Obama announces nuclear breakthrough on landmark India trip
in.reuters.com
in.reuters.com
The NPT thing alone is like the US openly providing nuclear technology to Israel, or building nuclear reactors in Iran.
Not to mention that even tho this is purely "civilian"(like that thing actually exists) nuclear technology it sure will make Pakistan nervous, and when either India or Pakistan gets nervous Russia and China get on alert.
If the US actually opens trading in nuclear technology with a non NPT signatory what will prevent Russia from doing the same with N. Korea or what will prevent Iran from boasting see the Americans selling nuclear tech to a "rogue state" why can't we buy it as a NPT signatory?
This is either a very misquoted or misguided story, or a one big FU from the US to one of the most important treaties of the 20th century.
"Not to mention that even tho this is purely "civilian"(like that thing actually exists) nuclear technology"
To a great degree it does exist with civilian reactor designs that can't easily change fuel, e.g. not the Canadian CANDU or Soviet RBMK (Chernobyl) ones. If you brew uranium fuel rods for much longer than a month, you get too much of two undesirable isotopes.
One encourages fission, and even in weapons grade plutonium precludes gun assembly warhead designs like Little Boy, the other gives off a lot of heat which is useful in powering deep space probes but otherwise is ranges from a pain in weapons grade to giving off 100kW of heat per what I've read.
It's fuel cycle isn't optimized for doing so, and they actually intentionally have a burn stage in which the WG PU oxide is mixed with Uranium to burn it out of the spent fuel. But if you tweak the fuel cycle slightly, and forgo the burn phase you are getting a very good PU 239 factory.
If anything trade in nuclear technology has to be done with countries like India and Pakistan it should be in nuclear fail safes, and command and control systems.
The US system has so many fail safes and checks that even the president unlike in the movies can't launch a nuke with a button, ground silos can be launched within 30-45min, subs can take hours with the new regulations and launch prep.
On the other hand no one knows which nuclear fail safes Indian or Pakistani nukes have if any, and their command and control system is completely none existent, India launched a central network in 2009 but as far as it goes for both of those countries nuclear launch capabilities still remain within the hands of local field commanders once the forces go on launch ready alert.
Blame Bush, Obama or Osama frankly my dear i don't care, but the worlds first nuclear power, and the defacto "world police" should not trade in nuclear technologies with a country who didn't sign the NPT, especially when it has a nuclear armed neighbor that could turn into an AQ run state over night.
I would hope we have more knowledge of e.g. the Indian and Pakistani nuke systems, then again the simple fact that 90% of the CIA's employees work in the US is enough to make you highly skeptical of our nation's HUMINT. Then again we the US are primarily concerned with them falling into the wrong hands (a parochialism that does not enhance regional or ultimately world stability), and I heard back in the '80s from some friends who were in a position to know that we leaked to the Soviets everything they needed to know about Permissive Action Links to safeguard their nukes. And this of course eventually devolves to a people problem ... a very good argument against NP.
As for your last point, while I don't necessarily agree with it, I think the theory is that India isn't going to forswear nukes (South Africa is the only nation that has after developing them), India isn't an enemy, potential or real, like the other "nuclear rogue states" or likely ones in the future, so cozying up to them in this area is not going to produce the moral hazard WRT to the NPT and NP like, e.g., our tacit acceptance of Iran's imminent completion of warheads. And I'd note that on the other hand, our arranging the deposing and likely, although not inevitable death of Muammar Gaddafi demonstrated a very harsh lesson on giving up your WMD programs, undoing whatever good was done here WRT Saddam Hussein.
Of course, you could argue that the current situation with Iran is the sort of thing you'd expect by our not continuing an ultra hard line on NP. Me, I'm going to continue to keep handy my copies of Nuclear War Survival Skills along with all the other stuff I collected during the Cold War, including my mother's Civil Defense Block Mother sign, back from the late '60s when we still cared about the survival of the nation.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." --Winston Churchill
Obama announces nuclear India on landmark breakthrough trip
India breakthrough nuclear trip on landmark Obama announce