India's Nuclear Weapons Program 1944-1999 : Full History Must Read

[donganaaK]

India's Nuclear Weapons Program- Full History Must Read !!!

This article deserves a place in DFI and must read to all Indians and should be passed on to kids and next generation. It's our hard work of decades finally achieved in 1999 .The year we declared ourself a Nuclear power. Ahead of Pakistan which got all technology , core , design from China . 

India's Nuclear Weapons Program


The Beginning: 1944-1960
Last changed 30 March 2001



Historical Background
The end of World War II marked a revolution in world affairs - the recasting of nations and relations between nations, and the emergence of a new technology which fundamentally changed the role of warfare. Within the span of two years and two months, from 1945 to 1947, three critical events occurred whose reverberations have brought the threat of nuclear war in South Asia seemingly daily to the front pages of newspapers everywhere.

The three events were - in chronological order - the establishment of the United Nations on 26 June 1945; the dramatic demonstration of the destruction of which even crude nuclear weapons are capable in August 1945; and the calamitous partition of British India into the modern states of India and Pakistan at midnight on 14-15 August 1947.

It is clear to everyone that the legacy of partition is a key driving force behind the nuclear standoff that now exists between India and Pakistan. Partition split apart a region that had been united for millenia amid communal massacres on a scale never before seen, leaving in its wake the unresolved issue of contested Kashmir - a Muslim-majority region held by Hindu-majority India. The skirmishing that has continued now for over fifty years, punctuated by outbreaks of full-scale war (in 1947, 1965, and 1971), have given both nations ample motivation to develop potent weapons to gain advantage over -- or restore balance with -- the other.

Another motivation for India's acquisition of nuclear weapons, less often considered in the West, is the potential threat and regional challenge presented by the nuclear-armed state of China, which faces India along much of its northern border. Disputes covering 80,000 square kilometers of this border region exist:
 

• China currently occupies the Aksai Chin plateau adjacent to Ladakh in Kashmir;
• India occupies the North-East Frontier Agency claimed by China.

These territorial disputes, a legacy of British rule, erupted into the Sino-Indian War on 20 October 1962, when China launched a massive attack on India to which India was powerless to respond. India had relied for years on a warm relationship with the Soviet Union as a counterweight to China, but with the USSR facing down the United States at the same moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis, India was shocked to find the Politburo suddenly switching to support China in an effort to bolster its own position. PM Nehru was forced to appeal to the U.S. for help. U.S. naval air forces arrived off the coast, but before the USAF could deploy to India, China halted its attack on 21 November and partially withdrew. China continues to hold the Aksai Chin region captured in the initial advance. The legacy of this incident was the discovery that the Soviet Union was an unreliable ally, and the deep resolve not to be at a similar disadvantage with respect to China in the future.
Finally, an even less well known factor is a deep-seated drive to achieve international influence commensurate with India's size, and its importance throughout history as one of the world's principle civilizations. At the founding of the United Nations in 1945 the composition of the UN Security Council, the world's most influential and powerful international body, was fixed and has never changed from that time. By an accident of history India was not an independent state at that moment, and its only hope for representation at the conference was the Churchill administration, then in its closing days, which vehemently opposed India's national aspirations. As a result China - with a similar geographic size, population, and state of economic development - was given a seat on Security Council, but India was not. Nuclear weapons did not exist at the time the Security Council composition was debated, but over time the five Council members all acquired nuclear, then thermonuclear, arms. With the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty in 1970, and the replacement on the Council of the non-nuclear Taipei Chinese government with the nuclear armed government in Beijing shortly thereafter, the de facto principle that Security Council permanent members and the "nuclear club" were one and the same was firmly established.

The crucial importance of the desire for recognition of India as a world power in driving forward the nuclear weapons program, even overshadowing considerations of military necessity and deterrence is underscored by remarks by former weapons program leader Raj Ramanna:

"There was never a discussion among us over whether we shouldn't make the bomb. How to do it was more important. For us it was a matter of prestige that would justify our ancient past. The question of deterrence came much later. Also, as Indian scientists we were keen to show our Western counterparts, who thought little of us those days, that we too could do it."[Chengappa 2000; pg. 82]
Thus it should be no surprise that India, now tied for third place among the world's largest economies (with Germany), and soon to become the most populous nation on Earth, has concluded that to be given its due in world affairs, it must become a member of the nuclear club as well.

What is notable however is how the world's largest democracy developed such capabilities. The decisions were made by a handful of people, with virtually no input or oversight by the public or the legislature. India's nuclear weapons program from its outset has answered only to the Prime Minister's office, and only the Prime Minister and a select few of his or her appointees have ever had any say in its development and acquisition.

Origin of India's Nuclear Weapon Program
India's indigenous efforts in nuclear science and technology were established remarkably early. The first step was taken by Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha in March 1944 when he submitted a proposal to the Sir Dorab Tata Trust (established in honor of Bhabha's own uncle, Sir Dorab Tata) to found a nuclear research institute, over three years before independence and a year before the first nuclear weapon test. This led to the creation of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on 19 December 1945 with Bhabha as its first Director. The new government of India passed the Atomic Energy Act, on 15 April 1948, leading to the establishment of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) not quite one year after independence. At that time Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru declared:

We must develop this atomic energy quite apart from war - indeed I think we must develop it for the purpose of using it for peaceful purposes. ... Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it that way."[Chengappa, pg. 79]


This note of ambivalence in Nehru's speech foreshadowed his policies on nuclear research for the next decade. Nehru took a prominent role in international politics, founding the Non-Aligned Movement, and advocating nuclear disarmament. However, he refused to foreclose India's nuclear option while other nations maintained nuclear arsenals and supported programs designed to bolster India's weapons potential.

In 1954 the Indian nuclear program began to move in a direction that would eventually lead to establishment of nuclear weapons capability. On 3 January 1954 the IAEC decided to set up a new facility - the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET), later to become the "Indian Los Alamos". On 3 August 1954 the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was created with Dr. Bhabha as Secretary. This department answered directly to the Prime Minister and has continued to do so down to the present day.

The program grew swiftly. The atomic energy budget increased 12-fold from 1954 to 1956. By 1958 the DAE consumed one third of India's research budget. By 1959 AEET employed over one thousand scientists and engineers.

In 1955 construction began on India's first reactor, the 1 MW Apsara research reactor, with British assistance. And in September 1955, after more than a year of negotiation, Canada agreed to supply India with a powerful research reactor - the 40 MW Canada-India Reactor (CIR). Under the Eisenhower Administration's "Atoms for Peace" program the US agreed to supply 21 tons of heavy water for this reactor in Februrary 1956, and the reactor was dubbed the Canada-India Reactor, U.S. or CIRUS (now commonly written as Cirus).

