Nuclear Thread - 4

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Sep 23 2009, 03:32 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Sep 23 2009, 03:32 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Sep 24 2009, 02:40 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(acharya @ Sep 24 2009, 02:40 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
It has put an wedge in the decision for CTBT

But it actually means that there is a small group which is trying to take decision for the entire country and the govt and other policy makers in the govt dont have any say in the CTBT and other matters
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That group is Ambanis and IT CEOs.
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There are EJs and some powerful NRIs
Check GOPIO - members. - It is a suspect

[Guest]

<b>Scientist reveals India nuke test fizzled</b>

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But for the rest of the world, Santhanam's bombshell amounts to a colossal preemptive strike against Obama's push for the nations of the world to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the end of next year — not to mention a potentially debilitating assault on last year's Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement. Already, opponents to the deal have begun echoing Santhanam's call for further testing of India's thermonuclear arsenal, and the lingering doubts about the efficacy of the country's bombs looks likely to tie <b>Manmohan Singh's somewhat fragile coalition government's hands when the time comes to sign Obama's CTBT</b>.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->“We need to test again; it's just a question of when, not if,” said Bharat Karnad, a former member of India's National Security Advisory board and part of the group that drafted India's nuclear doctrine.

<b>Of course, that may not have been true if Santhanam had kept his mouth shut</b>.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Singh government subscribes to the theory that a “minimum deterrent” is sufficient to protect India from its nuclear neighbors, and even though that theory was predicated on the existence of a small number of effective thermonuclear missiles, most observers believe that Singh will not begin preparations of any kind for a resumption of testing. <b>The big question is whether he can sell the country on agreeing to Obama's full-fledged moratorium.</b>
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And that means Obama and the West have one big bargaining chip left to bring India into the nonproliferation fold: <b>Sign the CTBT, get a seat on the U.N. Security Council</b>. {Sign CTBT, and dangle MMS Nobel Peace Prize offer (not even actually give it) and that should do it. They don't even have to offer UNSC. Frankly, India, under its current leadership, dispensation of people (diffident, uber secularist/liberal, itnernationalist etc) does not deserve a seat on UNSC. After all, whose interests will they protect in UN? Not Indians, much less Hindus...}
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[Guest]

<b>Chidambaram’s dud blows up strategic deterrent</b>

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-k.ram+Sep 30 2009, 05:44 AM-->QUOTE(k.ram @ Sep 30 2009, 05:44 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Chidambaram’s dud blows up strategic deterrent</b>
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
On 11-1-1966 Indian prime minister Lal Bhadur Sastri was killed in Russia. On 19-1-1966 Indira Gandhi was elected PM of India. On 24-1-1966 Indira was swon in as PM of India and on the same day . Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha was killed in a plane crash. Dr. Raja Ramanna, who was instrumental in staging India's first Nuclear explosion at Pokharan range in 1974. had miraculously survived a plane crash. The third Indo-Pak War ended after the unilateral ceasefire declaration on 16-12-1971 and Dr. Vikram A Sarabhai was killed on 30 December 1971, in his bedroom, at Kovalam hotel, Trivandrum by two Christian ladies apparently sent by CIA. Official reason for his death was shown as heart attack. CIA was in to assassinations all over the world. CIA blew Up Cuban Airliner minutes after taking off from the Barbados airport on on 6-10-1976, The plane with 73 people on board exploded in midair over the Caribbean Sea. All the passengers died. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[dhu]

So now the "debate" is being framed as CTBT versus NPT!!!

Do not expect India to sign NPT in present form: ElBaradei

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad ElBaradei has said that he does not expect India to sign the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, but feels the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could be more "acceptable".

<b>"I do not expect India to sign the NPT in its present form...Maybe the CTBT would be more acceptable,"</b> he told in an interview to a television news channel.

His remarks assume significance in the wake of the United Nations Security Council adopting a resolution asking all non-NPT states, including India, to sign the NPT.

