Confronting India’s Nuclear Regulation Challenge - The Diplomat, 23 March 2020

In my last week's column for The Diplomat, I focused on India's continuing nuclear regulation challenge, where I argue that New Delhi needs to pay more attention to this aspect of its nuclear policy.

India plans to increase the share of nuclear power in the overall energy mix by more than three times from the current share by 2021. While India has impressive plans to expand its nuclear sector, it also needs to pay more attention to issues such as regulation of the industry.

For the full essay, click here.



Earlier in March, India’s Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions and Prime Minister’s Office, Dr. Jitendra Singh, publicized this while responding to a question in the Lok Sabha (lower house) of the Indian Parliament. Dr. Singh said that the current installed nuclear power capacity is 6,780 MW, which makes up around 1.84 percent of the total installed capacity of 368,690 MW. He said that the existing capacity of 6,780 MW will be augmented to 22,480 MW by 2031 by undertaking “progressive completion of projects under construction and accorded sanction.”

He added that there will be a capacity addition of 5,300 MW in the next five years, including a 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) being constructed at the Madras Atomic Power Station in Kalpakkam, India and implemented by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd. (BHAVINI). In an earlier debate in the Lok Sabha in June 2019, Singh had said that the installed nuclear power capacity would reach 13,480 MW by 2024-25 with the completion of certain projects.

In a November 2019 debate in the Lok Sabha on India’s nuclear energy target, the government stated that it has instituted several measures for increasing the share of nuclear power in its overall energy matrix, including the “administrative approval and financial sanction” of 10 indigenous 700 MW Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs), with a further two Light Water Reactors (LWRs) to be set up in cooperation with Russia. In addition, India had also set up the nuclear insurance pool (INIP) to deal with private sector concerns about India’s nuclear liability bill. India’s Atomic Energy Commission has approved 10 additional uranium mining projects, and further two related projects will come up in Jharkhand.

While these are important steps, the Modi government has been silent about a related issue: that of nuclear security-related legislation or institutional measures. Nuclear safety and security are particularly important for India given the political instability and security environment that prevails in the region. India rightly acknowledged this even before global attention on the issue following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

India has also streamlined much of its legislative and institutional practices based on the international guidelines and standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). India’s nuclear safety measures have been periodically updated to reflect the changing security concerns. In February 2020, in a statement in the Indian Parliament, Singh reiterated that India “ensures safety of Nuclear Power Plants according to International Standards.”

Nevertheless, India has come under international scrutiny when it comes to its nuclear security standards. This has been the case primarily because India has shied away from openly spelling out its nuclear security policies and practices. Excessive secrecy has actually damaged India’s reputation on this score. Even more importantly, India should take the issue seriously because of its own plans to expand nuclear power generation capacity. This could at some stage also involve private sector participation and it would be better for the government to spell out the rules and regulatory mechanisms.

This is not just a concern expressed by the global nuclear community but also by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), which has been critical of the relationship between India’s current nuclear regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), and the Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). There have been several studies that highlight the need for India to address this is in a more effective manner, so as to strengthen its own security practices but also to improve its international standing.

The government of India has acknowledged the need to address this issue as well. In September 2011, the Manmohan Singh government introduced the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill in an effort to establish a more independent nuclear regulator. However, it was not taken up over the next three years and the bill lapsed. There was expectation that the Modi government would reintroduce the bill and kick-start a debate in the Parliament but there is no sign yet of this happening.

The NSRA Bill is important because it would be a significant improvement over the current AERB regulatory architecture. It would establish a Council of Nuclear Safety (CNS) under the leadership of the prime minister himself. While there are critics of this as well, it is still an important demonstration of the government’s resolve to have a truly independent nuclear regulator. It is important in operational terms as well, in bringing about more stringent auditing practices. In terms of the optics, it would be good that the promoter and regulator of nuclear energy are separated.

This is not difficult for India to do because it has operationalized many of the essential components in ensuring this separation, be it in addressing physical protection, nuclear transportation, or insider threats. But India needs to formalize these changes in a new nuclear legislation in the Parliament so as to strengthen its own credibility and operational practices. India should also take its international reputation seriously in order to strengthen its case with global nonproliferation platforms such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Lastly, India should recognize that no country has a completely fool-proof mechanism and it should not get excessively defensive about its nuclear security policies and practices. More importantly, India has a good record to promote, and a number of developing countries look at India as a model to emulate.