The acquisition of Cirus was a watershed event in nuclear proliferation. Although the sale was made with the understanding that the reactor would only be used for peaceful purposes (the heavy water contract at least made this explicit), it occurred before any international policies were in place to regulate such technology transfers and no provision for inspections were made. And in fact India was careful to ensure that no effective regulation would accompany the reactor. India refusing to accept fuel from Canada for the reactor and set up a program to manufacture the natural uranium fuel for Cirus indigeneously so as to keep complete control of the plutonium produced there. This program, led by metallurgist Brahm Prakash, succeeded in developing the techniques for producing the precisely manufactured, high purity material demanded by the reactor.

The reactor was a design ideal for producing weapons-grade plutonium, and was also extraordinarily large for research purposes, being capable of manufacturing enough plutonium for one to two bombs a year. The acquisition of Cirus was specifically intended by India to provide herself with a weapons option and this reactor produced the plutonium used in India's first nuclear test in 1974; provided the design prototype for India's more powerful Dhruva plutonium production "research" reactor; and is directly responsible for producing nearly half of the weapons grade plutonium currently believed to be in India's stockpile. The sale further set a precedent for similar technology transfers which greatly assisted Israel in obtaining its own plutonium production reactor from France shortly thereafter.

The Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay was formally inaugurated by PM Nehru on 20 January 1957. It acquired its present name -- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) -- on 12 January 1967 when PM Indira Gandhi renamed it in memory of Dr. Bhabha who died in an airplane crash on 24 January 1966.

Apsara, fueled by enriched uranium from the UK, went critical on 4 August 1957, becoming the first operating reactor in Asia outside of the Soviet Union (though only days ahead of Japan's first reactor). Cirus achieved criticality at BARC on 10 July 1960.

As a nation India has always placed a premium on self-sufficiency. It is, in fact, the most self-sufficient large economy in the world and does not import any nuclear fuel. [The traditionally closed nature of economy though accounts for the import/export based Chinese economy far outstripping its growth from the late seventies to the early nineties.] Due to its vast domestic resources of thorium (a potential fuel for breeder reactors) but limited supplies of uranium, from the start of its nuclear program India has always placed strong emphasis on the development of breeder reactor fuel cycles. Breeder reactors require highly concentrated fissionable material for reactor fuel: either highly enriched uranium or plutonium. This provided a peaceful rationale for developing a plutonium separation capability, but the principal impetus for the India's first fuel reprocessing plant was to obtain a nuclear option.

In July 1958 PM Nehru authorized project Phoenix to build a plant with a capacity of 20 tonnes of fuel a year - sized to match the production capacity of Cirus. The plant was based on the U.S. developed Purex process and an American firm, Vitro International prepared the plans for it. Construction of the plutonium plant began at Trombay on 27 March 1961 and was commissioned in mid-1964.

India's civilian nuclear program was also established during this period. Discussions with American firms to construct India's first nuclear power plants at Tarapur were held in 1960-61. An interesting incident sheds light on Nehru's amd Bhabha's thinking at that time. In 1960 Kenneth Nichols, a former U.S. Army engineer who played significant roles in the Manhattan Project, represented Westinghouse in discussions on power plant construction. In a meeting with Nehru and Bhabha, Nichols relates that Nehru turned to Bhabha and asked:

"Can you develop an atomic bomb?" Bhabha assured him that he could and in reply to Nehru's next question about time, he estimated that he would need about a year to do it. ... He concluded by saying to Bhabha "Well, don't do it until I tell you to."

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On to Weapons Development: 1960-1967
Last changed 30 March 2001

With the two projects to necessary to provide the materials for nuclear weapons underway, the Cirus production reactor and the Trombay plutonium plant, Dr. Bhabha then turned his attention to acquiring information about nuclear weapons and initiating preliminary studies of weapon physics.

During the early sixties India's anxieties regarding China greatly increased. Tensions over the border disputes with China rose from 1959 onward, leading to large scale troop deployments by both sides in early 1962. By 1961 India had become aware of China's nuclear program which gave greater impetus to India's efforts. In January 1962 Bhabha set up a formal study group in high pressure physics at TIFR, headed by Prof. A.K. Asundi, to explore equations of state in the megabar range, a necessary step for designing implosion weapons. This group did its work in secret, submitting its papers to Bhabha for review.

A number of public indications show India's increasing interest in nuclear arms. On 9 January 1961 Nehru stated that

We are approaching a stage when it is possible to for us .. to make atomic weapons. A few weeks later, on 2 February, Bhabha was asked how long this would take and he responded "about two years I suppose". In September 1962, at Bhabha's urging, Nehru passed the revised Atomic Energy Act giving the central government strict control over all decisions on atomic energy and futher tightening secrecy (this act can perhaps be likened to the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954). This act explicitly linked atomic energy and its control to national security, scarcely mentioning civilian applications.


Following India's humiliating defeat by China in the Indo-Chinese border war of October-November 1962, the first formal demand for the development of nuclear weapons was made in Parliament, by the Jana Singh party, in December 1962. Bhabha, well aware that a Chinese nuclear test was not far off (his estimate was then 12 to 18 months), also began secretly agitating for a vigorous effort to match China's, going so far as to ask Nehru to authorize a nuclear test in Ladakh on the Chinese border.

Nehru died on 27 May 1964 and was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri who took office on 2 June. That summer and fall expectations of a Chinese nuclear test steadily increased. PM Shastri, a Gandhian, was strongly opposed to pursuing the Indian nuclear option, and Bhabha began making public statements in favor intended to increase public support and political pressure. On 4 October Bhabha repeated his estimate publicly that India could build a bomb within 18 months of the decision to do so. Interestingly, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate issued on 16 October thought India capable of developing a weapon in one to three years.

India's prime nuclear facilities were having growing pains though. Cirus operated erratically after going critical, and India had problems supplying fuel rods of the required purity. Cirus did not reach full power until 16 October 1963. Likewise the Phoenix plant at Trombay operated unreliably with only a fraction of its rated capacity when it began receiving spent fuel from Cirus in mid-1964 (for example experiencing an explosion during its first several months of operation). It was officially inaugurated 22 January 1965, but produced very little plutonium for years, taking India until circa 1969 to acquire sufficient plutonium for a single device.

