Thaindian News

Mumbai, Sep 24 (IANS) The nuclear tests India conducted in May 1998 were fully successful and helped the country achieve capability to build fission and thermonuclear fusion weapons from low yields up to 200 kilo tonnes, two top scientists said Thursday.
Setting at rest all controversies generated recently over the tests, Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and R. Chidambaram, principal scientific advisor to the government, said the nuclear tests at Pokhran in Rajashtan had achieved the desired scientific objectives.

Their joint statement came after doubts were raised by two retired scientists, K. Santhanam and P.K. Iyengar, on the tests conducted May 11 and 13, 1998.

Kakodkar said that on the basis of the capability, India had the ability to meet national security requirements and did not require to conduct more such tests.

Elaborating, Chidambaram, the architect of Pokhran-II, said that several measurements had confirmed the yields of the tests.

Proving the point, he said that noted US seismologist Jack Evernden had made estimations of the tests taking into consideration geological and seismological differences between the test sites. They tallied with India’s results.

Chidambaram pointed out that several papers had been written on the test results and had been peer-reviewed in reputed international journals.

Now, India also had the computer simulation capability to predict the yields of nuclear weapons-fission, boosted fission and two-state thermonuclear, of designs related to the May 1998 tests.

He pointed out that even Iyengar, who is now questioning the tests’ outcome, had agreed with the yield of the tests. However, the conclusions drawn by him on the efficiency were “purely speculative in nature”, according to Chidambaram.

He wondered how, without the knowledge of the design, the nature of fission-fusion break-up and quantity of thermo-nuclear material, Iyengar could calculate the efficiency of fuel burnt as 10 percent.

“No one outside the design team had the data to calculate fission-fusion yield break-up or any other significant parameter related to fusion burnt,” he said.