India: Nuclear Helpers

The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 2 (March 1995) Page 8

Western companies have supplied India’s controversial nuclear program for more than three decades. All of India’s plutonium-making reactors and heavy water production plants are based on foreign designs.

Canada

Supplied the Cirus reactor, which produced plutonium for India’s 1974 nuclear weapon test
Supplied India’s first two power reactors at Rajasthan, which India copied to build unsafeguarded reactors

France

Helped build the unsafeguarded Baroda and Tuticorin heavy water plants
Helped build the unsafeguarded Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) at Kalpakkam; trained Indian engineers in France and sent French engineers to work in India

Germany

Supplied unsafeguarded Nangal and Talcher heavy water plants; sold teleperm process control system to Hazira heavy water plant
German firm was fined $800,000 by the U.S. for illegally re-exporting U.S.-origin beryllium
German broker arranged illicit sales of more than 200 tons of heavy water to India
Supplied natural lithium useful in making tritium to boost nuclear bombs
Sold zircalloy pipes which are used as reactor fuel cladding

Norway

More than 26 tons of Norwegian heavy water was diverted to India through Romania and Switzerland

Soviet Union/Russia
Secretly sold at least 80 tons of heavy water to run unsafeguarded reactors

Sweden
Supplied specialized steel tube plates for heavy water reactors
Sold flash X-ray devices, which can be used for nuclear weapon development

Switzerland
Helped build the unsafeguarded Baroda and Tuticorin heavy water plants

United Kingdom
Supplied turbine generator designs used at several unsafeguarded reactors
Repaired damaged heavy water equipment at Madras reactor

United States
Supplied heavy water for Cirus reactor that made plutonium for India’s first nuclear bomb