The much anticipated Chinese test finally came on 16 October 1964. Shastri's initial reaction was to reiterate his opposition to India following the same path. But on 24 October 1964 Bhabha made a now famous speech on Indian radio. Bhabha argued that "atomic weapons give a State possessing them in adequate numbers a deterrent power against attack from a much stronger State". He further claimed that such weapons were remarkably cheap citing cost estimates provided by the U.S. AEC for projected Plowshare (peaceful nuclear explosive) devices - $350,000 for a 10 kt device, and $600,000 for a 2 Mt device. From this he estimated that "a stockpile of some 50 atomic bombs would cost under $21 million and a stockpile of 50 two-megaton hydrogen bombs something of the order of $31.5 million " [Perkovich 1999; pg. 67]

It seems Bhabha could not have been unaware of how inappropriate such cost estimates were to the circumstances of India. The U.S. Plowshare cost figures were based on the the incremental cost of producing devices by a vast industrial complex costing tens of billions of dollars, which had already manufactured nuclear weapons numbering in the tens of thousands. And even so, it is very questionable that the U.S. Plowshare estimates - made by Plowhare advocates - constituted anything like full cost accounting for the usage of this vast infrastructure. And this also ignored the fact that the delivery systems for nuclear weapons typically cost several times as much as the weapons themselves. The real cost to India for any nuclear weapon program would be orders of magnitude greater than Bhabha's claims (China had spent over $4 billion in then-year dollars up to 1964 for its program).

Nonetheless his claims fueled debate about the desirability of India initiating a weapons program, and undermined support for Shastri and his "no weapon" policy within his own Congress party. With Bhabha continuing to campaign both publicly and behind the scenes, Shastri eventually found himself in an untenable position. The enormous public stature of Bhabha, and the tight control over nuclear information, left no effective scientific voice to act as a counterweight.

A two day debate in the Lok Sabha (Parliament) on 23-24 November 1964 showed that the Congress party was split with a bare majority favoring pursuing a weapons program. On 27 November the most vocal advocate of pursuing nuclear weapons, the Jana Sangh party, introduced a motion in the Lok Sabha calling for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It was voted down in a voice vote. But in his speech following the vote Shastri made a crucial change in his position. He mentioned that he had just come from a meeting with Bhabha, and stated that Bhabha actually desired that India pursue the development of peaceful nuclear devices for future engineering use. Then he indicated that he and Bhabha were now in full agreement that work should be conducted on such devices -- that is, Shastri authorized the development of nuclear explosives.

There is a saying in the nuclear non-proliferation community: "The difference between a peaceful nuclear explosive and a bomb are the tail fins." Bhabha knew (and in fact had said so publicly in the past) that nuclear explosives for peaceful and weapon use were essentially the same, and he had suceeded in bringing Shastri around to supporting their development. The gain for Shastri was that now that he had Bhabha's support the lobby for an explicit weapon program was neutralized. At that time India was very vulnerable to the sanctions that an acknowledged weapon program would produce, and a "peaceful nuclear explosive" or PNE program was the only feasible way that weapons could be openly pursued. This fiction of a "PNE" would be maintained through India's first nuclear test in 1974 and up until 11 May 1998, after its second round of nuclear testing, when India finally acknowledged the objective of obtaining nuclear arms.

Despite the nationalistic rhetoric emphasizing Indian self-reliance that had characterized the nuclear debate, the first actions of both Shastri and Bhabha after their reconciliation was to seek outside assistance. In December Shastri publicly appealed vaguely to the existing nuclear powers for some sort of nuclear security umbrella for non-nuclear nation, a proposal that India never clearly defined or marshalled support for, and which slowly faded away over the next several months.

In February Bhabha visited Washington and implied to Undersecretary of State George Ball that he was interested in obtaining U.S. assistance in building nuclear explosives. Ball reported that "Dr. Bhabha explained that if India went all out, it could produce a device in 18 months; with a U.S. blueprint it could do the job in six months." [Perkovich 1999; pg. 95]. U.S. reports written in March indicate a request was received for an actual Plowshare device. In April Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the U.S. AEC, indicated that Bhabha had inquired "whether we would be prepared to make a moderate amount of plutonium available for research and development." [Perkovich 1999; pg. 97]

Curiously a number of U.S. officials and agencies also became interested after the Chinese test in providimg Plowshare devices, technology, and even (under some conditions) nuclear weapons to India. The U.S. AEC discussed undertaking a cooperative Plowshare program with India in November 1964. And Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton prepared a proposal to initiate a program to train and equip Indian forces to use nuclear weapons, and create a stockpile to disperse to India in times of crisis.

This caught the U.S. at a turning point in the evolution of U.S. policy. Up until the mid 1960s, although non-proliferation had been a U.S. interest, it had been distinctly secondary to efforts to promote the peaceful use of nuclear power (e.g. "Atoms for Peace" and Plowshare) and to strengthen the defenses of non-communist nations (e.g. the Multi-Lateral Force proposal to share nuclear weapons with other NATO nations). But a landmark event occurred on 21 January 1965 with the Gilpatric Committee on Nuclear Proliferation delivered its report to Pres. Johnson. This report took an uncompromising stand on non-proliferation, establishing the trend for non-proliferation concerns to dominate all others which continues to the present day.

In April Shastri gave Bhabha formal approval to move ahead with nuclear explosive development. On 5 April 1965 bBhabha initiated the effort by setting up the nuclear esplosive design group Study of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (SNEPP). Bhabha selected Raja Ramanna - Director of Physics at AEET - to lead the effort.

That spring Bhabha met with T.S. Murthy, bright student then undergoing training at the French nuclear laboratory at Saclay, in Paris. Bhabha confided that Shastri had approved of conducting a nuclear test, and that he was prospecting for a test site. Then Bhabha suggested he scout out the French for useful information, especially regarding polonium technology used for first generation neutron initiators for weapons. By mid year test were conducted with large amounts of high explosives to calibrate seismographs used for nuclear test monitoring.

Evidence suggests that India's new interest in the nuclear option was of great concern to Pakistan. Reports from from the fall of 1964 into mid 1965 indicate considerable concern by President Ayub Khan, and his Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (later President). In March both men met with Chou En-lai in Beijing, a meeting both felt had very positive results and developed Chinese support for Pakistan. It was in mid-1965 that Bhutto made his famous remark that is India acquired nuclear weapons: "then we should have to eat grass and get one, or buy one, of our own." Under Bhutto's later presidency the foundations of Pakistan's nuclear program would be laid. Thus in 1965, the seeds of the Indo-Pakistani nuclear confrontation of three decades later had been sown.

