The main conclusion of the recent study by a number of economists and engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, entitled “The Future of Nuclear Power” — widely seen as the definitive statement on the subject — was that nuclear power is too expensive to compete with coal and natural gas. While the cost gap might fall in future, it is not expected to close unless carbon dioxide emissions are heavily taxed. In India’s case, therefore, given that there are many, far cheaper things that we could do about carbon dioxide emissions, and especially given the government’s total lack of interest in emission reductions, there is no economic rationale for us getting into nuclear power right now.

It is safe, we think, to assume that the Indian establishment understands this, and therefore has no intention of making nuclear power central to our energy strategy. How then did we get into our biggest political crisis in years over it? The answer has to be that the agreement has very little to do with power generation and everything to do with our national aspiration to be a “nuclear power”.

A country with no domestic supplies of uranium that wants to be a nuclear power has something of a problem, because the established nuclear powers, mostly for their own bad reasons, want to keep it out of the club, and since they (mostly) control the supply of uranium, there is not much it can do about it. Of course it is possible to wait for an opportunity — the occasional rogue supplier with a suitcase full of uranium. But how do you suddenly develop the capacity to build really sophisticated nuclear devices? The solution, therefore, is to invest in ‘peaceful’ uses of nuclear energy. This allows the country to maintain a large establishment of nuclear engineers and scientists, and gives it a legitimate reason to buy uranium, all of which can leak into a little bit of bomb-making, if the need arises.

This, give or take a few details, is the strategy that India has historically pursued. But for the past many years, we have been paying for our youthful indiscretions — the occasional bout of reckless bomb-making — by being denied access to the world supply of uranium. This means we have been using reprocessed uranium, which makes our nuclear power extremely expensive, and limits our capacity to indulge the desires of our would-be bomb-makers.

The logic of the present, disputed, agreement seems to be that since we are already doing all this to keep our nuclear aspirations going, we might as well get a bit more out of it by building a number of new nuclear power plants. What makes this especially attractive (indeed, it would not make sense otherwise) is that it comes with assurance of a supply of uranium at world market prices, which will bring down the cost of our nuclear power. And because it was the Americans who opened the door for us, and because we were allowed to continue to talk openly about the non-peaceful side of nuclear energy, we also get the added frisson of being accepted — at least, in a back-handed sort of a way — into the nuclear club.

The risk, of course, is that we will do something that offends the Americans and they will cut off the supply of uranium (or threaten to interrupt the supply in order to get us to fall in line). Manmohan Singh surely knows this, but he (though, paradoxically, not the Indian Left) is probably cynical enough about the Americans to recognize that no amount of tweaking the words of the agreement would foreclose this possibility. If the Americans want to do it, they will find a reason to do so. Indeed the only thing that might stop them is economics — once we are a big enough buyer, it will hurt to cut us off — it may be that lobbyists in Washington DC will come to our rescue. And even if the Americans do try to cut us off, it is possible that Russia or one of the other suppliers might be lured into breaking ranks with them.

And even if it does turn out that uranium stops flowing, we will, by then, have a bigger pile of used fuel that we can reprocess and use. Indeed once they cut us off, there will be nothing to stop us from turning all of our stocks of uranium into devices (since we are already being punished and have little to lose). Of course, we might have to shut down some of our nuclear power plants to do this, but then power generation was never the primary purpose of investing in these plants.

Of course, the fact that the reaction to the agreement seems to be based on a misunderstanding does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea. It is not at all clear that we need to expand our capacity to inflict nuclear violence on our neighbours. We cannot deter suicide-bombers with atom bombs, and China would rather export to us than invade us. Any war where we use even a fraction of what we already have seems too frightening to contemplate. Couldn’t we think of better ways to spend the money?

One of the more memorable responses to our 1998 nuclear test was from a US comedian, who started by pointing out that most Indians lack sanitary facilities, yet the government was spending money on bombs. “Why don’t they simply wait for the wind to blow towards Pakistan,” he suggested, “that should do the trick.”