India Nuclear Weapons

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday April 08, 2003 11:06 by Lolobero

India is generally estimated as having approximately 60 nuclear weapons

India’s nuclear energy development program has allowed it to obtain the essential materials and facilities needed to produce nuclear weapons. This infrastructure includes seven operating nuclear power plants, two research reactors at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center near Bombay, where India produced its stock of weapons-grade plutonium, and resources for producing and reprocessing plutonium and enriching uranium. Indian pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWR) can be used to generate electricity, as well as producing plutonium and tritium. As additional indigenously built nuclear power reactors become operational, India’s capability to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons will increase. Although India is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, only some Indian nuclear reactors are subject to IAEA safegu

India's pursuit of nuclear weapons was first spurred by a 1962 border clash with China and by Beijing's 1964 nuclear test. India conducted its first nuclear detonation, described by India as a "peaceful nuclear explosion," on 18 May 1974. This test, which may have only been partially successful, demonstrated a claimed yield of perhaps 12 kt. It is reported that Western intelligence estimated the probable yield at 4-6 kilotons. Subsequently, India made significant progress in refining its weapons design and fabrication capabilities, including reducing the size of weapons and increasing their efficiency and yield through boosted fission using tritium.

At a formal level, Indian officials and strategists denied that India possessed nuclear weapons and refered to India's position as an "options strategy," which essentially meant maintaining the nuclear weapons option and exercising it should regional and international conditions so warrant. In pursuit of this end, India refused to sign the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Indian officials argued that India's refusal to sign the treaty stemmed from its fundamentally discriminatory character; the treaty places restrictions on the nonnuclear weapons states but does little to curb the modernization and expansion of the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapons states.

India probably began work on a thermonuclear weapon prior to 1980. By 1989 it was publicly known that India was making efforts to isolate and purify the lithium-6 isotope, a key requirement in the production of a thermonuclear device.

The nuclearisation of India has been an article of faith for the BJP. One of the few concrete steps taken by BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee in his brief 13-day term as Prime Minister in May 1996 was approval for DRDO and DAE to begin preparations for a nuclear test. However, the Government fell two days before the tests could begin, and the succeeding United Front government of H.D. Deve Gowda declined to proceed.

A statement to the press by Prime Minister Deve Gowda in September 1996 noted that India had no plans to build nuclear weapons or to test. Senior Indian officials reaffirmed statements of restraint concerning nuclear testing, while preserving the option to test if New Delhi's security situation changed significantly. In late October 1996, one of India's prominent nuclear scientists said publicly that India's present nuclear capability was sufficient and there was no need to conduct further nuclear tests.

Despite promoting a test ban treaty for decades, India voted against the UN General Assembly resolution endorsing the CTBT, which was adopted on September 10, 1996, by an overwhelming margin (158-3, with 5 abstentions). Not prepared to take steps that it feared will constrain its "nuclear option," India objected to the lack of provision for universal nuclear disarmament "within a time-bound framework." India also demanded that the treaty ban laboratory simulations. In addition, India opposed the provision in Article XIV of the CTBT that requires its ratification for the treaty to enter into force, which it argued was a violation of its sovereign right to choose whether it would sign the treaty. In early February 1997, Foreign Minister Gujral reiterated India's opposition to the treaty, saying that "India favors any step aimed at destroying nuclear weapons, but considers that the treaty in its current form is not comprehensive and bans only certain types of tests." Nevertheless, India's poor showing in the vote in October 1996 for a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council, coming so closely on the heels of its isolation on the CTBT, caused some in India to question the wisdom of New Delhi's hard-line tactics in trying to block the CTBT.

Operation Shakti was authorised two days after the Ghauri missile test-firing in Pakistan. On 08 April 1998 Prime Minister Vajpayee met with Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) chief R. Chidambaram and head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and gave the go-ahead for nuclear weapons tests. On the morning of 08 May 1998 scientists from DRDO and DAE arrived at Pokhran, and soon thereafter, the devices were emplaced.

On 11 May 1998 India carried out three underground nuclear tests at the Pokhran range. Two days later, after carrying out two more underground sub-kiloton tests, the Government announced the completion of the planned series of tests. The three underground nuclear tests carried out at 1545 hours on 11 May were claimed to be with three different devices - a fission device with a yield of about 12 KT, a thermonuclear device with a yield of about 43 KT and a sub-kiloton device. All the 3 devices were detonated simultaneously. The two tests carried out at 1221 hours on 13 May were also detonated simultaneously. The yields of the sub-kiloton devices were claimed to be in the range of 0.2 to 0.6 KT."

Based on seismic data, US government sources and independent experts estimated the yield of the so-called thermonuclear test in the range of 15-25 kilotons [versus the 43-60 kiloton yield claimed by India]. Observers initially suggested that the test could have been a boosted fission device, rather than a true multi-stage thermonuclear device. By late 1998 analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had concluded that the second stage of a two-stage Indian hydrogen bomb device failed to ignite as planned.

India is generally estimated as having approximately 60 nuclear weapons. In May 1998 G. Balachandran, an Indian nuclear researcher, estimated India had fewer than 10 weapons ready to be assembled and mounted on warplanes or missiles. The Institute for Science and International Security estimated in March 1998 that India had stockpiled enough weapons-grade plutonium for perhaps 78 bombs. Some estimates as high as 200 nuclear devices are based on estimates of plutonium that could be extracted from India's six unsafeguarded heavy-water nuclear power plants. In 1994 K. Subrahmanyam suggestedt that a force of 60 warheads carried on 20 Agnis, 20 Prithvis and the rest on aircraft would cost about Rs 1,000 crore over 10 years. In 1996 Sundarji suggested a cost of some Rs 2,760 crore -- Rs 600 crore for 150 warheads, Rs 360 crore for 45 Prithvis and Rs 1,800 crore for 90 Agni missiles.