India has made it clear that it will not sign the pact as a non-weapon state as atomic arsenals are integral to its security.

The IAEA chief said India has to lead efforts for complete nuclear disarmament, an idea it first mooted as far back as in 1948.

ElBaradei, who received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, said the world was looking to India for the future of nuclear energy research and development, according to a press release issued by the news channel.

On reports of Iran ..<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>The real Pokhran story</b>

V Sudarshan
First Published : 03 Oct 2009 11:27:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 03 Oct 2009 01:06:54 AM IST

<b>The father of the dud thermonuclear bomb Dr R Chidambaram</b> is on record describing how a real atomic explosion works. This description is recounted in Raj Chengappa’s engrossing book Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power (Harper Collins, 2000) which provides a broad-brush overview of the development of both India’s nuclear and missile programmes. The author obviously had access to all the main players, the laboratories, which kind of makes it an almost official narrative. Chengappa who interviewed Chidambaram on June 10, 1998, writes (page 187): “Chidambaram’s eyes always light up when he describes what happens when an atom bomb is exploded deep underground. He says that under the intense heat of over a million degrees centigrade (emphasis mine) a mini-mountain of rock vaporises underground. And an equal amount melts… Meanwhile the shock waves of the blast strike the surface and cause a mini-mountain of sand to rise from the ground. The mound formed is called a retarc, the word crater spelt backwards. As the force of the explosion weakens in intensity the mound collapses inwards forming a giant crater.”

What basically happens is that the explosion vaporises material around it and then the vapours expand rapidly and push outwards in all directions creating shock waves that crushes more rock. “At the ‘Taj Mahal’ site (S1 where the fission device, weaponised for delivery through a missile exploded) the shockwaves from the blast lifted a giant mound of sand (page 430), the size of a hockey field (emphasis mine). DRDO’s colonel Umang Kapur who was flying high above in a helicopter to monitor the radioactivity and video film the event saw a plume of dust. As he neared he saw that the bunkers around the side had toppled like a pack of cards. Then, in awe, he watched a giant crater form as the sand poured down through a cylindrical chimney to fill up the cavity deep below the ground. …. On the ground the scientists suddenly felt the earth under their feet quake violently…. (They) ran out in time to see a giant wall of sand akin to a tidal wave rise and fall.”

At the White House site (S2 where the dud thermonuclear device was placed), if we are to go by what the scientists led Chengappa to believe, it was placed at a depth of 200 metres (page 427) in contrast to S1 which was about 50 metres less deep (at “over 150 metres”, page 422). This dud device was rated at 45 kt yield, three times the yield of the fission device in Taj Mahal shaft and was buried about 50 metres deeper, in a shaft a kilometre away. There is, however, good reason to believe that the shafts were not as deep as this since they had been in existence since 1981 and going by the accounts in the book were not deepened when readied for the 1998 tests; scientists familiar with the work say that the deeper shaft did not go as deep as 200 metres. A yield of one kiloton is the explosive energy equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that US dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, only a third of the explosive energy the dud thermonuclear bomb allegedly set off.

At the bottom of the second shaft, a kilometre away, was the thermonuclear weapon. It had a fission-based trigger. The second stage was the fusion weapon. The shaft ran more than a 120 metres into the ground. At the bottom it veered slightly to the left, making an ‘L’. After the turn it ran for a further five metres, called an adit. The small tunnel was about six feet high, high enough for a person to stand. The width was about three metres. To get the men and materials into the shaft there was a winch that was suspended from an A Frame run by a diesel motor. The entire shaft was cased and shielded by a thin steel casing of .3 mm. This was to prevent or reduce seepage from subterranean streams that could mess up the wiring, among other things. Both S1 and S2 were old shafts, dug in 1981 when Rammana was adviser to defence minister. But they had been wired up from 1995 when Narasimha Rao was weighing the option of conducting nuclear tests. The three-year-old wiring had been in good working condition and the test team did not have to relay the cables, both for giving the command and for instrumentation, which was the responsibility of the DRDO, and not the BARC. For the 1998 tests, the shafts weren’t deepened or modified further.

