From News Dispatches NEW DELHI: Norwegian investigators say that they have evidence that material that could be used in the manufacture of atomic weapons was illegally shipped to a Bombay company in 1983. The company is listed in the Bombay telephone directory as an affiliate the Indian Government’s Department of Atomic Energy, the New York Times reported on May 7.
The Norwegian investigators say their evidence of the shipment involving 21 tons of deuterium oxide or heavy water is a document and a statement from a witness. But the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, MLR. Srinivasan denied that such a transaction had taken place.
“At no stage have we brought heavy water from Norway,” Dr. Srinivasan, said in an interview. “We do not know the veracity of these documents; we have net had anything to do with Norway. We are one of the most important producers of heavy water in the world and we do not have any imports except from the Soviet Union, the paper said.
It has been previously reported that India obtained heavy water from Norway and the Soviet Union, but this is the first time that Norway has given details of the company that they said received the shipment at Bombay.
Norwegian officials say they have the original flight document that traces the shipment from Oslo to Basel in Switzerland and then to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and finally to Bombay. They are also relying on testimony by a man hired by a West German company to accompany the cargo.
Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a shipments of more than one ton must be reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency and put under safeguards if shipped to countries like India, which has not signed the treaty.
That was not done in the case of the 1983 shipment.
Heavy water is used in reactors to slow the neutrons emitted in nuclear fission to a speed at which they cause additional fissions. Ordinary water can also be used, but it absorbs neutrons and therefore requires use of enriched uranium which is expensive and difficult to make. With heavy water reactors can run on natural uranium. Reactors using uranium produce plutonium, a bomb fuel as a byproduct.
Plutonium is also used to start new atomic reactors, and Dr. Srinvasan the nuclear official, has said that critics who say that India is diverting the material to a nuclear arms program overlook this point. In an interview last year he said that 50 kilograms of plutonium were used in 1985 to start up a new “fast breeder” test reactor that uses raw material available in India.
Although most of India’s nuclear plants are not open to international inspection, New Delhi has denied having a secret weapons program. Its capability of building a nuclear weapons system was shown however, when it exploded what it called a peaceful nuclear device in 1974.
Norway said a West German company, Rohstoff Einfuhr, bought 15.18 tons of heavy water from Norway in 1983, flew it to Basel in Switzerland by West African Airlines.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 12, 1989
