China Diverting US Nuclear Technology For Military Purposes, Allege US Senators

The proposed renewal of the U.S-China civil nuclear deal has thrown open a can of worms with allegations flying about China’s misuse of the provisions in the deal signed in 1985. During the Senate hearing on the issue held on 12 May, both Republican and Democrat Senators pointed to the various omissions and commissions committed by China. One charge was that China illegally diverted U.S. civilian nuclear technology to its nuclear submarine program.

However, the Obama administration is keen to renew the deal before it expires by end of 2015. The government, already at odds with Congress over its nuclear deal with Iran, expects some muscle flexing from the law makers. That is why it has deputed some senior officials to brief the law makers in advance.

China’s violations of the agreement mostly pertained to diversion of technology for its own use in many barred areas besides exporting nuclear reactors. There was near consensus among Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China indeed flouted the international Nuclear Suppliers Group commitment by exporting additional nuclear reactors, that too with U.S. technology, to Pakistan.

The panel’s chairman Sen Bob Corker questioned two Obama administration officials whether the administration is ready to suspend nuclear cooperation, if Chinese violations are confirmed. “We have a country like China that is not honoring the spirit of the law. They’re not honoring previous agreements with the nuclear group. We know they’re going to take this information and use it for military purposes. We know that, even though the agreement says they won’t do it,” Coker said.

Sen. Robert Menendez revealed that Chinese nuclear diversion may have involved reactor cooling pumps also, which were produced by American company Curtiss-Wright Corp. It makes pumps for U.S. nuclear-powered submarines. He expressed concern that China could reverse engineer the pumps for their own nuclear submarine program. China is reportedly engaged in a major nuclear submarine buildup program to add nuclear and ballistic missile submarines, according to Pentagon’s own annual report, added Newsmax.

Commenting on the Senate testimony, Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center said it is clear that the committee is concerned about China’s violation of the 1985 agreement. He said it appears that the panel is readying to add more conditions before granting further approval to a new agreement.

Chairman Corker has hinted that the agreement may be modified by the Senate. “My sense is that as we move ahead, there may be a series of conditions that the Senate may want to place on this particular agreement,” he said. However, a spokesman of Corker later said the senator’s questions during the hearing were on the basis of unclassified assessments that addressed China’s “intent to divert” civilian technology to the military.

(For feedback/comments, contact the writer at k.kumar@ibtimes.com.au)