Markob, why don't you just own up to the fact that you don't like nuclear power. Then we could get over this farce about the NPT, which is a red herring.

India has a solid history in not proliferating its nuclear technology, which is more than can be said for a number of other nuclear states, including France.

Supplying India's energy needs will positively affect hundreds of millions of poor people in India.

> If so, why all the fuss about changing provisions of the regime?

Notice that the fuss is about the NSG meeting (agreeing on a waiver to its rules) NOT an NPT review conference... the only regime changing here is an informal arrangement rather than an international treaty..
Not one party to the NPT has claimed that it is being violated by the US-India deal... not a single country...

> think for yourself mate

Perhaps you need to google a little, and educate yourself, before you 'think' up any more of these bizarre ideas. Just wishing a treaty said something doesn't make it so. You can't think away 3 decades of precedence. You can't think up words on a 30 year old document...

> India has thus far refused to agree to place any part of its
> breeder reactor program

It now appears that two fast breeders will be placed in the civilian sector...
From a report in the Indian press yesterday...

"Apart from the 500-MWe prototype, the IGCAR was also establishing four other fast breeder reactors.
While two of them would be located at Kalpakkam.."

The decision to site two fast breeders away from the Kalpakkam or BARC "islands" (no IAEA allowed) suggests strongly that these two will be safeguarded and linked to the safeguarded Plutonium reprocessing plant to be constructed

Daryl Kimball is just recycling the same tired, irrelevant arguments he has made before.

He deliberately confuses a civilian nuclear energy agreement with arms control. The US-India deal is not designed to have either a positive or a negative effect on the Indian nuclear weapons program.

Does he honestly expect the IAEA to have a safeguards agreement with India treating it as a NNWS? One with pursuit clauses allowing entry into complexes where nuclear arms are designed and fabricated? IAEA inspection teams include personnel from many nations. It is in nobody's interests for, say, Brazilian or Korean inspectors to have opportunities to obtain thermonuclear warhead design information. Leakage of weapons information from the IAEA archives has done enough damage. India will not allow the IAEA into facilities (like BARC) where it simply has no business.

Does he think India will accept perpetual safeguards on a reactor if it denied fuel for it? India wants perpetual safeguards for perpetual supplies. The NWS have the option of removing any facility from IAEA purview. As a state with nuclear weapons, is it surprising that India
demands similar rights in the event of fuel cutoff?

And the same deceitful demands for India to cap fissile material production. The US, UK, France and Russia have only ceased fissile material production because they have enough material for their weapons complexes after decades of production. They're not doing anyone a favor here. They're not doing it for world peace. Their fissile stockpiles are simply in surplus.
India, like China, will cap fissile stocks when it judges it has produced enough material for its needs. Just as the US has done.

Well, I see that Johnno is working himself up into a lather posting at 9.30pm and then at 1.30am…Ok, I agree with a previous post and call time out but I must insist on the wording of the NPT treaty text as cited above and note that India is not and cannot be NWS under the NPT and should not be treated as such. Article 3 attributes good behaviour for an exporting state to export to states that accept the safeguards required by the article… An international regime includes rules and norms, formal and otherwise. A regime includes but is not limited to a treaty. This deal is outside the NPT regime as currently formulated and even as you also formulate it, conceding that NSG rules require full scope safeguards. The idea is to limit nuclear weapon states to the declared states and then for these states to work for getting rid of their nukes…not in engaging in nuclear trade with nuclear weapon states outside of the treaty…India’s record on proliferation (in response to another poster) is akin to North Korea’s, i.e. shocking…getting the bomb outside of the NPT framework, (although NK withdrew from the NPT, India was never in) an act for which we almost went to war in the 1990s in regards to NK. Pakistan’s record is bad but Pak is in the game ‘cause of India. In 1974 India walked through its obligations to conduct a nuclear explosion. Frum’s comments on the fast breeder are just what Frum calls them “suggestions”…suggestions just doesn’t cut it. The 1.30 am post just only re-enforces my point about how this treats India as a nuclear weapon state. If this was the Cold War and the USSR pulled a stunt like this then condemnation from Rice et al would be loud and clear. Kimball is not alone...even Ashton Carter, a former US nuclear war planner, has spoken against the deal.

> I see that Johnno is working himself up into a lather posting at 9.30pm and then at 1.30am

I see that elementary geography needs to be added to your remedial education list ... let me give you a hint ... the earth is round .... local time is not the same everywhere ... time zones etc...

Work on the geography after your english comprehension, english composition (argumentative essays and avoiding juvenile ad hominem arguments), basic nuclear physics, history, and geopolitics...

Don't worry.. they'll give you that PhD eventually...

I'm off to Vanuatu... some folk have been praying for cargo..