  11. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 28.
  12. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 94.
  13. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 64.
  14. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 95.
  15. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 53.
  16. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 96.
  17. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 96.
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  20. ^ George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 139.
  21. ^ “Nuclear Facilities: Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS),” Nuclear Threat Initiative, http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/India/Nuclear/2103_2456.html.
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  48. ^ Adinarayantampi Gopalakrishnan, “Evolution of the Indian Nuclear Power Program,” Annual Review of Energy & the Environment 27, no. 1 (2002): 381.
  49. ^ Adinarayantampi Gopalakrishnan, “Evolution of the Indian Nuclear Power Program,” Annual Review of Energy & the Environment 27, no. 1 (2002): 370.