P R O J E C T O N M A N A G I N G T H E AT O M

India’s Nuclear
Safeguards:
Not Fit for Purpose
John Carlson

D I S C U S S I O N PA P E R
JANUARY 2018
Project on Managing the Atom
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School
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www.belfercenter.org/MTA

Statements and views expressed in this report are solely those of the author and do not imply

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and International Affairs.

The author of this report invites liberal use of the information provided in it for educational

purposes, requiring only that the reproduced material clearly cite the source, using:

John Carlson, “India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose,” Discussion Paper (Cambridge,
MA: Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard
Kennedy School, January 2018).

Layout by Casey Campbell

Cover photo: The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at the Kalpakkam Nuclear Complex, India.

Photo Credit: Kirstie Hansen / IAEA

Copyright 2018, President and Fellows of Harvard College

Printed in the United States of America

 P R O J E C T O N M A N A G I N G T H E AT O M

India’s Nuclear
Safeguards:
Not Fit for Purpose
John Carlson

D I S C U S S I O N PA P E R
JANUARY 2018
 Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Alexander Bollfrass, Matthew Bunn,
Martin Malin, Kalman Robertson, Gary Samore, and William Tobey for
their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. The author is grateful to
Casey Campbell for her work on design and layout. The Project on Manag-
ing the Atom thanks the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for financial support during
the preparation of this paper. The views expressed in this report are the
exclusive responsibility of the author.

About the Author

Based in Australia, John Carlson advises the Nuclear Threat Initiative
(NTI) leadership on international nuclear security, safeguards and verifica-
tion, and management of the nuclear fuel cycle. He supports NTI’s efforts
in the Asia-Pacific region on nuclear security and arms reduction, and is
a member of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network. Carlson is a Nonresi-
dent Fellow at the Lowy Institute, a member of the Advisory Council of
the International Luxembourg Forum, and a member of VERTIC’s Inter-
national Verification Consultants Network. Carlson was an official in the
Australian government for more than four decades.

Before retiring from government, Carlson was director general of the

Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office. He was appointed as
chairman of the Standing Advisory Group on Safeguards Implementation
by former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General
Mohammed ElBaradei and served from 2001 to 2006. He also served as
Alternate Governor for Australia on the IAEA Board of Governors.

Carlson was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Com-

mission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and was founding
chair of the Asia-Pacific Safeguards Network. He is a fellow of the Insti-
tute of Nuclear Materials Management and recipient of the Institute’s
Distinguished Service Award. Carlson has written numerous papers and
presentations on nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament and verification
issues. In June 2012 Carlson was awarded the national honor of Member of
the Order of Australia (AM).

ii India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................................................. ii

About the Author................................................................................ ii

Introduction.........................................................................................1

India’s Separation Plan...................................................................... 4

India-IAEA Safeguards Agreement................................................... 5

Safeguarded plutonium can be substituted by unsafeguarded

plutonium of lower isotopic quality........................................................ 5

Safeguarded nuclear material can be used in facilities in the

unsafeguarded program......................................................................... 6

Safeguarded material can be used with unsafeguarded material........ 6

Plutonium produced using safeguarded material in an unsafeguarded

reactor can be exempted from safeguards if the proportion of
safeguarded material is less than 30 percent of the total.................... 6

Inconsistency with the IAEA Statute............................................... 8

Implications for Other States........................................................... 9

Conclusions........................................................................................ 9

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School iii
The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at the
Kalpakkam Nuclear Complex, India. (Kirstie Hansen
Introduction
India’s current safeguards agreement with the International Atom-
ic Energy Agency (IAEA) was concluded in 2009.1 The agreement
was a consequence of the Joint Statement of July 18, 2005 between
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United States Presi-
dent George W. Bush.2 In this statement India conveyed its readi-
ness to “assume the same responsibilities and practices … as other
leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the
United States,” and undertook inter alia to:

• identify and separate civilian and military nuclear facilities and

programs in a phased manner;

• place voluntarily its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA

safeguards.

Prior to the 2009 agreement, India had a number of “item-spe-

cific” safeguards agreements with the IAEA, based on the model
agreement published as IAEA document INFCIRC/66. This is a
pre-NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) model, intended for
states requesting the application of IAEA safeguards to a specif-
ic facility or specific materials. INFCIRC/66 continues to be the
model used where safeguards are applied in non-NPT states.

