There seems little evidence to support your, par for the course concerns Jim.
India stands almost alone in the development of Thorium power, which as you know Jim, has no weapons spin off whatsoever!
Moreover, they have a sizable nuclear weapons inventory now!
More than enough to act as the intended deterrent!
Why would they need more of these extremely costly items Jim?
Who threatens them?
Pakistan, China?
Some actual evidence, would make a pleasant change from the endless rhetorical suppositions and what ifs, you've provided, with your almost inevitable anti development stance? Suppository of all wisdom?
If your real concern here is industrial development, and a subsequent decrease in Indian poverty, you should say so.
And if overpopulation is your real concern here Jim, that's most easily addressed by mass education, but particularly of the girls; and the very economic growth you seem hell bent on preventing, if you can, with classic fomented suspicion and subsequent internal division!?
India has plenty of very smart successful environmental activists!
Who seem to be compelling change and who just don't need the interference campaign you seem to be running, and where as usual, the foreign do-gooders/dog whistlers, seem as always, to be doing more harm than good.
Rhrosty.

Hi Jim

Your arguments and the connections are quite valid. However they are weakened by India's legitimacy (time reliant legal, regulatory and political) arguments.

What right has India to have the same status as the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5 - US, UK, France, Russia, China)? The P5 gave themselves (in 1967-68) under narrow self-interest, the exclusive status under the NPT to be legal nuclear weapon owning states. To justify their legal weapon owning status the P5 used a convenient nuclear weapons test before 1967 criterion to exclude other weaker non-P5 countries.

India claims that it was an accident of history (India as a dominion of the UK in the critical UNSC deciding year of 1945) that prevented India from being part of a P6. With its 1974 nuclear test India missed the NPT weapon test cut-off date by 7 years.

The US–India Civil Nuclear Agreement on July 18, 2005 effectivily lifted sanctions against India - in so doing giving India the right to have nuclear weapons while also not signing the NPT.

Australia has now followed the US lead - as have Russia, UK and France and many other countries - in conducting nuclear commerce (including Uranium sales) with India.

As the P5 have not kept their promise under the NPT of fully disarming India argues it does not have to be a victim of the NPT's exclusive P5 and weapon test cutoff rules.

Regards

Pete
see http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/australia-to-export-uranium-to-india.html

Once again we have the tired old argument that by selling uranium to India, even with safeguards, we will be freeing up uranium from elsewhere to be used in weapons development. It is widely recognised in New Delhi that India needs a nuclear weapons deterrent bordering as it does, two nuclear-armed nations, Pakistan and China. It also needs nuclear power in part to fuel the ambitious economic expansion blueprint laid out by its new Government, led by Narendra Modi. Having spoken to many officials in the Indian capital, I am aware of the depth of good feeling towards Australia that exists here. There is a desire for closer ties between the two democracies which I hope will be strengthened when Modi visits Australia for the G20. Denying India access to Australia's uranium at the behest of a lobby that would like to see nuclear power done away with altogether, would be an unnecessary irritant to that relationship.

Despite what Green has been saying for a couple of decades now, reality has taken a different path. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/09/25/the-nuclear-weapons-states-who-has-them-and-how-many/ There is clearly no nexus between nuclear power and atomic weapons.

Poor Jim Green. What a waste of a career.

Same old, same old. The left haters get all gooey over China and oppose the Democracy. With a long land border with China along its expansionist frontier of Tibet they need adequate defence. As predicted in the 80's China IS trying to do a Tibet in the seas between Vietnam and Philippines, Nepal is next.

Is uranium about to become redundant ?

http://fcnp.com/2014/10/09/the-peak-oil-crisis-cold-fusion-a-new-report/

Now this will be interesting.