Canada has sent the first consignment of uranium to India, ending a 41-year-long hiatus in the bilateral nuclear cooperation.





The first shipment of uranium from Canada arrived in India on Friday. The consignment was shipped by Canada’s Cameco Inc, which entered into a contract with Department of Atomic Energy during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Ottawa this year.



The first consignment of uranium from Cameco Inc arrived more than four decades after Canada cried foul over India’s first nuclear test in 1974 and ended all bilateral cooperation in the field of atomic power.



The consignment consists of product mined and milled at Cameco Corporation’s McArthur River and Key Lake operations in the Saskatchewan province of Canada.



“India has just received its first shipment of Saskatchewan uranium under the Canada-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, and today we mark an economic milestone for our uranium-mining industry and our province,” Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, was quoted as saying in a press release by the provincial government.



Ottawa had snapped its nuke ties with New Delhi after accusing the Indian government of using plutonium produced in a reactor provided by Canada and installed in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay for its first nuclear test in Pokhran in 1974. Canada had supplied the nuclear reactor CIRUS to India in mid-1950s under the Atom for Peace programme for civilian use of nuclear energy.



But Canada signed a new civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India in 2010 and followed it up by inking the administrative arrangement in 2012. During Modi’s visit to Ottawa in April, the DAE inked an agreement with Cameco Inc for supply of 3,000 MT of Uranium Ore Concentrate (UOC) till 2020 – 2,50,000 kg in 2015, 7,50,000 kg in 2016, 5,00,000 kg in each year from 2017 to 2019 and finally, 2,50,000 kg in 2020.



The contract has a provision of increasing annual quantity of procurement in 2020 to 5,00,000 kg. The agreement can also be extended beyond 2020. The “Smiling Buddha”, as the first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, was codenamed, had triggered international uproar and Canada had immediately cut off supply of nuclear materials and technology to India.



Canada was also among the founding members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group or NSG (originally known as London Club), which came up as a cartel of countries exporting nuclear materials and equipment, with the objective of controlling the global nuclear commerce.



New Delhi’s 34-year-long isolation from international nuclear trade ended in 2008 when the NSG granted it a waiver, paving the way for signing of the landmark India-US agreement for cooperation in the field of use of atomic power for civilian purposes.

