When India was readmitted to the club of nuclear nations this year, it promised faithfully, truly, and honestly that it wouldn’t allow nuclear proliferation. It refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but the rest of the world was willing to take India’s word for it. After all, billions of dollars worth of business opportunities would have been ruined by being pedantic and sticking to international law, wouldn’t it?

So, how is India’s nuclear industry looking? Not good, you’d have to say. After two high profile uranium smuggling plots were exposed in the country this year, and Indian radioactive scrap found its way into European elevator buttons, you’d have to say that the Indian nuclear industry is leaking like, well, like a French nuclear reactor.

Apparently, in one of the smuggling cases, ‘the confiscated packet bore a printed inscription of the Indian Atomic Energy Department.’ Whether the uranium escaped because of incompetence or malice, it would suggest that all is not well inside the Indian nuclear industry.

Still, it would be wrong to single out India on the matter of carelessness with radioactive materials. It’s not as if the rest of the members of the nuclear club are any better. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates there ‘may be more than one million missing radioactive sources of various levels worldwide’ as ‘medical scanners, food-processing devices and mining equipment containing radioactive metals like cesium-137 and cobalt-60’ are scrapped and recycled.

We’re failing miserably to deal with our radioactive legacy and it is not without harm. A study in Taiwan of residents living in apartments made with radioactive steel should an increase in cases of cancer.

So who are we to lecture India on their nuclear troubles? In the short time since she joined the nuclear club she’s shown herself to be truly one of the rest.