Opening up of international civil nuclear cooperation with India and related developments R.B. Grover Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, India article info Article history: Received 19 June 2016 Received in revised form 8 September 2016 Accepted 20 September 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Civil nuclear cooperation Nuclear suppliers group Safeguards agreement Governance system Nuclear security ITER abstract The Joint Statement issued by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and the President George W. Bush of the United States in July 2005 paved the way for momentous changes leading to the opening up of international civil nuclear cooperation with India. As a follow up, India prepared a Separation Plan to offer several of its indigenously built nuclear reactors and fuel cycle facilities under safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and negotiated an India-Specific Safeguards Agreement. India also launched an outreach with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the NSG relaxed its guidelines in September 2008 to facilitate international civil nuclear trade with India. All this resulted in India signing Nuclear Cooperation Agreements (NCA) with several countries and has enabled India to import uranium from the international market. India has placed orders with Russia for setting up of additional reactors in technical cooperation and is in negotiation with companies in France and the USA for similar orders. In parallel, India was admitted in December 2005 to the ITER venture as a full partner. The global scientific community now recognizes India as an important stakeholder in mega science projects and there has been a deluge of requests for India's participation. The paper focuses on gains for India arising from developments subsequent to the Joint Statement. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Research and development to exploit atomic energy for the welfare of the people of India was launched in mid-nineteen forties, Atomic Energy Commission was set up in 1948 and Atomic Energy Act was also enacted in 1948. A swimming pool type research reactor APSARA achieved first criticality on August 4, 1956 and was followed by setting up of a 40 MWt research reactor CIRUS which achieved first criticality on July 10, 1960. Atomic Energy Act, 1948 was replaced by Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and research and devel- opment on all aspects of nuclear science and engineering was launched at a research centre set up in Trombay. India is not endowed with any significant conventional energy resources and therefore, the objective of research and development was to exploit nuclear technology for generation of electricity. In view of very modest domestic uranium resources, it was decided to follow a closed fuel cycle approach so as to utilize the full energy generation potential of uranium. India has vast thorium resources, which can be exploited only by following a closed fuel cycle. Over the years India has developed technological capability in exploration and mining of uranium, fabrication of a variety of fuel pins, heavy water production, designing and setting up of pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs), spent fuel reprocessing and waste management including partitioning of minor actinides. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) provides for peaceful nuclear explosions. The international Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) organized short-term workshops on the subject until mid-nineteen seventies. However, once India con- ducted a peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, the concept of peaceful nuclear explosion was no longer a part of the discourse on the subject. All international civil nuclear cooperation with India came to an abrupt end, but India remained steadfast in its resolve to develop nuclear power technologies and achieved several notable successes. This included improvements in the design of PHWRs, setting up of PHWRs and associated fuel cycle facilities, design and setting up research reactors and reprocessing plants, and devel- oping technologies for setting up fast breeder reactors. 2. A new initiative India conducted three underground nuclear tests on May 11, E-mail address: rbgrover@hbni.ac.in. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Progress in Nuclear Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pnucene http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2016.09.016 0149-1970/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Progress in Nuclear Energy xxx (2016) 1e8 Please cite this article in press as: Grover, R.B., Opening up of international civil nuclear cooperation with India and related developments, Progress in Nuclear Energy (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2016.09.016