George Perkovich suggests that it was fear of the changes in the balance of power that Idia's nuclear weapon program would bring that motivated Pakistan to initiate the Second Indo-Pakistani War that summer [Perkovich 1999; pg. 108].

This war, the second major war in three years involving India, was fought in three phases. First Pakistani forces moved in to the Indian marshland of the Rann of Kutch in April. India attempted to repulse the incursion, but the rainy season threatened isolation of Indian troops, and they withdrew. Thus emboldened by this first probe Pakistan attacked an Indian outpost in Kargil, Kashmir. India counterattacked and seized territory that had been held by Pakistan. Shastri agreed to a ceasefire and withdrew from Pakistani territory, and adopted a conciliatory stance regarding the Rann of Kutch - a stance widely regarded in India as weak. It was apparently similarly regarded in Pakistan, because on 1 September Pakistan launched a massive armored assault on Kashmir. This attack pushed into Indian held Kashmir and threatened Srinagar but then ground to a halt. Then on 6 September India counterattacked south of Kashmir driving 15 miles into Pakistan, threatening Lahore.

Despite superior U.S. supplied arms in Pakistani hands (especially armor), India maintained a strong position on the battlefield. Then on 17 September China, which had supported Pakistan throughout the conflict - even alleging Indian aggression in the face of a Pakistani assault, attempted to involve itself directly by threatening Indian positions on the Tibetan border. India firmly resisted Chinese pressure, supported by both the U.S. and the USSR.

The outcome of the war did a great deal to strengthen India's long-term resolve to acquire nuclear weapons. The alliance between U.S. armed Pakistan and nuclear-armed China presented India with a security threat that they could not ignore. Although India did find some support from the Superpowers with repect to Chinese pressure, India found that when faced with unprovoked attack - foreign "even handedness" cut off supplies and aid to both, indicating that India could not expect outside aid if threatened in the future.

It seems clear that at this point Bhabha felt he had authority to go ahead with developing and perhaps even testing an actual nuclear device, since in the wake of the war he seemed satisfied with the program then authorized. Homi Sethna, then head of the IAEC, has stated that Shastri told Bhabha during the war to go ahead with development but to hold off testing unless he had clearance from the cabinet [Chengappa 2000; pg. 102].

This initial effort to develop a "peaceful nuclear explosive" (PNE) existed almost entirely as an unwritten personal understanding between Dr. Bhabha and PM Shastri.

On 11 January 1966, just hours after he had signed the Tashkent Declaration formalizing the end of hostilities in the war with Pakistan, PM Shastri died of a heart attack. Just two weeks later on January 24, and the very day Shastri's successor Indira Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister, Dr. Homi Bhabha was killed while on a trip to Europe when the plane in which he was flying collided with Mount Blanc. India's impressively large nuclear establishment was suddenly left without any official plan or policy, to give it direction.

But Bhabha had by now shaped India's nuclear establishment and policy making environment to such an extent that the patterns he established would persist for decades after this death. Under Bhabha, the drive toward building the infrastructure for nuclear explosives, and the advocacy for developing such explosives had come from the nuclear scientists themselves - not the civilian government, and certainly not from the Indian military which virtually no role in the planning or decision making. The advance of the nuclear explosives program would also be conducted without any serious public debate over the decisions taken, and without consultation of parliament. The desire of weapons developers to continual advance the program would be offset though by the fact that the support for the program was not based on a broad consensus among key decision makers. Thus the program's fortunes were hostage to the personal preferences of the Chairman of the IAEC, and the mood and attention of the Prime Minister.

Some of the numerous positions held by Bhabha were distributed among his top scientists working on SNEPP, like Ramanna and Sethna, but the principal successor to Bhabha was Vikram Sarabhai personally chosen by Indira Gandhi to be Chairman of the IAEC, and Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy. Sarabhai was a follower of Mohandas Gandhi and a pacifist who opposed nuclear arms. His selection was probably politically motivated as Sarabhai hailed from a rich and politically powerful family.

At the beginning of June 1966 Sarabhai ordered a halt to SNEPP, and the confiscation of the papers that had been generated on the project. It appears that this was Sarabhai's personal decision, rather than a reflection of PM Gandhi's policies at this time, and he may not have even consulted with her on it. That this was possible illustrates the vulnerability of a program not based on a broad consensus among key decision makers. It did not altogether mean the end of Indian progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons however. The development of the necessary infrastructure proceeded apace, and the cadre of scientists that Bhabha personally recruited did not forget their objective (as they would demonstrate less than 18 months later). And the logic of India's strategic situation continued to push India toward exercising this option.

In 1966 India's diplomatic policy towards nuclear weapons made a fateful shift. While international interest in non-proliferation, focusing on restricting the spread of nuclear weapons to any additional states, India's Nehruvian policy of broadly opposing nuclear arms developed a pointed new emphasis. Indian negotiator V.C. Trivedi adopted the stance advocating non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament as long as it was universal - that no club of permanent nuclear powers should be permitted. As long as existing nuclear powers resisted disarmament, they left other nations no choice but to pursue the same option as they saw necessary. The quid pro quo was clear - India would not eschew nuclear arms unless the existing nuclear states did also. This fundamental logic led to India refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and voting against it on 12 June 1968, and has informed Indian nuclear diplomacy ever since.

The new and inexperienced prime minister's views on the nuclear option were unfocused and tentative, but she tended to follow along with Sarabhai's view that nuclear weapons were useless unless part of a comprehensive and hugely expensive defense system, far beyond India's means. Over the next few years, as she grew more saavy and confident, her views on the PNE program shifted. Whether or not it was due to an explicit change in government policy, late in 1967 the new effort to develop nuclear explosives got underway at BARC, an effort that would continue uninterrupted until it culminated in a successful nuclear test less than seven years later.

Footnote: The Jana Sangh would remain the most vocal and consistent advocate of developing nuclear weapons of any Indian political party. In the Lok Sabha debate in 1964 one rising leader of the party who captured attention was Atal Behari Vajpayee. Years later the Jana Sangh would develop into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was the BJP which, upon taking office in 1998 with Vajpayee as Prime Minister, would conduct the 1998 Shakti test series and bring India into the open as a nuclear armed state

 

 

 

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India's First Bomb: 1967-1974
Last changed 30 March 2001

Late in 1967 the scientific leadership at BARC led by Homi Sethna and Raja Ramanna undertook a new effort to develop nuclear explosives, one that was larger and more intense than any previous efforts. One that would lead to the successful design of a nuclear device, a device that India would successfully test.