The Control Room was about 2.5 km from ground zero. It was a tin shed with air conditioning and had all the instruments both for command cables and cables for instrumentation and recording. It was manned by working scientists and engineers of DRDO; the engineers were directly involved in instrumentation and recording process. Instrumentation within Pokhran was 100 per cent DRDO. Aviation Research Centre seismic instruments were outside Pokhran. The DAE had instrumentation in the shaft for Cortex which was a prototype. (It later transpired that the prototype Cortex failed to work). There were television cameras looking at ground zero, accelerometers, ground motion sensors, and a central recording place where the data stream was slipped. Instrumentation in 1998 was of a much higher order than 1974. This is undisputed.

After the explosion once the helicopter indicated there was no radioactivity in the air, the two teams Bravo (scientists from Bombay) and Delta (those from DRDO) went to inspect their work. According to Raj Chengappa, “The Taj Mahal site had a giant newly formed crater. But the Hydrogen bomb site wasn’t as impressive. A mound of several metres had risen and the sheds all around it had collapsed in a crazy heap. Some of the scientists looked worried. There was concern whether the secondary fusion device had properly detonated… That afternoon, however, Chidambaram and Sikka were confident. They told the rest that because the shaft was a very deep one and located on granite strata the impact on the surface was minimal. Reassured, the team headed back to break the news to the Prime Minister in Delhi.” (pages 431-432). The reconstruction of the final Pokhran moments in the book is based on author’s interviews with Chidambaram, S K Sikka, Anil Kakodkar, K Santhanam and Abdul Kalam.

<b>
According to one source who visited the site immediately after the test, apparently Chidambaram and the Bravo team stared in silent disbelief at the failure of the experiment. The blast had failed to even dislodge the winch and the A frame which stood in mute eloquent testimony to the failure. In the distance the scientists could see the yawning hole of the shaft grin mockingly at them. It had been a Gandhi bomb, totally non-violent.</b>

<i>(Tomorrow: Kalam and the Gandhi Bomb)
sudarshan@epmltd.com
About the author:
V Sudarshan is the Executive Editor of ‘The New Indian Express’</i>

[Arun_S]

I eagerly await mid-Oct. When R.Chidambaram, SK Sikka and A.Kakodkar will very likely be stripped of their proverbial undies when hard data from TN test may become public, showing how good their 100% successful fizzle was.

[Guest]

When will the "three weeks" be up? (Oct mid month, I take it?)

The credibility of "deterrence' is gone, no matter what.. No?. And it is a good thing, that MMS ilk may be forced to do something (for better or worse). INteresting times ahead...

[ramana]

<!--QuoteBegin-k.ram+Oct 3 2009, 06:14 PM-->QUOTE(k.ram @ Oct 3 2009, 06:14 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The real Pokhran story</b>

V Sudarshan
First Published : 03 Oct 2009 11:27:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 03 Oct 2009 01:06:54 AM IST

<b>The father of the dud thermonuclear bomb Dr R Chidambaram</b> is on record describing how a real atomic explosion works. This description is recounted in Raj Chengappa’s engrossing book Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power (Harper Collins, 2000) which provides a broad-brush overview of the development of both India’s nuclear and missile programmes. The author obviously had access to all the main players, the laboratories, which kind of makes it an almost official narrative. Chengappa who interviewed Chidambaram on June 10, 1998, writes (page 187): “Chidambaram’s eyes always light up when he describes what happens when an atom bomb is exploded deep underground. He says that under the intense heat of over a million degrees centigrade (emphasis mine) a mini-mountain of rock vaporises underground. And an equal amount melts… Meanwhile the shock waves of the blast strike the surface and cause a mini-mountain of sand to rise from the ground. The mound formed is called a retarc, the word crater spelt backwards. As the force of the explosion weakens in intensity the mound collapses inwards forming a giant crater.”