INFCIRC/66 has unique provisions, not seen in other safeguards

agreements. INFCIRC/66 provides considerable flexibility to move
nuclear material between safeguarded and unsafeguarded facili-
ties. This flexibility may make sense where a state has a number of
civilian facilities, only some of which are required to be safeguard-
ed. However, such flexibility is inappropriate to India’s current cir-

1 IAEA, “Agreement between the Government of India and the International Atomic
Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards to Civilian Nuclear Facilities,” INF-
CIRC/754, May 29, 2009, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/docu-
ments/infcircs/2009/infcirc754.pdf.
2 George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh, “Joint Statement by President George W. Bush
and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India,” White House Press Release, July 18,
2005, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2005-book2/pdf/PPP-2005-book2-doc-
pg1236.pdf.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 1
 cumstances, where India has undertaken to separate civilian and military
facilities and to place civilian facilities under safeguards. India describes
the facilities remaining outside its safeguarded program not as “civilian,”
but rather as “strategic.” It must be assumed this means they are or can
serve a military purpose. In these circumstances a safeguards agreement
that allows nuclear material to move between safeguarded and unsafe-
guarded facilities cannot be considered appropriate—yet this is exactly
what the 2009 agreement does.

Following on the 2005 Joint Statement, the Indian government prepared a

Separation Plan to give effect to its commitment to separate civilian nu-
clear facilities from military facilities. The Separation Plan was presented
to the Indian parliament on May 11, 2006.3 In the Separation Plan India
undertook to significantly increase the facilities under safeguards, extend-
ing safeguards from imported facilities and materials, which were covered
by a series of INFCIRC/66 agreements, to a number of indigenous facilities
which until then had been unsafeguarded. While the Plan does increase
the number of safeguarded facilities in India, a large number of facilities
remain outside safeguards.

Subsequently India and the IAEA commenced negotiations on a safeguards

agreement to reflect the Separation Plan. In these negotiations it was decid-
ed to adopt the INFCIRC/66 model, changing it from an individual facility
agreement to a generic agreement that would apply to all facilities and
materials covered by safeguards. The facilities covered are to be listed in an
Annex to the agreement. The Annex is to include all the facilities that India
designates as “civilian” and agrees to place under permanent safeguards.
The Annex is to be added to as required.

Modifying the item-specific safeguards model to apply to a list of facilities

may have seemed a pragmatic solution, but on reflection it is apparent that
using an old agreement—one that pre-dates the modern IAEA safeguards
system—was a major mistake. Unlike the “voluntary offer” safeguards

3 IAEA, “Communication dated 25 July 2008 received from the Permanent Mission of India concern-
ing a document entitled “Implementation of the India-United States Joint Statement of July 18,
2005: India’s Separation Plan,” INFCIRC/731, July 25, 2008, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/
files/publications/documents/infcircs/2008/infcirc731.pdf.

2 India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

agreements that apply to the NPT nuclear-weapon states,4 which are based
on standard NPT safeguards agreements, the 2009 agreement gives India
flexibility to move safeguarded nuclear material in and out of its unsafe-
guarded, “strategic” nuclear program, and allows safeguarded nuclear
material to be used for the production of unsafeguarded nuclear material.

As a result of this flexibility there is in fact no clear separation between

facilities designated as “civilian” and facilities serving military or strategic
purposes. This situation not only contradicts India’s commitment to sepa-
rate its civilian and military nuclear programs and undermines the funda-
mental purpose of providing assurance of the peaceful use of safeguarded
materials and facilities, it also appears inconsistent with the IAEA’s Statute,
which requires the IAEA to ensure it does not further any military purpose.

Currently the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is considering India’s appli-

cation for membership. NSG members are reportedly discussing member-
ship criteria for states not party to the NPT. These include a requirement
for clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities
from non-civilian nuclear facilities. The NSG is right to be concerned about
dual-use facilities; such facilities do not meet contemporary nonprolifera-
tion standards and can be seen as a strategic threat. Meeting this criterion
would require not only amending India’s Separation Plan but also amend-
ing its IAEA safeguards agreement to remove the loophole that would allow
safeguarded material and facilities to contribute to unsafeguarded activities.