374x480, 65 K Raja Ramanna
It is not completely clear why they decided to revive the effort and move forward at that time, but due to the convergence of a number of trends perhaps the time simply seemed ripe. China had just exploded a thermonuclear device in 1967, and had become very belligerent - moving troops into disputed areas and making threats. And India's supply of separated plutonium, necessary for anything beyond purely theoretical work, was slowly accumulating. Some researchers (like Perkovich) have concluded that the new effort was begun at the initiative of the scientists involved. Chengappa however states that Gandhi directly approved the new effort at the urging of her new secretary Parmeshwar Narain Haksar[Chengappa 2000, pg. 112], and that she specifically told Vikram Sarabhai, chairman of the IAEC, not to interfere. In any case Sarabhai did not try to stop this work when he became aware of it and appears by the spring of 1969 to have become at least a moderate supporter of the program.

That fall Rajagopala Chidambaram - then a researcher in molecular biology at BARC - was recruited by Raja Ramanna to investigate the equation of state of plutonium (how its density varies with temperature and pressure) - knowledge essential for designing an implosion bomb. Chidambaram would later become the chairman of the IAEC, and head of India's nuclear weapons program leading up to the 1998 test series.


446x480, 67 K Rajagopala Chidambaram
Other key researcher's who became involved in the project in 1967-68 include P.K. Iyengar, Ramanna's deputy, and Satinder Kumar Sikka, who would lead the development of India's hydrogen bomb in the 90s. The team would eventually grow to between fifty and seventy five scientists.

India's nuclear weapons program moved in to full swing with Raja Ramanna at the helm. As Ramanna admitted in an interview on 10 October 1997, the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive" (PNE) program - implying an intention to develop the nuclear explosives for civilian engineering work - was simply a cover for a program aimed from the beginning to develop a weapons capability, in truth there was little if any interest in Plowshare type peaceful applications. On the other hand, there was also no involvement of the military in the development program. There was no attempt to devise a military role for the nuclear explosive, or to seek the military's input for requirements. The military's public statements on nuclear weapons at this time were far from enthusiastic - essentially mirroring Sarabhai's views - so the advocates of nuclear weapons development had little incentive to seek their collaboration.

Even with the peaceful cover story, India found it necessary to keep as a low a profile on the project as possible to avoid inevitable attempts by other nations to obstruct it by denying access to nuclear technology and knowledge.

During December 1968 - January 1969 P.K. Iyengar visited the Soviet Union with three colleagues and toured the nuclear research facilities at Dubna. He was very impressed by the plutonium fueled pulsed fast reactor he saw there. This type of reactor is an unmoderated fast neutron reactor, that is allowed to go prompt supercritical to produce an intense very short pulse of neutrons. These are all characteristics of the cores of fission bombs, the principal difference between them being that in pulsed reactors the degree of supercriticality is very slight and ordinary thermal expansion of the reactor core is sufficient to shut down the reaction, while in fission bombs the degree is very large and the core cannot expand fast enough to shut down the reaction until vast amounts of energy are released. Pulsed fast reactors provide an excellent laboratory model of fission bomb behavior, having been used for that purpose during the Manhattan Project (the famous Dragon experiments) and afterward (the Godiva, Popsy and Topsy reactors).

Recognizing this, Iyengar set about developing just such a reactor for India. The scientific leadership approved the plan in January 1969, the kick-off meeting for this reactor, called Purnima (an approximate acronym for Plutonium Reactor for Neutron Investigation in Multiplying Assemblies), took place in March 1969. Attending this meeting was Iyengar, Ramanna, Homi Sethna, and Sarabhai. Sarabhai's presence clearly indicates that with or without formal approval, the work at BARC toward weapon design now had Sarabhai's support. Chengappa indicates in fact that Sarabhai approved a one million rupee budget for Purnima (about $125,000, a figure could have covered only incidental costs - not the value of the plutonium).

Purnima was designed to use a hexagonal core of 177 stainless steel pencil shaped rods containing 18 kg of plutonium as 21.6 kg of plutonium oxide pellets (enough for three Fat Man type bombs) with a nominal average power of 1 watt. Mahadeva Srinivasan developed a sophisticated physics model for criticality calculations in 1970, and later became the reactor's chief physicist. Construction began that year when sufficient separated plutonium finally became available. Purnima went critical on 18 May 1972. With Purnima as a test bed the Indian physicists were able to refine their understanding of the physics of fast fission and fast neutrons. While not formally part of the later bomb development team Srinivasan's expertise in fast critical systems underlay the nuclear design of the device.

1970 saw expansion of the nuclear weapons program in many ways. Due to the requirements of Purnima the program needed to develop facilities and experience in handling large amounts of plutonium (developed under the supervision of P.R. Roy), and work also began on fabricating plutonium metal alloys for the eventual construction of the bomb core. To advance the development of the essential implosion system V.S. Ramamurthy also began performing numerical implosion simulations on an antiquated Soviet Besm 6 computer

Development of the technology for implosion got underway in April 1970 when Ramanna sent Pranab Rebatiranjan Dastidar, the electronics expert at BARC, to Waman Dattatreya Patwardhan at the Explosive Research and Development laboratory (ERDL) at Pune to begin work on the detonation system for the bomb. Patwardhan was well known to the BARC scientists, since he helped them with the explosives tests years before as part of SNEPP. In July nuclear physicist Dr. Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri took over as science adviser to the Defense Minister, and as Director of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The following month, he and Ramanna began working together to recruit the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), located in Chandigarh, to develop the explosive lenses for the implosion system.

During 1971 work on weapon design continued. Srinivasan working with K. Subba Rao developed models of the fission process on a nuclear bomb, and equations to predict its efficiency. Chidamabaram completed his work on the plutonium equation of state, and Ramamurthy developed computational models of the implosion, nuclear reaction, and disassembly process to predict the devices behavior. Throughout this period Ramanna and his lieutenant, P.K. Iyengar, held frequest reviews of the projects progress.

In April 1971 Nag Chaudhuri appointed Nagapattinam Sambasiva Venkatesan to Director of TBRL with specific instructions to assist in developing the nuclear device.

