India does not need uranium from outside of India for the nuclear weapons program. Uranium in India being freed for the weapons program is also hogwash. Our uranium resource are enough to support the entire PHWR line which has so far given us fissile material to make a 1000 bombs if we so choose. How many more will it produce in another 50 years? The very reason why we have a Uranium economy today as opposed to a thorium economy was the fact that Uranium economy also subsidized the nuclear weapons ambitions of USA, USSR, UK, France and China. Thorium was considered and discarded by the US due to lack of military potential and early problems in handling u-232 waste products. Difficulty in storing weapons near men with such compounds. The reality today will be vastly different for a u-233 bomb for USA. We also tested a u-233 sub kiloton device.
The Indo-US deal is a cap on the number of reactors outside safeguards. The best nuclear weapons arsenal program is one which produces electricity and as a side effect produces nuclear weapons. This is how the rest of the world did it. This is the US program and why there are no new nuclear reactors after 1980 in US.
Indian attraction to the nuclear deal are largely on two accounts, expanding the uranium imports for the civil program to reach 50 GW of power to move into the third stage thorium program. Thorium in thermal breeders requires 50 years to double. So for a Thorium economy we need a huge stockpile of u-233. This requires 10 GW of PHWR and 40 GW of FBR. Once we get here there will be enough u-233 fissile material to create as many Thorium reactors as we like. In the mean time while the material breeds in the FBR there will be a decade gap in our program. It take 10 years for our FBR to breed. (The one which will really be a fast breeder. The current FBR does not have an impressive fuel mix, which will be tested once the safety aspects are tested on a conservative fuel bundle). This brings us to the second attraction for our nuclear deal. Metallurgy and obviously fuel rods which France has experimented with in the past for Fast breeders. The ones which double in 10 instead of 22 years for the FBR.
There is a proverbial third carrot, the deal clincher, in term of the nuclear deal. This was ENR technology. This enrichment technology was sought not to aid the military fissile program but the civil program. The west assume this will help India increase it's nuclear weapons rapidly by copying the designs to our military enrichment plants. The interest in ENR stems from not nuclear weapons stockpiles. We are ready to sign the Fissile Material cut off treaty post negotiations. Our fissile material is present in sufficient quantity. It's a byproduct of Indian three stage program. Our fissile material declaration will be among the largest in the world. So It's not a problem for us. The number of weapons we make will be a political decision, the fissile material is there to give us the second largest or third largest nuclear weapons program if we decide to do so.
As far the concerns on fissile material enrichment and the lack thereof and the estimates of how many weapons India has. No one knows. There are multiple reason for this. India has tested FBF designs with reactor grade fuel which can be scaled up to 200 to 300kt. This is also backed by our cheap tritium production ability again a byproduct of civil nuclear operations whereas the rest of the world had to invest billions to get their stockpile which has a half life of less than 20 years and needs to be replenished every 12 or 15 years which is different from the half life.(It will become half in x years but needs to be replaced slightly sooner or later than the half life.)
There is also the weapons capability on the u-233 weapons which we are interested in. No-one knows if we have succeeded in producing u-233 without u-232. This is a requirement for our third stage breeder reactors. So I will bet my bottom dollar we worked on this for years. No outside source can confirm or deny this. So how many weapons do we have which have u-233 given that at the moment we don't even have a third stage reactor in commercial use and a decent stockpile of u-233.
The numbers of nuclear weapons of India are always quoted based on some rare earth plant in Karnataka. It's just specious. It's probably only used for the nuclear submarine project. Our weapons enrichment is taking place elsewhere for the weapons which need enrichment. FBF's fielded today probably have very little enrichment focus.
The key take away is our weapons reflect how much we are ready to spend. I will suggest we will keep it as economical as possible. We may have 1000 weapons on short notice or just a few 100 assembled weapons as we are quoted as possessing.
Notice the ENR technology will accelerate our path to the third stage of the nuclear program by helping us get more FBR reactor online faster. There is a new plant outside safeguards in Karnataka which is going to be used largely for our civil nuclear program when it's built up in a few years.
We were back-stabbed on the nuclear deal. We have been denied ENR in 2011 NSG. The idea in 2008 was to prevent India from getting better weapons by blocking tests. The US cap India plans backfired when India stated fielding FBF's with cheap tritium with 300kt yield. Then they decided to cap us with ENR. Again a wrong thrust. The ENR cap is more of a cap on civil program becoming self sufficient through a third stage boot up by 2030 instead of 2050. If the civil program is self sufficient there is noting to stop India from being a formidable power with no string attached even earlier than 2050.
The curx:
2008 Deal--- Cap by preventing test: Absolute failure as shown by FBF's. Thermonukes will be fielded later when our enrichment capacity can be expanded at a cheaper cost. For now FBF's will do. We will reserve the thermonuke of 200kg design for global deterrence. With these FBF's we have a good deterrence. We don't have a good global deterrence. We however have global deterrence as well with FBF.
2011 ENR Cap: Cap by tying India to NSG lobby through Uranium supply linkages on Foreign reactors. If you test we will cut off your fuel.
Here comes the kicker of it all. This ENR cap will force India to project power in a decade. It will be forced to project power globally to prevent economic threats to fuel supply cutoffs.
Of course there will be nuclear tests in the future. The Indian Civil-Nuclear deal is dead. We where cheated by US. It will be discarded at the appropriate time. Just wait and watch all our imports are from France and Russia only. Even they went back on ENR under US threats. (I have read all the news reports on French and Russian ENR supply, those are hogwash. The only possibility is if these are secret arrangements with France and Russia on this. I have also read the statement by French atomic energy chief, parroting the words of the french ambassador. The sad conclusion after all of this is that there is a ENR denial in place. The ruling party for obvious reasons isn't tom tomming about this in the media. It's been buried for now. It will come up when the civil nuclear liability bill is discussed. So the bill is not being discussed in the parliament. Exteremely convenient co-incidence. Read the three reports on ENR in 2011 from Time of India. The ENR denial was first from US. Then the final article reads we hope France and Russia will stand by their commitments. Then there i an assertion on our own ENR capability being sufficient. )
To recap our ENR is good enough for the nuclear submarine and the limited enrichment capacity needed on our FBF weapons. However it's not sufficient for our enrichment capacity required for a third stage transition. It's simply not industrial scale technology right now for the civil program. We don't want to waste our money on a civil only industrial plant and don't need such a big military facility ever. To recap our weapons program will not move faster or slower with the enrichment technology from outside of India. It will move as fast as it is moving now.
If we are planning on using u-233 weapon on a large scale we may never need to enrich uranium or whatever anium. The same goes for FBF reactor-grade fuel weapons which have low enrichment figures.
So we really have no idea what BARC holds. It's a complete mystery. It's also possibly equally brilliant in terms of the nuclear weapons designs. The designs may be ones which the rest of the world doesn't have in it's arsenal. (I don't mean in terms of yield or technology. The others can design these weapons, but they may not make economic sense to them) I mean like FBF 300kt. It's cheap for India and extremely expensive for the rest of the world. Right of center weapons I call them. U-233 weapons etc.
All these denial and cat and mouse game are largely due to misconceptions on Indian weapons designs and the US belief in some quarters however misplaced that they can cap India. It's a dangerous game. One I believe will not work in 30 year time. One which may not even work in 10 years time with the right government.