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.
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.