The 1971 Indo-Pakistani War influenced India's resolve to test a nuclear device, but in a curious and indirect way. This war developed when the bi-regional state of Pakistan, split into East and West Pakistan on either side of India, held its first national election in December 1970. The dominant party of the more populous East Pakistan won a majority of the seats in parliament, but West Pakistan, accustomed to monopolizing political and military power, responded by ignoring the election result. And on 25 March 1971 West Pakistan forces arrested the winner Mujibur Rahman, and launched a campaign brutal military repression on the Bengalis of East Pakistan. This resulted in tens of millions of refugees spilling into India, some of whom took up arms against the Pakistani government. By autumn the Indian-East Pakistani border had become something close to a combat zone, with India and Pakistan trading intense firing across the border, while armed rebels operated from safe havens in India. In late November PM Gandhi authorized Indian forces to cross the border to "pursue" Pakistani forces. Pakistan responded by a massive strike against Indian airbases in western India on 3 December, and declaring war on 4 December. India had spent months preparing for this escalation, indeed had deliberately provoked it, and launched an overwhelming 3-pronged attack into East Pakistan. Unable to hold back the Indian invasion, Pakistan attempted to counter with an attack in Kashmir, gaining several miles of territory before being halted by Indian forces. The Indian army on the other hand had surrounded Dacca, the capital of East Pakistan by 15 December, and its garrison surrendered the next day. On 17 December a cease-fire was accepted by both sides, effectively ending the war.

The war had been a crushing defeat for Pakistan, which had lost more than half its population. As the crisis developed throughout 1971 China and Pakistan had grown closer to the U.S. while India had grown closer to the Soviet Union. The keystone of the Nixon administration's foreign policy had been its reapproachment with China (announced 15 July), to place the Soviet Union between the pincers of two major opposing powers. Pakistan had played a critical role in facilitating secret negotiations with China. India had at the same time strengthened its ties to the U.S.S.R. culminating in a formal treaty of friendship on 9 August. Chinese support for Pakistan during the most extreme crisis of Pakistan's existence came to nought however. China failed to provide any significant assistance for Pakistan, such as applying pressure on India's border. The net result was that Pakistan suffered both a serious military defeat, demonstrating its inferiority to India in military terms, and a permanent irreparable loss in its strategic position by the new found independence of East Pakistan. And the much feared Pakistan-China axis had turned out to be a "paper tiger".

Unsurprisingly this did bolster India's sense of security, but it did not stem the momentum toward the testing of a nuclear device as one might have supposed.

On 30 December 1971 Sarabhai died, and Homi Sethna - already head of BARC - took his place as chairman of the IAEC. Thus the only prominent voice in Indian government counciling restraint in pursuing the nuclear option was replaced by one of its most ardent advocates.

And the hostile attitude taken toward India by the U.S. during the crisis had along lasting effect on Indian attitudes. Pres. Nixon and Sec. of State Kissinger chose to view India's actions as hostilities aimed at a U.S. ally and thus as an act hostile to the United States, rather than a case of a western-style democracy coming to the defense of a people being brutally persecuted by a military dictatorship for attempting to exercise its democratic rights. The U.S. even went so far as to dispatch an aircraft carrier battle group to the Indian Ocean in an ill-conceived, obscurely reasoned, and ineffectual attempt to pressure India. The feeling that a superpower had attempted to coerce India in affairs affecting India's vital interests became a cause celebre for advocates of the nuclear option (although they never clearly explained how a limited nuclear capability would counter U.S. pressure).

Bhabhani Sen Gupta ably described the shift in India's views toward the nuclear option in the wake of the 1971 war:

The Chinese bomb ceased to be the main argument for the Indian bomb, perhaps becasue of the Chinese inability to help Pakistan in the 1971 war and also becasue of the initiatives taken by India to normalize relations with China. The arguments for the bomb now were that without it India could not expect to be admitted to the corridors of global power, nor enjoy the status of the dominant regional power; that the bomb might quicken the process of normalizing relations with China; that it would proclaim India's independence of the Soviet Union and compel the United States to change its attitude of hostility or benign neglect.[Gupta 1983; pg. 4].


By the beginning of 1972 the basic design for India's first nuclear device was complete, and other parts of the program for developing the necessary expertise to implement the design were coming along. During that year the data from operating Purnima (starting in May) began flowing in allowing confirmation and refinement of the device's nuclear design; and the work in plutonium metallurgy reached the point where the device could be successfully fabricated.

The decision to go ahead and manufacture the device and prepare for a test was made later in the year, while Indira Gandhi was still near the peak of her post-war popularity. Early in the year PM Gandhi had seemed ambivalent about the wisdom of conducting an actual test. But by this time the internal momentum of the nuclear development program, the now well established popularity of the nuclear option among India's literate urban elite, the lack of any significant restraining counsel, and Gandhi's sense of strength all seem to have combined to make the decision one of when, not if, the test would come. The decision to move forward was made by PM Gandhi on 7 September 1972, a day in which she toured BARC on the occasion of the tenth convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay. During this tour she was shown a wooden model of the device. Upon seeing the model she gave the scientists present verbal authorization to construct it and prepare for testing, but not to test it without explicit approval from herself.

One change made by Sethna soon after assuming the chairmanship was to split the Indian space program, then part of the Department of Atomic Energy, into a separate agency - observing quite reasonably that to have the DAE developing both nuclear explosives and missile technology would wave a red flag for observers concerned about proliferation, no matter what claims were made about the peaceful intent of both programs.

[donganaaK]

Smiling Buddha: 1974
[Chengappa 2000; pg. 184] these detonators are said to have a margin of error of 7 microseconds, a figure that is so large that it is probably incorrect (a figure under 1 microsecond would more plausible).

High speed gas tube switches were developed to trigger the device by the laser division of BARC.

Obtaining the plutonium for the core presented a problem. In 1970 the Phoenix plutonium plant developed a serious leak and had to be shut down. Initial estimates were that the plant could be put back into operation within a year, but by late 1972 it was clear that another year or more would be required before it could again produce separated plutonium. After construction of Purnima there was little plutonium left from which to fabricate the core. So eight months after it began operation, Ramanna ordered Purnima shut down in January 1973 so that part of its fuel could be used to manufacture the nuclear device. This type of solid core device requires about 6 kg of plutonium (the Gadget and the Fat Man bomb each used 6.2 kg; but the design yield of the Indian device was smaller), and Purnima contained 18 kg. Thus in 1974 India's entire inventory of plutonium could have manufactured no more than three bombs.

Instead of fabricating the core as two hemispheres as was done during the Manhattan Project, Soni and Kakodkar designed the core to be made in a number of slices (probably six) that stacked to form a sphere. To ensure a snug fit, the mating surfaces of the slices tapered off with a twist so that they would lock together securely. This design, which they first modeled this in brass, allowed them to work with smaller pieces of plutonium. The actual plutonium core was fabricated by a team led by P.R. Roy of BARC's radio-metallurgy department, who had also made the plutonium fuel rods for Purnima.

