A Technological Comparison of Two Potential Nuclear Powers: India and Japan

Abstract

The series of Chinese nuclear tests over the past three years is provocative confirmation of the decreasing exclusiveness of the nuclear club. Further confirmation is the development of nuclear technology to the point where its industrial utility is clearly important to developing and developed countries alike. National nuclear development programs are advancing apace in all parts of the world. International commercial competition in nuclear industrial commodities has seemed to hasten the diffusion of nuclear technology at the same time that it marks the growing importance of nuclear energy as a source of power. The scientific information required for basic nuclear development is so widespread and readily available that only its translation into actual processes presents any problems, and even these engineering problems are now well known. On the basis of this, it is important to understand that this technology contributes directly to the capability to produce nuclear weapons. As Dr. Arnold Kramish has commented, is a tendency, even among men well informed in these matters, to suppose that atoms for peace and atoms for war are two distinct realms that can be effectively fenced off from each other. That is an illusion.1 Prior to the development of a certain level of civil nuclear technology, the nuclear weapons option is not a practical consideration; but with the development of civil nuclear technology the weapons option comes willynilly. At that time, a combination of pressures, not the least of which may be the pressure of scientific-technological dynamism, may well make the decision not to produce nuclear weapons more difficult to maintain than what may seem to be a natural development of circumstances-the production of nuclear weapons. Yet, there is no chance of stopping or slowing the spread of civil nuclear programs. There are too many benefits to be derived from nuclear technology. The process of acquiring nuclear power facilities adds to a country's technical and industrial competence as well as to its wealth. Advanced industrial and scientific nations see nuclear programs as natural extensions