What basically happens is that the explosion vaporises material around it and then the vapours expand rapidly and push outwards in all directions creating shock waves that crushes more rock. “At the ‘Taj Mahal’ site (S1 where <b>the fission device, weaponised for delivery through a missile exploded</b>) the shockwaves from the blast lifted a giant mound of sand (page 430), the size of a hockey field (emphasis mine). DRDO’s colonel Umang Kapur who was flying high above in a helicopter to monitor the radioactivity and video film the event saw a plume of dust. As he neared he saw that the bunkers around the side had toppled like a pack of cards. Then, in awe, he watched a giant crater form as the sand poured down through a cylindrical chimney to fill up the cavity deep below the ground. …. On the ground the scientists suddenly felt the earth under their feet quake violently…. (They) ran out in time to see a giant wall of sand akin to a tidal wave rise and fall.”

At the White House site (S2 where the dud thermonuclear device was placed), if we are to go by what the scientists led Chengappa to believe, it was placed at a depth of 200 metres (page 427) in contrast to <b>S1 which was about 50 metres less deep (at “over 150 metres”, page 422). </b>This dud device was rated at 45 kt yield, three times the yield of the fission device in Taj Mahal shaft and was buried about 50 metres deeper, in a shaft a kilometre away. There is, however, good reason to believe that <b>the shafts were</b> not as deep as this since they had been <b>in existence since 1981 and going by the accounts in the book were not deepened when readied for the 1998 tests; scientists familiar with the work say that the deeper shaft did not go as deep as 200 metres.</b> A yield of one kiloton is the explosive energy equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that US dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, only a third of the explosive energy the dud thermonuclear bomb allegedly set off.

At the bottom of the second shaft, a kilometre away, was the thermonuclear weapon. It had a fission-based trigger. The second stage was the fusion weapon. <b>The shaft ran more than a 120 metres into the ground. At the bottom it veered slightly to the left, making an ‘L’. After the turn it ran for a further five metres, called an adit. The small tunnel was about six feet high, high enough for a person to stand. The width was about three metres. To get the men and materials into the shaft there was a winch that was suspended from an A Frame run by a diesel motor. The entire shaft was cased and shielded by a thin steel casing of .3 mm.</b> This was to prevent or reduce seepage from subterranean streams that could mess up the wiring, among other things. Both S1 and S2 were old shafts, dug in 1981 when Rammana was adviser to defence minister. But they had been wired up from 1995 when Narasimha Rao was weighing the option of conducting nuclear tests. The three-year-old wiring had been in good working condition and the test team did not have to relay the cables, both for giving the command and for instrumentation, which was the responsibility of the DRDO, and not the BARC. <b>For the 1998 tests, the shafts weren’t deepened or modified further.</b>

<b>The Control Room was about 2.5 km from ground zero. </b>It was a tin shed with air conditioning and had all the instruments both for command cables and cables for instrumentation and recording. It was manned by working scientists and engineers of DRDO; the engineers were directly involved in instrumentation and recording process. Instrumentation within Pokhran was 100 per cent DRDO. Aviation Research Centre seismic instruments were outside Pokhran. <b>The DAE had instrumentation in the shaft for Cortex which was a prototype. (It later transpired that the prototype Cortex failed to work). There were television cameras looking at ground zero, accelerometers, ground motion sensors, and a central recording place where the data stream was slipped.</b> Instrumentation in 1998 was of a much higher order than 1974. This is undisputed.

After the explosion once the helicopter indicated there was no radioactivity in the air, the two teams Bravo (scientists from Bombay) and Delta (those from DRDO) went to inspect their work. According to Raj Chengappa, “The Taj Mahal site had a giant newly formed crater. <b>But the Hydrogen bomb site wasn’t as impressive. A mound of several metres had risen and the sheds all around it had collapsed in a crazy heap. Some of the scientists looked worried. There was concern whether the secondary fusion device had properly detonated… That afternoon, however, Chidambaram and Sikka were confident. They told the rest that because the shaft was a very deep one and located on granite strata the impact on the surface was minimal. Reassured, the team headed back to break the news to the Prime Minister in Delhi.” (pages 431-432).</b> The reconstruction of the final Pokhran moments in the book is based on author’s interviews with Chidambaram, S K Sikka, Anil Kakodkar, K Santhanam and Abdul Kalam. 

