Fifty years ago on 18 May 1974, India became the sixth nation in the world to enter the nuclear club — literally with a bang.
Among the many geopolitical reasons that could have influenced then-PM Indira Gandhi to give a go-ahead to the nuclear scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to prepare for a test, the 1971 India-Pakistan war seems to be the most important one. Highly agitated over India’s capabilities to liberate Bangladesh and inflict a crushing defeat on Pakistan, the United States stationed a carrier battle group led by USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in the Bay of Bengal to intimidate New Delhi into forcing a withdrawal and cease-fire. The Soviet Union reacted sharply by sending a nuclear-armed submarine to keep a watch on US Navy movements. Indira Gandhi was quick to realise the salience of nuclear deterrence and authorised a team of about 75 scientists under the leadership of Raja Ramanna to work on a nuclear fission device.
The first test
On the morning of 18 May, the nuclear device was detonated in the Rajasthan desert near Pokhran. Codenamed “Operation Smiling Buddha”, the test was received with shock, awe, consternation, and knee-jerk reaction from Canada, which ended the nuclear cooperation agreement.
Twenty years after the establishment of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) under the leadership of Homi Jehangir Bhabha, father of India’s nuclear programme, the nation was ready to conduct a nuclear test — a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE). The bombing of Dresden by the British (when they dropped some 2,700 tons of bombs on the German city), the incendiary firebombing of Tokyo codenamed ‘Operation Meetinghouse’, and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bombings — all in the same year, 1945 — exemplified the massive devastation that nuclear weapons can cause.
In 1957, PM Jawaharlal Nehru, deeply disturbed by the nuclear destruction, said, during a Lok Sabha address: “We have declared quite clearly that we are not interested in and we will not make these bombs, even if we have the capacity to do so.”
But later, he indicated India’s determination to use nuclear energy for non-civil purposes if “compelled” to do so. “We must develop this atomic energy quite apart from war – indeed I think we must develop it for the purpose of using it for peaceful purposes…Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it that way.”
Yet, the progress of India’s nuclear programme was anything but smooth. The 1962 Chinese aggression, the sudden death of Nehru in 1964, the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict, and the death of India’s second PM Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent under mysterious circumstances in January 1966 were major roadblocks in the nuclear research process. In October 1965, Bhabha announced on All India Radio that if he was exempted, he could make a nuclear bomb for the country at the cost of just $10 million, and that too within 18 months. Three months after he made this public statement, on 24 January 1966, at about 7:02 am, Air India 101 ‘Kanchenjanga’, a Boeing 707 aircraft, crashed on Mont Blanc near the Franco-Italian border, killing all 117 passengers and crew on board, including the 56-year-old Bhabha. This came as a severe blow to a nation that had signed a peace treaty with Pakistan only 13 days earlier. India’s nuclear journey received a jolt but did not stop there; rather it surged ahead with greater force as if with a vengeance at the perceived conspiracy against its growth trajectory.
Also read: India can’t wait for Canadians to vote out Justin Trudeau next year. Act now
India has always been self-reliant
In 1954, the United Nations General Assembly resolved to establish the United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee to advise the Secretary-General on arrangements for the First International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. The UN convened its first Geneva Conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy from 8 to 20 August 1955. Bhabha was elected as the president at the conference. In his presidential address, he said, “Nuclear energy would provide a shortcut to the prosperity of the developing countries that the industrialised countries were now beginning to enjoy.”
Bhabha was also a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1958 under the leadership of WB Lewis of Canada. India’s commitment to the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and Bhabha’s proximity to Canadian experts in the field brought the two countries together to work on developing India’s nuclear technology. As part of the Indo-Canadian nuclear cooperation project, a 40-megawatt CIRUS reactor was built and commissioned on 10 July 1960. CIRUS reactor proved to be an excellent platform for training engineers and scientists and understanding the intricacies of managing natural uranium, heavy water, and reactor systems, which eventually evolved into the Indian pressurised heavy water reactor programme. After 50 years of successful operation, it was decided to permanently shut down the reactor in December 2010. CIRUS was used for the production of isotopes, R&D in reactor technology, training, neutron beam research, neutron activation analysis, development and testing of fuel assemblies and testing of neutron detectors.
Thus, India’s nuclear programme was rooted in self-reliance and learning by experiments, which greatly reduced foreign collaborations and meddling. It also maintained necessary secrecy about tests and the collection and publication of data without releasing proliferation-sensitive information.
The second test
Fourteen years later, for the second time, India conducted five nuclear tests of advanced weapon designs on 11 and 13 May 1998 at the Pokhran range. These included a 45 kt thermonuclear device, a 15 kt fission device, and a 0.2 kt sub-kiloton (i.e. less than 1 kiloton) device. The two nuclear devices detonated simultaneously on 13 May were also in the sub-kiloton range – 0.5 and 0.3 kt. These tests conclusively proved that India possesses sufficient expertise in all the fields of nuclear weapons development like explosive ballistics, shock wave, radiation–matter interaction and condensed matter physics, radiation hydrodynamics and other areas such as complex computer simulation software development to enable accurate prediction of weapon yields.
Besides, India maintains a very high standard of nuclear safety, which has ensured an accident-free nuclear programme for over five decades.
India is committed to total nuclear disarmament and a world free from nuclear weapons. But such an ideal scenario will forever remain a utopic idea unless nuclear powers commit themselves to a nuclear-free world and return to the use of nuclear technology for energy, medical, and other peaceful purposes. As one of the most populous countries in the world, India is the third-largest energy consumer after China and the US, indicating an upward growth trajectory as energy is one of the prime indicators of economic growth. Sooner than later, India will have to fast-track the use of thorium as fuel, the third cycle of nuclear progression, reduce the use of fossil fuels, and minimise carbon emissions.
It is estimated that India has a substantial deposit of thorium (518, 000 tonnes) in the form of monazite in beach sands, which increases the affordability of long-term projects. The long-term sustainability of the indigenous nuclear power programme in India depends, to a great extent, on the large-scale utilisation of the vast thorium resources to breed 233U and recycle the same in self-sustaining 232Th–233U ‘closed’ fuel cycle in thermal breeder reactors.
The next government should work on two priorities — civil and military. In the nuclear weapons field, we should improve competencies to ensure sufficient credible deterrence capabilities, and regarding nuclear energy, speed up the thorium fuel cycle to meet energy demands and mitigate climate change issues.
Seshadri Chari is the former editor of ‘Organiser’. He tweets @seshadrichari. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)