The work on the neutron initiator began in mid 1972, and became one of the "critical paths" of the project, a task that prevented completion of preparations before May 1974. The team lead, V.K. Iya, recognizing the difficulties in development after his sojourn at Saclay had recommended in 1965 that development of an initiator be begun immediately. At the start of the project T.S. Murthy estimated it would take 18 months if they were given everything they needed (and estimate that turned out to be too optimistic). A principal difficulty was in learning the techniques to manufacture and handle the large amounts of polonium required (this had been a problem in the Manhattan Project as well).

The initiator was christened the Flower; Chengappa explains "it is believed that the Indian team deposited the polonium on a platinum gauze in the configuration of a lotus to allow maximum surface area". Chengappa claims that the polonium-bearing gauze was enclosed in a tantalum metal sphere, which was nested in a uranium metal shell that had embedded in it beryllium pellets. The system was designed so that the implosion shock wave would drive the beryllium pellets through the tantalum shell to mix with the polonium. Perkovich states that the beryllium was designed to create shape charges, implying a beryllium shell with wedge shaped grooves (like the Manhattan Project's Urchin), or conical or polygonal pits which would form penetrating jets of beryllium when the collapsed. Perkovich gives the diameter of the Flower and 1.5 cm, Chengappa as "about 2 cm".

The Flower was not ready until around 4 May 1974. To get it to Pokhran in time Iyengar and Murthy carried it aboard a regular Indian Airlines flight in a thermos bottle.

A final step in nuclear design verification was taken on 19 February 1974, when a "tickling the dragon's tail" experiment was conducted. The core for the test device was assembled and mounted on a track so that two large blocks of paraffin wax, simulating the high explosive that would surround the core, could be slowly advanced while the neutron emissions from the core were monitored. After 24 hours, the experiment was successfully complete showing that the design was safe to assemble, and that the criticality formulas were correct.

Also in February successful test firings of hemispherical assemblies of the implosion lens were conducted.

The task of sinking the shaft for the test was assigned to the 61 Engineering Regiment stationed in Jodhpur. Ramanna first contacted the regiment commander, Lt. Col. Subherwal, in May 1973 to dig the shaft. The Army did not cooperate until June when PM Gandhi ordered Gen. Bewoor to proceed. The unit had no prior experience in digging shafts and the work got underway with difficulty. The shaft construction project was code named Operation Dry Enterprise, and the engineers and soldiers were told that they were digging a well to supply the Pokhran test range. The project was set back in January 1974 when, unfortunately theydid hit water when the shaft tunneled into an aquifer that underlies Pokhran (that this seems to have been a surprise indicates an astonishing lack of preparation, since exploratory drilling would have quickly revealed this). Efforts to pump out or contain the flow of water failed and the shaft had to be abandoned. A new shaft was begun at the site of the abandoned village of Malki which was known to have dug several dry unsuccessful wells many years before. Sinking the new shaft began in February 1974 and was completed only days before the 18 May test.

The fact that two shafts were constructed may account for reports that India actually made two tests in 1974, the first of which failed.

Ramanna indicates in his autobiography that a round of decision making meetings occurred in 1974 prior to the test. The meetings included only Ramanna, Sethna, Nag Chaudhuri, Haksar and Dhar. The first was held probably in February when successful tests indicated the device was nearing completion. The final meeting occurred a "few weeks" prior to the 18 May test. Both Dhar and Haksar opposed the test to varying degrees, the three PNE program leaders supported it strongly. It was of course PM Gandhi's decision, and she ordered it to go ahead.

The completed core (probably packed as separate pieces) was transported to Pokhran from Trombay under the direct supervision of Chidambaram and Roy. They rode in an army convoy carrying the plutonium core packed in a special case for the 900 km journey, which took three days.

The explosive lenses and other components of the implosion system came from TBRL by truck along with high speed cameras to record the detonation.

The device was assembled in a hut 40 m from the shaft. Assembly began on 13 May with a team made up of Soni, Kakodkar, Iyengar, Venkatesan and Balakrishnan. During the assembly process the plutonium core was mounted in a copper disk to act as a heat sink and remove the decay heat. Nonetheless due to the extreme desert heat the core components did not fit together properly, and the assembly attempt was unsuccessful. The next day attempts were started earlier in the day and succeeded, so assembly moved on the lenses. Each of 12 lenses weighed approximately 100 kg and required 4 people to lift. Once both halves of the device were complete, each with 6 lenses, the upper half was raised with a crane to put in place. While this was going on one of the lenses slipped out of its mount and fell to the ground, becoming chipped. There was one (and only one) spare lens on hand to serve as a replacement. The assembly operation was complete after nightfall. The assembled device was hexagonal, yellow, about 1.25 m in diameter and weighed 1400 kg. The device was mounted on a hexagonal metal tripod, and transported to the shaft on rails which the army kept covered with sand.

The device was lowered into the shaft on the morning of 15 May. It was placed in a side cavity at the bottom of the L-shaped shaft. Moisture oozing from the shaft side gave concern about the integrity of the firing circuit, and Balakrishnan volunteered to go down the shaft to check it. Finally the shaft was sealed with sand and cement.

The team retired to an observation bunker 5 km away for the test on 18 May. The entire team of senior leaders and contributors to the PNE project appear to have been present.In addition to the assembly team, also present were Ramanna, Sethna, Nag Chaudhuri, Chidambaram, Sikka, Srinivasan, Dastidar, presumably Murthy and Roy who had helped deliver the nuclear components, Gen. Bewoor, and Lt. Col. Subherwal.

The test was scheduled for 8 a.m., but it was delayed for five minutes because V.S. Sethi, an engineer from TBRL, became stranded at the test site while checking the high speed cameras when his jeep wouldn't start. Sethi hiked out in time for the test to go as scheduled, but the army's efforts to recover the jeep delayed the shot. Finally at 8:05 a.m. Dastidar pushed the firing button.

Aside from the PNE development team members actually at Pokhran, the only other Indians who knew of the test in advance for sure were PM Gandhi and her close advisers Haksar and Dhar. There is disagreement about when the Defense Minister Jagjivan Ram was notified. According to Perkovich [Perkovich 1999; pg. 174] Ram learned of the test on 8 May (but was not consulted for his opinion). Chengappa[Chengappa 2000; pg. 12]asserts that he only learned of the test after the shot. Perkovich also says that the Minister of External Affairs Swaran Singh was given 48 hour advance notice.