<b>
According to one source who visited the site immediately after the test, apparently Chidambaram and the Bravo team stared in silent disbelief at the failure of the experiment. The blast had failed to even dislodge the winch and the A frame which stood in mute eloquent testimony to the failure. In the distance the scientists could see the yawning hole of the shaft grin mockingly at them. It had been a Gandhi bomb, totally non-violent.</b>

<i>(Tomorrow: Kalam and the Gandhi Bomb)
sudarshan@epmltd.com
About the author:
V Sudarshan is the Executive Editor of  ‘The New Indian Express’</i>
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The new facts are:
1) S-2 the fission weapon was also missile qualified. Earlier it was thought to be only aircarft delivered per Rajamohan at CASI, Uty of Pennsylvania.

2) S-1 the TN wasnt buried at 200m as was stated in Chengappa's WOP and the Hindu Frontline article by R. Ramachadran. It was ~ 120 with a 5m adit.

Conclusions:
120m makes it in shale not granite. The crater was a retarc.

The odd thing is to explain the stated S-1 yield requires a lot of things to coincide: the twin explosions, the deep shaft, burial in 'pink' granite strata, absence of crater: instead of crater of 72m radius they get a retarc, seismic stations bias against India <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->, the cavity radius of 40m +/- 4m per the psot shot radio-chem paper.

All these have to occur simultanoeusly to get the stated yield.

[ramana]

My weekend work.....

While reading the numerous threads after K. Santhanam’s revelations, I came to some conclusions on the process by which Indian elite makes its policy decisions.

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Indian Strategic Elite and the Nuclear Question

Despite George Tanaham’s RAND report there is an Indian strategic elite consisting of: scientist-strategists, military- strategists, and civilian strategists. These three groups are responsible for charting the Indian nuclear strategy.

<b>Scientist-strategists</b> were the early pioneers, Scientists like Drs. H Bhabha, V. Sarabhai, H.N. Sethna, Raja Ramanna, M.R. Srinivasan, PK Iyengar were the well known proponents of this group of startegists. Being aware of the power of the atom they helped formulate the initial strategy. The main aims of the group are: acquire, demonstrate and retain the nuke capability.
<b>Military-strategists-</b> Some well known members are: K.K. Nayyar, Raja Menon, Brajesh Jyal, Gurmeet Kanwal. However the doyen of this group is Gen Sundarji. His principle contribution to the nuclear strategy was : Minimum credible deterrent based on Realist school of International Relations. It is based on proven warheads on proven delivery vehicles. When his strategy was formulated, only fission weapons were envisaged without further tests. His doctrine is contrary to the prevailing political view that nukes are symbolic weapons of power. A key component to the strategy is that the deterrent requires reliable delivery vehicles which are solely in DRDO’s purvey. The 1998 tests before the proofing of the required delivery vehicles was factor for later events. The main aims of this group are: acquire, proven weapons deployed in the forces.

