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Weapons a nuclear deterrent, say scientists

Last week's series of five nuclear tests, carried out within a month of receiving the go-ahead from the new government, will help India counter nuclear threats.

Scientific adviser to the defence minister A P J Abdul Kalam and Atomic Energy Commission chairman R Chidambaram told a press conference yesterday that the May 11 and 13 tests had also provided "critical data for the validation of our capability in the design of nuclear weapons of different yields for different applications and different delivery systems".

''These tests have significantly enhanced our capability in computer simulation of new designs and taken us to the stage of sub-critical experiments in the future if considered necessary,'' they said in a joint statement on behalf of the Department of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research Development Organisation

Asked when exactly the government gave the orders to conduct the tests, Chidambaram said, ''You will have to do some arithmetic - it is 'D' minus 30 days.'' Putting the date at April 11, three weeks after the new government assumed power on March 19.

The two top scientists indicated that the country had a nuclear weaponisation programme running over two decades.

''The design and development of various kinds of nuclear explosives, for example, fission, boosted fission, thermonuclear and low-yield, has been carried out by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre based on more than 25 years of research and development,'' Chidambaram said.

The DRDO and the DAE will now have joint control over a plant near Mysore where enriched uranium is made, the scientists said.

BARC has also worked out several new concepts like long shelf life of device components and optimisation of the yield-to-weight ratio critical to weaponisation.

The scientists also stated that the thermonuclear device detonated on May 11 had a yield of 43 kt, one fission device had a yield of 12 kt and the last was a sub-kiloton device. The two devices exploded on May 12 had yields in the range of 0.2-0.6 kt.

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