This situation has implications for other non-NPT states, such as Pakistan,
seeking to join the NSG. Not only would such a state need to demonstrate
a clear separation between civilian and non-civilian nuclear programs; in
addition, it would need to apply safeguards to the civilian materials and fa-
cilities to verify they are not being used for military purposes. The current
India-IAEA safeguards agreement is not an appropriate model to apply.

In light of the deficiencies in India’s current Separation Plan, exacerbated

by the problems in the 2009 safeguards agreement, it seems unlikely there
will be consensus within the NSG to admit India, unless these concerns are
addressed. The remainder of this paper details these issues and suggests

4 Based on IAEA model INFCIRC/153.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 3
 steps India could take to advance its case and to avoid setting precedents
that may prove contrary to its interests. The paper also discusses steps
needed to protect the integrity of IAEA safeguards.

India’s Separation Plan

India’s 2006 Separation Plan committed to place under IAEA safeguards 14
out of 22 power reactors then in operation or under construction, together
with nominated upstream and downstream facilities (35 facilities in all).
For the future, facilities would be placed under safeguards if India deter-
mines that they are “civilian.”

The language used in the Separation Plan indicates that close links remain
between India’s civilian and military nuclear programs:

• India will include in the civilian list “only those facilities …that, after sep-
aration, will no longer be engaged in activities of strategic significance”;

• “The overarching criterion would be a judgement whether subjecting a

facility to IAEA safeguards would impact adversely on India’s national
security”;

• “However, a facility will be excluded from the civilian list if it is located

in a larger hub of strategic significance, notwithstanding the fact that it
may not be normally engaged in activities of strategic significance”;

• “A civilian facility would therefore, be one that India has determined

not to be relevant to its strategic programme.”

In effect India has three classes of nuclear facilities: facilities that are
declared as civilian and designated for IAEA safeguards; facilities that are
functionally civilian (such as power reactors) but can be dual-use; and
facilities that appear to be purely military. Facilities not designated for
safeguards include eight out of the 22 power reactors referred to above (all
heavy water power reactors), fast breeder reactors, and enrichment and
reprocessing facilities. All of these facilities can be operated to produce

4 India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

weapon-grade materials. This situation is described in greater detail in
“The Three Overlapping Streams of India’s Nuclear Programs.”5

While it appears India does not consider those facilities placed under safe-
guards to be relevant to the “strategic program,” the relationships between
the civilian safeguarded, dual-use unsafeguarded, and military programs
are opaque. Under the India-IAEA safeguards agreement, civilian facilities
that are unsafeguarded can be transferred into safeguards and out again
on a temporary or “campaign” basis, safeguarded material can be used in
normally unsafeguarded facilities, and unsafeguarded material can be used
in safeguarded facilities. India has the flexibility to use both safeguarded
and unsafeguarded programs to optimize fissile material production. The
flexibility of these arrangements contradicts the international assurances
IAEA safeguards are intended to provide.

India-IAEA Safeguards
Agreement

The major problem areas in the India-IAEA agreement, as currently draft-

ed, are outlined as follows:

Safeguarded plutonium can be substituted by unsafeguarded plutonium of

lower isotopic quality.

Article 30(d) allows India to substitute unsafeguarded nuclear material for

safeguarded material. The agreement allows substitution based simply on
element mass (weight), without taking account of isotopic composition.
Safeguards are terminated on the formerly safeguarded material.

Substitution under Article 30(d) requires the IAEA’s agreement, but it is not
clear on what basis the IAEA could or would withhold agreement. In the case
5 Kalman Robertson and John Carlson, “The Three Overlapping Streams of India’s Nuclear Pro-
grams,” Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard
Kennedy School, April 2016, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/theth-
reesoverlappingtreamsofindiasnuclearpowerprograms.pdf.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 5
 of enriched uranium, the IAEA has a policy requiring isotopic equivalence.
Considering the explicit language of Article 30(d) for substitution on the ba-
sis of mass, however, it is not clear whether the IAEA’s policy would prevail.