<b>Civilian-strategists </b>– All members not belonging to above two types are included in this group. The civilian-strategists include four broad sub-divisions: <b>maximalists</b>-seek what ever the front ranking powers have (B. Karnad, B. Chellaney et al), <b>minimalists</b>- seek the bare minimum to maintain a nuclear deterrent based on a borderline pacifist world view (Dr. C. Rajamohan et al), <b>disarmament strategists</b>: some former Ministry of External Affairs officials, peace activists(Praful Bidwai et al) and chatterati (Achin Vanaik)- seek disarmament of India as first step of global disarmament ideally and together with others as a maximum position, and lastly <b>political-strategists</b>- seek to support the government stand and build support or consensus behind it. The principal doyen of this grouping is Dr. K. Subramanyam. The main aims of this group are: acquire, demonstrated weapons with out jeopardizing the international status of India. The Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) in 1974 was a break with the civilian-strategists dogma. The 1974 PNE broke the consensus this group had built up and they quickly reacted to prevent the follow-thru of the test. Again the 1998 tests, broke the consensus that these groups re-forged after the 1974 PNE and caused great dissension. However this time this group was not able to reverse the situation due to the atmospherics in the neighborhood and the constant wars after the tests: Kargil, Operation Parakram and unrestricted terrorism from Pakistan and the unsettled borders with China.

<b>One common theme of all three groups(except the disarmament and chatterati groups) is that nuclear weapons are required only to deter China.</b> The crafting of the No First Use (NFU) doctrine is a clear indication of that. This doctrine clearly states that nukes will not be used on Pakistan unless in retaliation. <b>On all other issues( Force posture, Force composition, Nuclear doctrine, International treaty negotiations etc) these three groups dissent often vehemently.</b> The interaction between these groups can be seen by the opinion-editorials and speeches in the Indian news media.

<b>Consensus </b>

Even before Independence the scientist- strategists embarked on a program to acquire nuclear capability which received official approval of PM Nehru after Independence and were at the forefront of developing the strategy. <b>The consensus was to acquire all the technologies that are required to demonstrate nuclear capability in all aspects- electrical power and weapons without overt demonstration.</b> Until 1960s the emphasis was on the symbolic and prestige value of the nuclear technology and the pursuit of power reactors were an indication of that thinking. Weapons research wasn’t pursued with any seriousness and people were content to give the impression that the acquisition was an easy task. The literature of the Fifties (Beaton, Maddox et al) seeks to address the question when will India test and it was a given that they would. After the twin blows from China of 1962 aggression and the first nuclear test in 1964, <b>the consensus shifted to seeking a nuclear umbrella from the West and failing that to retain a capability to acquire the technology by staying out of the NPT.</b> The 1971 victory and the creation of Bangladesh reduced the threat from Pakistan. However superpower interventions and inducements to PRC, forced the pace and resulted in 1974 PNE. <b>However again the consensus was that the technology would not be weaponized.</b>

Again the events in 1970s and 1980s overcame peaceful thinking- Pakistan acquisition of nuclear technology and weapons from Western Europe and China <b>forced the Indian decision. Again the acquisition was not demonstrated and led to instability.</b> In 1990s the CTBT, was forced and had India in its Entry-into-Force clause and there were repeated moves to break out: 1995 Rao, 1996 ABV and finally the political system decided to take the heat and sanctioned the 1998 tests during NDA government. The scientists chose the technologies to demonstrate and there was little input from other groups. <b>The tests broke the national consensus on retaining weapon capability without demonstration.</b> In addition the underperformance of the TN device did further damage to the consensus and <b>re-arranged the strategic elite in all the three segments</b>. Some of those who were scientist-strategists(officials) moved to the political-strategist spectrum and within the civilian-strategists spectrum the groups were further re-shuffled with the political-strategists managing to come to primacy. The important thing is the disarmament-strategists also coalesced into this latter group. In addition it put the rationale of Gen. Sunderji’s doctrine of Minimum Nuclear Deterrent (MND), which was based on fission weapons, at risk by its underperformance and thus questioning the credibilty.
------------------

[ramana]

In the express buzz story above, why would the scientists bury the 15 kt fission weapon deeper(~150m) than the 45kt TN weapon (~120m)? Would this account for the fear that the shock wave from TN would take out the other shaft? Being shallower it might also have a largr lateral displacement.

[gangajal]

<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Oct 7 2009, 09:58 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Oct 7 2009, 09:58 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the express buzz story above, why would the scientists bury the 15 kt fission weapon deeper(~150m) than the 45kt TN weapon (~120m)? Would this account for the fear that the shock wave from TN would take out the other shaft? Being shallower it might also have a largr lateral displacement.
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Why should the scientists fear about the destruction of the other shaft since they triggered both the devices at the same time?

