1.3.2. India-US Cooperation on Nuclear Energy: Historic Background

♤ More than a thousand Indian scientists between 1955 and 1974 participated in the US nuclear energy research projects;

♤ The sale of US heavy water to India in the 1960s that was used in the unsafeguarded CIRUS reactor that produced plutonium for India’s first nuclear explosion;

♤ Design work for the Trombay reprocessing facility provided by Vitro International, a US company; and

♤ US assistance in the building and fuelling of the Tarapur reactors.

♤ The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978 (now usually referred to as the NNPA), was signed by President Jimmy Carter in March 1978, this put a legal break to nuclear cooperation with India.