In the case of plutonium, as far as the author can ascertain, the IAEA has
no such policy. It appears that if India produces, under safeguards, pluto-
nium that has an isotopic quality at or close to weapon-grade, India could
remove this material from safeguards and replace it with the same quantity
of reactor-grade plutonium from unsafeguarded stocks. India has large
unsafeguarded stocks of such material.

Plutonium removed from safeguards through substitution is available for

unsafeguarded purposes. This defeats the purpose of civilian-military sepa-
ration—if plutonium substitution is permitted, it should occur only between
batches of similar isotopic quality, so that India could not use safeguarded
facilities to add to its unsafeguarded stocks of weapon-grade plutonium.

Safeguarded nuclear material can be used in facilities in the unsafeguarded

program.

The agreement allows India to use safeguarded material in normally un-

safeguarded facilities (that is, facilities not listed in the Annex to the agree-
ment)—see for example Articles 11(f), 14(b), 69 to 78, 84 and 94. Articles
11(f) and 14(b) provide that where India uses safeguarded material in an un-
safeguarded facility, safeguards will apply to the facility temporarily while the
safeguarded material is present. While this may seem satisfactory, it provides
the opportunity, when combined with the exemption provisions (see below),
for safeguarded material to contribute to the unsafeguarded program.

Safeguarded material can be used with unsafeguarded material.

The agreement allows India to use safeguarded and unsafeguarded materials

together—see for example Articles 25, 95 and 96. This provides the opportu-
nity for safeguarded material to contribute to the unsafeguarded program.

Plutonium produced using safeguarded material in an unsafeguarded reactor

can be exempted from safeguards if the proportion of safeguarded material is
less than 30 percent of the total.

6 India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

Article 25 allows special fissionable material (for example, plutonium)
produced through the use of safeguarded material to be exempted from
safeguards provided:

• it is subject to safeguards only because it has been produced in or by

the use of safeguarded nuclear material; and

• it is produced in a reactor in which the proportion of safeguarded ma-

terial is less than 30 percent of total material.

The proportion of produced material corresponding to the proportion of

safeguarded material will be subject to safeguards (and vice versa).

In “The Three Overlapping Streams of India’s Nuclear Programs” it was

shown how this provision could allow safeguarded reactor-grade plutoni-
um to be used to produce unsafeguarded weapon-grade plutonium.6

It is notable that similar provisions are not available to the nuclear-weapon

states under their IAEA safeguards agreements—if a facility is eligible for
IAEA safeguards (that is, it is included in the “eligible facility list” under
the agreement concerned), all nuclear material in the facility is subject to
safeguards. It is the case that the nuclear-weapon states’ agreements allow
them to remove facilities and materials from safeguards. However, safe-
guarded material cannot be used outside facilities designated for safe-
guards. In any event, the nuclear-weapon states all ceased production of
fissile material for nuclear weapons many years ago.

The agreement has a general prohibition against using items subject to the
agreement for nuclear weapons or to further any other military purpose.7
This seems at odds with the specific provisions allowing movement of
materials to and from unsafeguarded (therefor “strategic”) facilities. In any
case, once material has left safeguards the IAEA has no way of knowing
whether or not it is used for nuclear weapons or other military purposes.

When the 2009 safeguards agreement was drafted, one must assume the
problems outlined above were not apparent to the IAEA. Today it is clear

6 Robertson and Carlson, “The Three Overlapping Streams of India’s Nuclear Programs,” pp. 7-9.
7 IAEA, INFCIRC/754, Article 1.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 7
 that several provisions in this agreement can no longer be considered
appropriate. This could also be the case for INFCIRC/66-type agreements
applying in other non-NPT states.

Inconsistency with the IAEA

Statute
As currently drafted the India-IAEA safeguards agreement appears to be
inconsistent with the IAEA Statute. The Statute requires the Agency to
ensure that:

“… assistance provided by it or at its request or under its super-

vision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military
purpose.”8

The Agency is authorized to:

“… establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that

special fissionable and other materials … under its supervision …
are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”9

It may be open to legal argument whether nuclear material under safe-

guards is under the Agency’s “supervision,” but clearly the situation is
problematic where a safeguards agreement authorizes actions that could
further a military purpose. Whatever the legal position, the agreement
gives a cloak of legitimacy to the use of safeguarded facilities and material
to benefit India’s unsafeguarded, “strategic,” nuclear program. This is clearly
unacceptable. The agreement should be amended to remove the problem-
atic provisions, regardless of India’s NSG application.