[ramana]

The reason given for the simultaneous triggering was this very fear. If it was buried ~ > 200m than it might be just a precaution. However if it was shallower than it could be real concern. And this simultaneous triggering caused the seismic interference which misled all the people, including the test director, except those who designed the test articles.


The story of POKII is wrapped in many mysteries and half truths. So trying to make sense.

[gangajal]

If the two devices were placed at roughly the same depth and the fission device produced a crater while the TN device did not produce a crater then that would suggest that the TN device yield was significantly less than the fission device. That would imply that even the primary boosted fission trigger of the TN device did not work properly. This seems to go against even Santhanam's position that the boosted fission trigger of the TN device did work.

The simultaneous triggering did cause some interference between the waves. However, it does not seem right to say that such interference would show up thousands of kms from the explosion site. From thousands of kms from Pokhran the two explosions separated by a km and occuring at the same time would appear to be one explosion. Any interference effect would substantially vanish at large distances. The other argument that Pokhran is inhomogeneous and that would affect the seismic result also seems to be bogus. The waves from the 2 explosions would traverse the Pokhran area and thus any inhomogeneity of the Pokhran range would be there in the signal. There is no case for the inhomogeneity argument since the two explosions were sited only a km apart.

Yes, the POK II event is shrouded in mystery because the radio-chemical analysis is not in the public domain. However, I feel that at least the boosted fission trigger did work since according to Bharat Karnad the boosted fission trigger was simply a fission bomb with a layer of Lithium Deuteride. The design was sufficiently simple that it did work. Whatever else is true it seems that BARC does understand how to produce simple fission devices. Also the trigger yield was around 15 kt since everyone seemed to agree that the TN device design yield was 45 kt. Hence it would seem that if the TN device was placed at a shallow depth of 100 m then it would have created a crater about the size of the fission bomb. Since that did not happen that would suggest that the TN device was placed at a deeper level.

[ramana]

You may be right.

[gangajal]

Although it was distressing to see the confirmation of the failure of the second stage of the TN device, we must thank Santhanam, Subramaniam and others for lifting the unnecessary veil over the Indian nuclear program. This is what I think was the situation before the 1998 blast:

(1) BARC had built untested fission weapons using the POKHRAN 1 design as a reference. These 20 Kt fission weapons had a fission efficiency of about 15 %. Karnad says that even the cleverest fission weapon is only about 25 % efficient;

(2) BARC also had a simple boosted fission device where they just coated the plutonium with Li D and pumped Tritium gas into the container containing the LID coated plutonium core and the explosive lens.
This design is basically the same as the fission bomb. BARC was sure about the fission part but uncertain about the boosting of fission efficiency that they will get from this design.

(3) BARC had a tentative TN device design but they were themselves uncertain about it. Mahadevan Srinivasan admitted to Karnad about the uncertainty in the minds of the Indian weaponeers about how to concentrate the gamma rays onto the second stage fusion material. Karnad writes that the Indian weaponeers had lots of problems understanding how to focus the gamma rays onto the fusion material.

The situation has changed after the 1998 tests. Now BARC is confident that

(1) their simple fission device will work yielding approximately 20 kts;

(2) their boosted fission design would yield a boosting of fission efficiency of about 4. Karnad specifically mentions a boosting factor of 4 in his book. That means the boosted fission device will get a 60 % fission efficiency unlike the 15 % efficiency fission weapon.

(3) their design to focus the gamma rays on the fusion material is highly inefficient.

What is the implication of these facts regarding weaponisation?

India has simple fission bombs of yields 20 kts with a reliability of greater than say 95 %.

India also has boosted fission bombs in the 60-80 kt range with almost the same degree of reliability. This is because a factor of 4 increase in fission efficiency from the 15 % fission bomb would imply a 60 % fission efficiency and a yield of 4x20 kt or 80 kts. Indian military would have high level of confidence in a 80 kt boosted fission weapon.

