Tanmoy Guha

INDIA AS A NUCLEAR POWER

As early as 26 June 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru, soon to be India's first Prime Minister, announced: As long as the world is constituted as it is, every country will have to devise and use the latest devices for its protection. I have no doubt India will develop her scientific researches and I hope Indian scientists will use the atomic force for constructive purposes. But if India is threatened, she will inevitably try to defend herself by all means at her disposal.

Current Arsenal and Estimates of Inventory

In 2005, it was estimated that India had between 40 and 50 warheads. In November 2008, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that India has about 70 assembled nuclear warheads, with about 50 of them fully operational. A report by published by the Institute for Science and International Security in 2000, estimated that India at end of 1999 had 310 kilograms of weapon grade plutonium, enough for 65 nuclear weapons. He also estimated that India had 4,200 kg of reactor grade plutonium which is enough to build 1,000 nuclear weapons. By the end of 2004, it was estimated that India had 445 kilograms of weapon grade plutonium which is enough for around 85 nuclear weapons considering 5 kg of plutonium required for each weapon. As of February 2011, the Federation of American Scientists estimated that India had a stockpile of 80-100 weapons.

CTBT

India is not a signatory to either the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), but did accede to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in October 1963. India is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and four of its 17 nuclear reactors are subject to IAEA safeguards. India announced its lack of intention to accede to the NPT as late as 1997 by voting against the paragraph of a General Assembly Resolution which urged all nonsignatories of the treaty to accede to it at the earliest possible date.

Indias First Test

India conducted its first nuclear detonation, described by India as a "peaceful nuclear explosion," on 18 May 1974. This test, which may have only been partially successful, demonstrated a claimed yield of 12 kt. The device was emplaced in a vertical shaft and detonated at a depth of 107 meters. It is reported that the American intelligence community estimated that the actual yield was in the range of 4 to 6 kilotons. The test produced a crater with a radius variously reported at between 47 and 75 meters, and a depth of about 10 meters. The Atomic Bomb The fully assembled device had a hexagonal cross section, 1.25 meter in diameter and weighed 1400 kg. The device was detonated at 8.05 a.m. in a shaft 107 m under the army Pokhran test range in the Thar Desert (or Great Indian Desert), Rajasthan. Officially the yield was reported at 12 kt, though outside estimates of the yield vary from 2 kt to 20 kt.

Test
After 24 years without testing India resumed nuclear testing with a series of nuclear explosions known as "Operation Shakti." Prime Minister Vajpayee authorized the tests on April 8, 1998.

On May 11, 1998, India tested three devices at the Pokhran underground testing site, followed by two more tests on May 13, 1998. The nuclear tests carried out at 3:45 pm on May 11th were claimed by the Indian government to be a simultaneous detonation of three different devices - a fission device with a yield of about 12 kilotons (KT), a thermonuclear device with a yield of about 43 KT, and a sub-kiloton device. The two tests carried out at 12:21 pm on May 13th were also detonated simultaneously with reported yields in the range of 0.2 to 0.6 KT.