8 IAEA Statute, Article II, https://www.iaea.org/about/statute.

9 IAEA Statute, Article III.A.5.

8 India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

Implications for Other States
In its safeguards agreement with the IAEA and its NSG membership bid, In-
dia should also consider the precedents being established. It is important not
to replicate the problems outlined here with other non-NPT states seeking
to join the NSG, such as Pakistan. As with India, there will be a need for a
general safeguards agreement that applies to an updateable list of facilities in
the state. However, this agreement should not be based on the INFCIRC/66
model unless the problematic provisions discussed here are omitted. If India
is reluctant to amend its safeguards agreement, perhaps Pakistan can lead by
example by concluding an agreement that avoids these problems.

Conclusions
While the 2009 India-IAEA agreement has extended the application of
IAEA safeguards in India, a number of power reactors and related facili-
ties remain outside safeguards, and the language of India’s Separation Plan
makes it clear that unsafeguarded facilities are “engaged in activities of stra-
tegic significance.” India has undertaken to place future imported reactors
under safeguards, but it is bound to do this anyway at the supplier’s behest.
India gives no commitment about placing any further indigenous facilities
under safeguards, other than a vague reference to include those facilities
India deems “civilian.”

India’s continued operation of dual-purpose facilities is strategically

provocative—for instance Pakistan views India’s fast breeder reactors, and
other unsafeguarded materials and facilities, as part of the military pro-
gram, posing a strategic threat.10 India, far from assuming the same respon-
sibilities as other leading nuclear countries, is operating a fuel cycle model
—civilian and military programs closely linked—that was abandoned by
the nuclear-weapon states decades ago.

10 See Mansoor Ahmed, “India’s Nuclear Exceptionalism,” Discussion Paper (Cambridge, MA: Project
on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy
School, May 2017). https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/indias-nuclear-exceptionalism.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 9
 India should revise its Separation Plan. A genuine separation of civilian
and military programs requires elimination of the ambiguous category of
dual-use facilities. All civilian facilities (including all reactors that gener-
ate power for civilian use) should be placed under permanent IAEA safe-
guards, and all facilities outside safeguards should be clearly seen as mili-
tary and kept functionally separate from the civilian program. It would also
be a major confidence-building step if India placed under safeguards all
unsafeguarded power reactor spent fuel, and all plutonium separated from
power reactor fuel.

The India-IAEA safeguards agreement is a major part of the problem,

allowing India the flexibility to move safeguarded material between its safe-
guarded and unsafeguarded nuclear programs. As a positive commitment
to the integrity of IAEA safeguards, as well as to meet NSG requirements,
India should initiate amendments to remove the problematic provisions
from its safeguards agreement. If India is not intending to use these provi-
sions to move nuclear material between its safeguarded and unsafeguard-
ed programs it should embrace the opportunity to make the necessary
amendments. As an immediate step India could make a public commit-
ment not to take advantage of these problematic provisions.

A further consideration in clearly separating civilian and military pro-

grams is the substantial effort required by the IAEA to implement safe-
guards in India. Reducing potential diversion pathways could enable some
rationalization of this effort.

If India does not take the initiative in amending the safeguards agreement,
the IAEA needs to review whether in its current form the agreement is
consistent with the Agency’s obligations under its Statute. If there is any
doubt in this regard, the Agency should initiate appropriate amendments.

10 India’s Nuclear Safeguards: Not Fit for Purpose

About The Project On Managing the Atom
The Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) is the Harvard Kennedy School’s principal research
group on nuclear policy issues. Established in 1996, the purpose of the MTA project is to
provide leadership in advancing policy-relevant ideas and analysis for reducing the risks
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arsenals; lowering the barriers to safe, secure, and peaceful nuclear energy use; and addressing
the connections among these problems. Through its fellows program, the MTA project also
helps to prepare the next generation of leaders for work on nuclear policy problems. The MTA
project provides its research, analysis, and commentary to policy makers, scholars,
journalists, and the public.

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