Efforts to notify the Prime Minister about the success of the test met with some difficulty. Sethna tried to contact P.N. Dhar in the the Prime Minister's Office by prearrangement through a field telephone that had been set up at the bunker, but when he finally succeeded in making a connection (after several attempts) the line went dead before he could pass on the information. Subherwal drove Setha to Pokhran village to make another call, but Sethna had forgotten Dhar's number. Subherwal finally established contact through the telephone operator (after encountering considerable resistance in putting the call through) so that the message could be delivered. However Dhar had already been successfully informed by Gen. Bewoor ten minutes earlier, also by a call placed at Pokhran village.

This test has been known since its public announcement as "Smiling Buddha", a name apparently given to it by Dhar, but the origin of this appellation is somewhat mysterious. The test actually had no formal code name prior to the shot (a pattern that would be repeated with the second test series 24 years later). The test was coincidentally conducted on the Buddhist festival day of Buddha Purnima, perhaps the reason that the association with the Buddha came about. Chengappa relates that the story that Sethna passed on the message to Dhar with the code phrase "The Buddha is smiling" is probably a myth[Chengappa 2000; pg. 3]. Haksar refused to confirm the story in an interview before his death, Sethna denies he used such a code phrase, and Dhar agrees that this phrase was not used, and claims he was not repsonsible for it. Ramanna claims that he had been told by Sethna that the code phrase had been used, and that the phrase was Dhar's idea. Sethna believes that Dhar made up the code name after the test. [There is a bit of a parallel here between the naming of India's first test, and the origin of the name "Trinity" used for the first U.S. test. This test is known to have been named by Robert Oppenheimer, but the reasons for the name are controversial.]

The yield of the PNE has also remained controversial. Although occasional press reports have given ranges all the way up to 20 kt, and as low as 2 kt, the official yield was set early on at 12 kt (post Operation Shakti claims have raised it to 13 kt). Outside seismic data, and analysis of the crater features indicates a lower figure. Analysts usually estimate the yield at 4 to 6 kt using conventional seismic magnitude-to-yield conversion formulas. In recent years both Homi Sethna and P.K. Iyengar have conceded that the official yield is an exaggeration. Iyengar has variously stated that the yield was actually 8-10 kt, that the device was designed to yield 10 kt, and that the yield was 8 kt 'exactly as predicted'. Careful analysis of hard rock cratering effects establishes a tight bound around 8 kt for the yield however. For a detailed discussion of this issue seeWhat Are the Real Test Yields?.

In the wake of the test, the scientists that had produced it became national heroes. In 1975 Setha, Ramanna, and Nag Chaudhuri received the Padma Vibhushan -- India's second highest civilian award. Iyengar, Chidambaram, Venkatesan, Dastidar, and Seshadri received the third highest award, the Padma Shri.

The test caused an immediate revival in Gandhi's popularity, which had flagged considerably from its high after the 1971 war. Jana Sangh response etc fnord

8 kt (12-13 kt claimed)
The crater produced by this detonation of a plutonium implosion device has been reported to have a radius of 47 meters with a crater depth of 10 meters. Recent high resolution commercial satellite imaging (Ikonos on 3 February 2000) shows an apparent crater radius of 60 m. This is inconsistent with know cratering phenomenology, and suggests the crater site has been altered. The shot was fired 1.5 km southwest of the abandoned village of Malka, but was 24.8 km northwest of the town of Pokhran (which is usually given as the test site). See the BGR Hannover Seismic Data Analysis Center for a nice summary of the seismic data with a map.


640x413, 75K The upheaval mound momentarily lifted up by the test explosion.
Images of the subsidence crater:


370x251, 46 K Smiling Buddha Test Crater

640x442, 57 K Smiling Buddha Test Crater

350x245, 20 K Smiling Buddha Test Crater
 Smiling Buddha Test Crater

417x248, 39 K Smiling Buddha Test Crater

675x487, 112 K Smiling Buddha Test Crater

458x480, 54 K Indira Gandhi visiting the test site
Click here to see a satellite image of this crater taken 3 February 2000. The interesting heart-shaped asymmetry of this crater may be due the slope of the ground in which it was made. The reason that the dark perimeter outlining the crater and extends outside of it by about 20 m may be due to the extensive ground breaking and fissuring around the crater seen in the images above, making it impractical to approach the crater edge closely.

The "Smiling Buddha" device was manufactured from plutonium produced at the Cirus reactor at BARC. The basic design had been developed by 1972, when manufacture of the test device began at PM Gandhi's order. It took two years to separate, purify, and fabricate the plutonium metal, and to manufacture the implosion lens systems and associated electronics. Most of the work was done at BARC, but the explosive lenses were made by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The neutron initiator was a Polonium-210/Beryllium type (like those used in early U.S. bombs) code-named "Flower". Apparently both the development of "Flower" and the precise implosion electronics gave considerable trouble.

This test was declared at the time to be for "peaceful purposes". Although this assertion can be dismissed (especially in light of Raj Ramanna's recent admissions), the bomb was certainly an experimental test device, not a weapon in deployable form.

For an excellent study on the Rajasthan test site including both the Smiling Buddha test and recent site preparation activity see Investigating the Allegations of Indian Nuclear Test Preparations in the Rajasthan Desert: A CTB Verification Exercise Using Commercial Satellite Imagery , July 1996, by Vipin Gupta and Frank Pabian.

[donganaaK]

read the other parts here :

 

 

http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/indias-nuclear-weapons-program-1944-1999-full-history-must-read.68475/

[manjunath455]

GP. Dr. Homi jahangir Baba  :4_12_13:  :4_12_13:

[dappusubhani]

read the other parts here :

 

 

http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/indias-nuclear-weapons-program-1944-1999-full-history-must-read.68475/

 

paina unnavi chadavadanike 4 rojulu padutundi.. malli other parts aa  @3$%

[manjunath455]

paina unnavi chadavadanike 4 rojulu padutundi.. malli other parts aa  @3$%

tamari bonda bye1

[dappusubhani]

tamari bonda bye1

 

meeru chadivestharu saaar.. meeru goppollu.. ROBO lo chitti laaga.. 

[manjunath455]

meeru chadivestharu saaar.. meeru goppollu.. ROBO lo chitti laaga.. 

kaaliga vunte alage vuntundi sir. eppudu edo okati chaduvutaam :giggle: