NEW DELHI, Oct 29: Canada has said it would closely watch India’s CIRUS nuclear reactor that it helped set up in 1954, to ascertain if it was declared as a military facility or a civilian outfit to facilitate a crucial Delhi-Washington deal, the Asian Age said on Saturday.

“Despite India’s assertion that designating a nuclear reactor as a civil or military facility will be her sovereign choice, Canada has said it will watch closely under which category India places the CIRUS reactor,” the newspaper reported, quoting a Canadian government statement.

The statement comes as the United States applies pressure on New Delhi to separate its nuclear facilities before any agreement on the nuclear deal with India is presented to Capitol Hill.

CIRUS stands for Canadian-Indian-US reactor, a research reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay near Mumbai.

Although CIRUS was supplied by Canada, it uses heavy water supplied by the United States. India’s second oldest nuclear reactor, CIRUS is not under IAEA safeguards, which did not exist when the reactor was sold.

However, Canada did stipulate, and the US supply contract for the heavy water explicitly specified, that it only be used for peaceful purposes.

Nonetheless CIRUS has produced much of India’s weapon plutonium stockpile, as well as the plutonium for India’s 1974 Pokhran-I nuclear test. CIRUS can produce 6.6-10.5 kg of plutonium a year (at a capacity factor of 50-80 per cent).

Now the Canadian government has told the Age that “the separation of the civilian and military fuel cycles, and the scope and nature of safeguards to be applied on the civilian part, is a very important issue, and that as part of this process the disposition of the CIRUS reactor will be a matter of particular interest to Canada.”

India has 14 nuclear reactors and eight are under varying stages of construction. Currently, six of India’s nuclear reactors are safeguarded. The weapons-grade plutonium-producing reactor CIRUS is expected to be retained in the list of military facilities.

The Canadian government’s response comes after the US raised objections through an adviser to the US state department and deputy director of the Monterey Institute, Leonard Spector, to India’s decision to retain the Canadian-supplied CIRUS nuclear reactor in the military list, the Age said.