EFFORTS are on to generate a favourable public opinion for
allowing our government to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. It appears the Prime Minister, Mr. A. B. Vajpayee, has
been trying to sell to opposition parties and the public the
following points:
Our nuclear scientists are sure that with the Pokhran-II tests,
conducted in May 1998, they have ``enough data, expertise and
skills to conduct sub-criticial tests and maintain our deterrence
for the next 25 years or so,'' and therefore we can go ahead and
sign the CTBT.
India does not need any further nuclear test for weaponisation
and for acquiring a minimum deterrent.
If we sign the CTBT now, there will be every possibility of the
American Government supporting India to get a permanent seat in
the United Nations Security Council.
There will be a favourable world opinion and it will result in
many advantages to India.
Mr. Vajpayee's logic will collapse if the failure of Pokhran-II
is made public. But the credit claimed by the BJP for Pokhran-II
and the benefit derived from it during the general elections do
not allow Mr. Vajpayee or any of his party members to consider
even remotely the possibility of the tests having been a failure.
They wish to believe that the tests were a grand success.
The fact is Pokhran-II was only a marginal improvement on the May
1974 Pokhran-I. The thermo-nuclear test (hydrogen bomb) in May
1998 failed and the sub-critical tests went in a random way
yielding very meagre data. Only the fission test (atom bomb)
worked in May 1998, but it did so in May 1974 also. Therefore, if
the nuclear tests alone are the criteria for our signing the
CTBT, India could have acceded to the treaty right after Pokhran-
I. To hide this fact, the Vajpayee Government is cleverly
managing the media and conducting a glorified international
diplomacy.
Scientifically explaining the need for an independent assessment
of Pokhran-II, a petition was presented to the Prime Minister in
September 1998, suggesting the appointment of an expert
committee. The petition was submitted on the advice of the
Gandhian, freedom fighter and Padma Vibhushan awardee, Dr. Usha
Mehta, and the Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, was aware
of this fact. But Mr. Vajpayee did not even care to acknowledge
the receipt of the petition.
Time will show that the strengths in military science and
technology built purely on a too-clever-by-half diplomacy and
media manipulation can prove arsenic poison capable of eating
away into the vitals of the nation.
Failure of a design
Here are the facts about the promise and performance of our
nuclear establishment. The first one concerns the nuclear
submarine project. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre had been
working on a nuclear submarine propulsion plant design and
development since 1971. Being the ultimate user, the Navy
deployed in 1976 one of its officers with proven abilities to
look into the viability of the design. He found serious flaws and
also discovered that the design was a copy of the German nuclear
merchant ship, Otto Hahn, and as such would not be suitable for a
nuclear submarine. The BARC scientists, unable to hide the
glaring fact, grudgingly dropped the design in December 1976. By
April 1978, they claimed that their second design was complete.
But the same naval officer showed with computer calculations that
the design, which was based on land-based reactor concepts, would
not be viable for a seagoing application. The scientists could
not disprove the findings and therefore dropped their second
design also, in January 1979. In March 1980, they submitted their
third design directly to the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi,
who, however, obtained technical comments from the very same
naval officer. As his findings showed conclusively that the
design seriously violated the ground rules and safety rules
strictly followed in all nuclear navies of the world, Indira
Gandhi decided not to grant Rs. 150 crores sought by the
scientists. The third design was consequently dropped towards the
end of 1980.
The naval Admirals then directed their officer to develop a
design of his own. He took two years to complete the design which
was submitted in 1983, through proper channels, to Indira Gandhi
with a request that it be sent along with the fourth design of
the BARC for examination by an independent group of experts. For
lack of any group of experts in the country outside the DAE
(Department of Atomic Energy) circles, she suggested to the
senior scientists of the BARC that the design developed by the
naval officer be examined for a possible naval application. But
Dr. Raja Ramanna, then head of the BARC, refused to consider the
design saying it was the work of a naval officer and not that of
a scientist under him. During the subsequent period Dr. Ramanna,
as the head of the DAE, and Dr. V. Arunachalam as the Scientific
Advisor to the Defence Minister worked out a plan by which the
BARC would be the sole agency to deal with the nuclear side of
the submarine propulsion plant and the Navy would confine itself
to the steam side. The Admirals tried their best to get control
of the project but failed. Thus what commenced in 1971 has now
become an open-ended project allowed to go at a pace the Navy and
the rest of the nation are compelled to treat as ``affordable''.
The BARC scientists have the luxury of deciding their own time-
table even in defence matters.
