Mohan:
News about India's Nuclear Doctrine and Neutron Bomb
Neutron Bomb
expressindia.com
Nuclear Doctrine
expressindia.com
India can make neutron bomb, says Atomic Energy Commission chief
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
Mumbai, Aug 16: India has the capacity to build a neutron bomb, according to Atomic Energy Commission
chairman Rajagopala Chidambaram.
Indian nuclear scientiss, after the Pokharan-2 tests, can
design and make nuclear weapons of "any type or size," he
said.
Neutron bomb, which is a battlefield weapon, is essentially a
low-yield thermo-nuclear device, where the
neutron-producing fusion process dominates over the fission
trigger. It is not difficult to build such a device, according to
Chidambaram.
India, which exploded a hydrogen bomb and four fission
devices under the Thar desert in May last year and declared
a moratorium on further tests, has not stopped its nuclear
weapons research, according to top officials of the Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
"The research is on. We have not stopped (it)," said BARC
director Anil Kakodkar. The test devices were designed and
built in BARC. Kakodkar, however, declined to elaborate.
India is free to carry out sub-critical tests to keep on refining
theweapon codes, but authorities were unwilling to comment
if such studies are being done in BARC.
According to former AEC chief Krishna Gopala Iyengar,
subcritical studies will require expensive facilities.
Meanwhile, authorities said that analysis of rock samples
obtained from drilling at all the five holes at the Pokharan test
site has been completed.
Chidambaram said the analysis had established beyond doubt
that the hydrogen bomb did explode producing an yield as
per design. (There were some reports in the West that only
the fission trigger worked and that secondary fusion fuel failed
to explode).
Chidambaram said that the samples carried evidence of
reactions caused by 14 million volt neutrons. "Such high
energy neutrons are produced only in the fusion process," he
said.
"This is a proof that our hydrogen bomb did explode."
According to Chidambaram, the yield obtained from sample
analysis (60-kiloton) also tallied with that obtained from
seismic data.
Kakodkar said the analysis of post-shotdrilling data is
classified, as it contains information about actual design of the
bombs and material used.
Copyright ¸ 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (
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