India on road to H-bomb, says Jane's
Saisuresh Sivaswamy
The January issue of Jane's Intelligence Review has
reported that the Indian atomic energy sector has taken on the
production of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen whose main application
is in fashioning a hydrogen bomb. The report, filed by Bombay-based
journalist T S Gopi Rethinaraj, also has various nuclear barons
refusing to comment on the probable use of the tritium so obtained,
leading to the inescapable conclusion about its end-use.
The report mentions that while the United States of America stopped
producing tritium by about 1988 owing to safety reasons and ageing
facilities, the Indian breakthrough at the hands of scientists
at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre has been made at a fraction
of the estimated US $ 7 billion incurred by America in the process.
The Indian scientists have managed to extract highly enriched
tritium from heavy water used in power reactors. One significant
area of difference between the Indian and the Western processes
is that the local initiative assumes heavy water as the moderator
while the latter, barring Canada, uses light water.
The report also says that the mere accumulation of tritium -- whose
other, peripheral, use lies in medical diagnostics -- does not mean
that India has already stockpiled the next generation of weapons
of mass destruction. But just as uranium is indispensable for
the manufacture of an atomic bomb, so is tritium the sine qua
non for the vastly superior H-bomb. While the extraction of the
isotope is a scientific decision, going in for fusion bombs -- the
1974 Pokhran explosion demonstrated India's fission weaponry capacity -- will
have to be a political decision.
The cat was let out of the bag rather inadvertently, it would
seem. On page 461 of the book entitled Heavy Water -- Properties, Production
and Analysis, authored by two BARC scientists Sharad M Dave and
Himangshu K Sadhukhan along with the Mexican Octavio A Novaro,
were the following lines:
'The BARC, Bombay, India, also having developed a wet-proof catalyst
for LPCE (liquid phase catalytic exchange), has employed it for
detraction. A pilot plant based on LPCE-cryogenic distillation
with about 90 per cent tritium removal from heavy water has been
commissioned and is under experimental evaluation. Reportedly,
this facility seems to be the only operating LPCE-based detritiation
facility in the world... A commercial detriation plant based
on this process is being set up at one of their nuclear power
stations.'
Explaining this away, BARC scientists have told Gopi Rethinaraj
that the new technology is aimed at lowering the tritium content
in heavy water circulating around the moderator circuit, and argue
that the project is being executed to prevent the many health
hazards associated with the leakage of tritium from reactors.
But the same voluble scientists, it would seem, seem inarticulate
about what is exactly being done to the highly radioactive tritium
so recovered, even on conditions of anonymity. Some have ventured
to comment that a scenario in which the recovered tritium is being
stockpiled for strategic purposes cannot be ruled out.
When the author of the report contacted the managing director's
office at the Nuclear Power Corporation, the government-controlled
body that constructs and runs India's commercial power reactors,
one senior NPC officer said: "Please don't ask anything
about the detraction plant, we have been asked not to talk about
it." However, there has been no categorical denial of such
a project being at the implementation stage, notes Rethinaraj.
Some time ago, the NPC management had announced that one of the
power reactors at Kalpakkam near Madras in southern
India would be opened to research activities, and highly placed
sources in the nuclear power establishment have confided to Rethinaraj
that the commercial version of the detriation pilot plant is taking
shape there.
Recently, to jog one's memory, labour trouble hit
the plant with the workers striking for nearly a month because
of alleged high levels of radioactivity, and employees working
in the station are still puzzled as to why their dosimeter readings
have increased in recent times.
However, A Shantakumar and C Surendar, group directors at NPC,
told Rethinaraj the same thing: "We are unable to understand
what you are talking about, there is no such project at Kalpakkam."
Also refusing to comment was former AEC chief P K Iyengar, one
of the pioneers of India's 1974 fission bomb experiment.
Dr Rajagopalan Chidambaram, chairman of the AEC, when asked persistently
about the project by Rethinaraj, finally admits: "Yes, there
is a pilot plant for detriation of heavy water in BARC."
Asked whether the project is meant for stockpiling tritium, he
replied: "No comment."
With eight operating Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors at Kalpakkam,
Rawatbhatta, Narora and Kakrapar plus more to come up in the future,
India seems to be sitting atop a land mine of tritium sources since
the BARB pilot plant can be replicated in all these power stations.
Since, unlike fission bombs, fusion bombs have no critical size,
bombs of various intensities can be fabricated using tritium.
The Jane's report points out that fusion bombs require an ambient
temperature of 100 million Centigrade to overcome the Coulomb Repulsion
Barrier which prevents lighter atoms from coming together, meaning
that fission bombs are a prerequisite for detonating fusion bombs,
a capability India demonstrated way back in 1974.
Given this, the conclusion is inevitable, points out Rethinaraj:
the BARC breakthrough puts India on the road to self-sufficiency
in terms of strategic materials for defence purposes, never mind
even if Indian scientists are loath to call it production of tritium
and prefer the innocuous term 'detriation'.
"Look, our intention is not to produce tritium," a senior
scientist directly involved with the pilot detriation plant at
BARC told Rethinaraj. "Our aim is to lower the tritium content
in the heavy water, which gets contaminated after fission and
neutron capture by deuterium (another hydrogen isotope) atoms.
If tritium comes out as a by-product, what can we do about it?"
Asked what was to be done with the tritium so obtained, the scientist
just smiled.
Tritium is highly radioactive, and has a half-life of 12.3 years,
meaning that 5.5 per cent of tritium will decay into non-radioactive
Helium-3 every year. Although it finds a marginal use in medical
diagnostics, its main use in the construction of hydrogen bombs
and to boost the yield (destructive capability) of both fission
and thermonuclear weapons. Contained in removable and refillable
reservoirs at nuclear arsenals, it boosts the efficiency of the
nuclear materials.
Although no official data is available on inventory
amounts of tritium, each the thermonuclear warhead is said to
contain 4 g of the isotope. However, neutron bombs designed to
release more radiation will require 10.30 g of tritium, according
to a status report prepared by the US department of energy's science
policy research division and an assessment made by the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland, USA.
Jane's reveals that according to authoritative sources the US's
total tritium production since 1955 was 220 kg, and after decay
it is now left with 75 kg of tritium which is sufficient to see
it through the first quarter of the next millennium.
However, no figures are available relating to the Indian stockpile
of tritium. The pilot plant at BARC was set up in 1992, the report
quotes well placed sources in the department.
The presence of tritium in heavy water has been a major concern
for reactor engineers in India for a long time. During the operation
of a BHWR, tritium is produced as a result of fission and irradiation of reactor components with neutrons, remains in the fuel and later
passes into the effluents in the fuel reprocessing plants. The
BARC pilot plant treatment is known to yield maximum tritium,
and scientists from the plant say the philosophy of the plant's
operation is based on fail-safe conditions, Rethinaraj states
in his report.
The caution is well-justified. Even at low levels tritium has
been linked to developmental problems, reproductive problems,
genetic and neurological abnormalities and other health problems.
Additionally, there is evidence of adverse health effects on population
living near tritium facilities. Tritium contamination has been
reported at the Savannah river site in ground water soil from
operational releases and accidents.
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