Fuelling concerns
The second concern is about nuclear fuel, for the Tarapur atomic
power plant set up as a turn-key project by GE of the U.S. in the
Sixties. The Americans cited their laws and expressed their
inability to supply fuel for Tarapur as India was not a signatory
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The DAE scientists went
on an aggressive publicity in and abroad that India had almost
completed the development of MOX (plutonium oxide + uranium
oxide) and therefore even if the Americans refused to supply
enriched uranium fuel, the Tarapur plant would not face a
shutdown and would be run on MOX. At that juncture, believing
that they could convince the Indians to buy nuclear power plants
from France instead of from Russia, the French agreed to supply
fuel for Tarapur. But on seeing that the Indians still opted for
Russian nuclear technology, France declined to supply fuel beyond
10 years. That situation in the early Nineties landed the DAE
with the option of running Tarapur with MOX, claimed to have been
perfected 10 years earlier. But surprisingly, the DAE looked
around to find a country to source enriched uranium. India had to
swallow its pride and now it is the fuel from China that is
running the Tarapur plant.
The third concern is about the hydrogen bomb test. Did India
succeed with its first hydrogen bomb test on May 11, 1998? The
nuclear tests done that month, according to the official version,
included three tests on May 11 (atom bomb + hydrogen bomb + a low
yield device) and two low yield tests on May 13. The DAE
scientists claimed that they succeeded fully with Pokhran-II. But
this writer, in an analysis TheHindu (May 20, 1998), explained
that the first hydrogen bomb test by India completely failed. In
another article, in Frontline (June 19, 1998), this writer
analysed the failure of India's first hydrogen bomb test. These
write-ups prompted some members to raise questions in Parliament
on the claims about the hydrogen bomb test, but there was no
satisfactory reply.
The New Scientist (May 23, 1998) reported an assessment by Dr.
Frode Ringdal, scientific director of the Norweign Seismic Array
near Oslo, which is also part of the global seismic network, that
``the blast (May 11) registered clearly in Pakistan, Canada,
Russia, Australia and here (Oslo). All the traces show it was at
most 25 kilotons.''
Seismological Research Letters (September 1998) carried an
article, ``The May 1998 India and Pakistan Nuclear Tests'',
containing an analysis of data from 22 seismic monitoring
stations around the world, with the conclusion that the May 11
explosions had a combined force of no more than 15 kilotons, so
small that they probably involved a less sophisticated fission
bomb than a thermonuclear H-bomb.
According to Dr. R. Chidambaram, present Chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission, and Dr. Ramanna (in a scientific paper ``Some
studies on India's peaceful nuclear explosion experiment'',
published as part of the Proceedings Panel Vienna, IAEA (1975)
(421-436), India's first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, gave a
body wave magnitude (mb) of 5.0 or 5.1 on the Richter scale and
the yield was estimated to be 10 to 12 kilotons.
Whereas, according to Mr. S. K. Sikka and Mr. Anil Kakodkar,
present Director of the BARC, the nuclear tests in May 1998 gave
a magnitude of mb equal to 5.2. Their research work appeared in
the BARC News Letter 172, May 1998. They concluded that the
``yield of the POK2 detonations (May 1998 tests) was about 60
kilotons.''
The 1974 and 1998 tests were conducted in the same Rajasthan
desert and therefore the constants in the mathematical formulae
are the same. That being so, how can the results of mathematical
calculations be so much at variance as to result in an increase
of a 48-kiloton yield with an increase of 0.1 on the Richter
scale?
All this is evidence enough to show that there is a science scam
in India's nuclear tests in May 1998 and it is more serious than
the bank scam, the fodder scam, the fertilizer scam, the shoes
scam and all such scandals under judicial scrutiny. Therefore,
the petition submitted to Mr. Vajpayee in September 1998 pleaded
that in the national interest, a judicial inquiry into the
science scam be held.
Nuclear diplomacy based on false claims can be dangerous to
national security. The interests of a political party in power
cannot be above the national interest. Hence the judicial inquiry
is necessary to safeguard the national interest.
What is more significant is that while delivering the Yeshwantrao
memorial lecture in Mumbai on November 29, 1999, Dr. Chidambaram
altered the Richter scale value of Pokhran-I from 5.1 to 4.9 and
of Pokhran-II from 5.2 to 5.4, and said the DAE was correct in
all its claims. This instance offered conclusive proof to show
that the DAE is in the habit of fudging scientific data to suit
its claims. Thus there are valid grounds to question its claim on
the success of Pokhran-II. Hence the basis for Mr. Vajyapee's
arguments to sign the CTBT is flawed to the core.
These are some of the matters to which the Prime Minister is
required to pay attention as he holds direct charge of the DAE.
But he has been ignoring such issues and is making the country
believe that he is the one who is responsible for building a
nuclear muscle for India with Pokhran-II. Can the people agree to
India signing the CTBT without re-orienting the DAE and without
infusing fresh blood into the nuclear establishment?
BUDDI KOTA SUBBARAO
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