India does not have a TN weapon because the confidence level of a BARC design is at say 10-15 % level.

The next question is whether India has a deterrence at a 200 kt level. BARC certainly has the capacity of making a 200 kt boosted fission bomb. They, however, cannot use the blue prints of the 20 kt bomb to do it. They will have to start with a 50 kt fission bomb because they can only get a boosting of factor 4. It is here that uncertainty creeps in because lots of things will have to be redesigned to get a 50 kt fission bomb. Once they have designed a 50 kt bomb, they can coat the plutonium with LiD and immerse the bomb in Tritium gas to get a boosting of 4. It is possible that BARC has designed such a weapon. However, the confidence in such a weapon would be less than the 80 kt boosted fission weapon without tests.

Has BARC modified the TN device design? I think yes from Santhanam and Chidambaram's statements. However this design can not be weaponised without tests.

[ramana]

Pretty good assessment. I concur that the TN fizzle doesn't mean that the deterrent is compromised. It only means they need more of them.

One concern is the 50kt being boosted to 200kt. The first part will have to be quite heavy to get that much out of it. Hence the pursuit of the TN.

BTW, where does Karnad say all this?

Agree that the KS and other follow-on comments have clarified a lot of the issues and its more credible than the TN capability stuff before the revelations.

[gangajal]

<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Oct 9 2009, 02:15 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Oct 9 2009, 02:15 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
BTW, where does Karnad say all this?

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The chapters 2 and 3 of Karnad's India's nuclear policy has lots of info. I reread the book after all these revelations and found the book very helpful to understand the public debate.

[gangajal]

Karnad's book also has pieces of information that are quite puzzling.

1. <b>Why did BARC fire both the fission bomb and the 2-stage TN device at the same time</b>?

Karnad says that the reason was that BARC felt that they will get only one chance to test a big one and it is better to test 2 big bombs at the same time although it will complicate the seismic signal.

Chidambaram says in public that they did it out of concern for the shafts.

Who is telling the truth?

2. <b>What was the depth of the S1 shaft?</b>

Dr. Prasad, a former director of BARC, is quoted by Karnad as saying that the S1 shaft was only about 100 m deep since these shafts were dug in the 1980s when India did not have the technology to dig deeper. India did not deepen the shaft in 1998.

Chengappa says in weapons of peace that the shaft was deeper than 200 m.

Who is right? If Prasad is right then it raises a question regarding the boosted fission trigger of the TN device in S1. Why is there no crater in S1 while there is a large crater in S2 when the boosted fission trigger and the fission weapon in S2 are of comparable size? Even the 8 kt Pokhran 1 device placed 107 m below ground created a crater. This is a relevant question since every one agrees that the boosted fission trigger worked. Mahadevan Srinivasan even says that the BARC boosted fission design is almost the same as the successful fission design. So this discrepancy in the emplacement depth is a mystery.

3. <b>Is the thermonuclear device weaponized?</b>

Karnad quotes a former head of the Strategic forces Command (SFC) as saying that SFC is standardizing to a 100 kt thermonuclear weapon since this is the international norm.

Even Chidambaram is not saying that. Chidambaram only talks about capability. Santhanam of course says that the TN device has not been weaponized. So what is the SFC head saying? Does he mean a boosted fission device when he says thermonuclear?

4. <b>What is the highest yield weapon in Indian inventory?</b>

Karnad says that the Agni 1 is optimized for carrying 20 kt warhead, Agni 2 is optimized for carrying 90 to 150 kt warhead and Agni 3 is optimized for carrying as much as 300 kt warhead.

Why should any one optimize Agni 3 to carry a 300 kt warhead when even Chidambaram is only talking about deterrence at 200 kt level. Does Karnad mean 3 100 kt weapons when he talks of 300 kt warhead?

[dhu]

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