But India’s apparent discomfort in acknowledging its own nuclear security successes and challenges and engaging with the larger global nuclear community can be stifling for New Delhi in beefing up global nuclear security approaches. India must start the NSRA debate in the Parliament as a first step to improve itself. But it also provides a new opportunity for enhancing India’s status now that the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process has come to an end.

Managing Nuclear Risks: The Emerging Technologies Challenge - The Diplomat, May 24, 2019

In the last week's column for The Diplomat, "Managing Nuclear Risks: The Emerging Technologies Challenge", I examined the impact of emerging technologies on nuclear risks that need to be addressed much more directly.

Conversations around nuclear risks and the need for strategic stability have picked up momentum in the run up to the 2020 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. Nuclear risks are changing for the worse because of geopolitical and technological changes, but the latter, in particular, needs to be addressed much more directly.

As far as the geopolitical dynamics are concerned, the shift in the global balance of power equations has meant that rulemaking and enforcement have become the victims of great power politics because both rulemaking and enforcement require some consensus among powers. But a second significant factor should be noted that could also lead to possible breakdown in nuclear deterrence: The impact of new technologies.

Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and hypersonic weapons, among others, are posing new questions to the traditional understanding of stability and deterrence. These emerging technologies are unfortunately not being discussed enough within Track 1 NPT platforms as directly as they should be. It can, however, be argued that these new technologies could increase regional and global nuclear insecurities and therefore it is necessary to discuss this more seriously in order to manage the risks associated with nuclear weapons.

For the full article, click here.



The development of hypersonic weapons could potentially have a big impact on nuclear stability. A key problem here is that such weapons can increase the possibility of surprise attacks because of the difficulty of detecting and countering them. They thus present the possibility of offering a temptation to attack first in the hope of decapitating the enemy leadership or even destroying second-strike nuclear retaliatory capabilities. Even if states do not plan such attacks, the fear that they may do so could drive potential targets to develop riskier nuclear operational plans, such as launch on warning.

Alternatively, it could also spur nations with smaller nuclear arsenals, such as China, to increase the size of their nuclear forces so that at least some survive such a first strike. This could lead to a destabilizing arms race spiral between key great powers, all of whom are working on developing these weapons.

An additional problem is that hypersonic weapons potentially blur the line between conventional and nuclear weapons, which will also increase instability because of the discrimination problem. It is more stable if early warning systems can clearly distinguish between a nuclear attack and a conventional one. If the same system can undertake both conventional strikes and nuclear attacks, a prudent defense system will have to assume that any attack it detects is a nuclear attack because the risks of assuming the alternative will be too high. Though this is a problem that is not confined to hypersonic weapons, the combination of the risk of a first strike combined with the discrimination problem makes the danger particularly acute.

Another evolving technology is Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), which also has similar problems. Nuclear deterrence and stability are based on mutual vulnerability, and BMDs threaten to undo this key source of stability, with unpredictable consequences. This is not a new problem of course: the fear that one side might develop a strategic technological advantage was one reason for the Cold War U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty. It might be time to revisit the possibility of developing a wider ABM treaty-like instrument in order to avoid a larger technology arms race as ballistic missile defense technologies slowly improve.

A third area is outer space, which Russia has been raising repeatedly in the NPT platforms. The increasing use of and reliance on space for national security missions has led states to develop counter-space capabilities to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy space systems. These include both kinetic and non-kinetic means.

Counter-space capabilities such as anti-satellites (ASAT) add an inherently destabilizing dimension to outer space security. But these are also a problem for nuclear stability because nuclear early warning as well as command and control systems depend on space-based assets far more today than a few decades ago. While these are not new capabilities – the United States and Soviet Union had conducted several ASAT tests in the 1970s and 1980s – the greater reliance on space assets increases nuclear vulnerabilities.

The NPT faces myriad problems, of course, and many will be discussed in the coming deliberations. But these emerging technologies represent a danger that should not be minimized in the debates about how much has been achieved, whether all sides have lived up to their end of the NPT bargain (especially nuclear weapons states), and how to proceed forward.