Illustration: Alex Nabaum

For a developing country, India has pursued a uniquely ambitious and far-reaching nuclear technology program. During the last six decades, it has developed expertise and facilities covering the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and milling to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. India also operates a pilot fast breeder reactor, one of seven countries to have built one, and it has started constructing an industrial-scale breeder.

The Indian government's long-held vision is that nuclear energy—and especially breeders, which are designed to produce more fresh fuel than they consume—will play a large part in the country's ambition of becoming energy-independent by the year 2030. But progress has fallen far short of that goal. Early on, the country's top nuclear officials forecast that by 1987 nuclear energy would generate 20 to 25 gigawatts of electricity. Later estimates inflated that figure to 43.5 GW by the year 2000. Today, India's 17 reactors generate 4.1 GW, a mere 3 percent of the country's total electricity-generating capacity. Although India is the fifth-largest producer of electricity in the world, in nuclear generation capacity it is not even among the top 15 countries. Despite 60 years of development and government support, India's nuclear establishment has failed to produce either the world-class technology or the large quantity of cheap electricity that it once promised.

One important factor that has impeded India's nuclear-energy ambitions is its preoccupation with nuclear weapons. When the country detonated its first nuclear explosive in 1974, it caught the existing nuclear powers by surprise. Up until then, Western countries had freely shared their nuclear technology and expertise with India. Afterward, the rest of the world largely disengaged from India's nuclear program, despite New Delhi's claims that the test's goals were “peaceful.” Without access to international technology and collaborations, its plans to expand atomic energy went awry, as project after project suffered setbacks.

In spite of its status as nuclear outcast, India's determination to move ahead did not abate. In 1998, the world discovered why, when a set of nuclear tests at Pokhran, in northwest India, abruptly and officially ended the country's public stance of pretending to pursue only peaceful uses of nuclear technology. This time around, though, the outcome was decidedly different. Within two years of the tests, the United States decided to re-engage with New Delhi, laying the groundwork for strategic military partnerships. Now, nine years after the Pokhran tests, India and the United States are trying to embark on a nuclear collaboration of unprecedented scope.

The two countries signed a statement in July 2005 that commits the United States to “work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation” and “adjust international regimes to enable...[nuclear] trade” with India, including letting the country import much-needed uranium. In exchange, India will separate its nuclear facilities into civilian and military sites and open up the civilian sites to international inspection. “What we are attempting today is to put in place new international arrangements that would overturn three decades of iniquitous restrictions,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his Parliament in August 2006.

Proponents of the deal have lauded it for, among other things, helping to move India away from fossil fuels and helping to stem the proliferation of nuclear materials and warheads. In fact, though, the pact will likely decrease India's reliance on coal and gas by only a nominal amount. What's more, the arrangement is unlikely to provide the much-needed boost to India's languid civilian nuclear program or fix the myriad problems that hobble it. Most troubling, the U.S.-India deal, which must still be approved by various international organizations, would in all likelihood free up India's uranium resources for military ends, facilitate the building of even more nuclear weapons and, possibly, lead to greater instability in South Asia.