August 31, 1998

India might have to keep with the scientific Joneses.

By Manoj Joshi

The hype has always been that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will end nuclear weapons development. But the reality is that science may not quite be ready to go out of the business of making weapons. What the new weapons will be cannot be forecast, says Atomic Energy Commission Chairman R. Chidambaram, adding sardonically, "Given the past, you can allow your imagination to run free."

India's opposition to the CTBT on grounds other than security continues. The contention is that while the CTBT blocks the emergence of new nuclear weapons states, it does nothing to prevent the advanced countries from using their technological capabilities to continue the design and development of what are called "fourth generation nuclear weapons".

US specialists have charged that India's fledgling inertial confinement fusion (ICF) programmes, run by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), would aid in nuclear weapons' design. But the boot may be on the other foot. According to Arjun Makhijani and Hisham Zerrifi of the US-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the US is trying to achieve thermonuclear ignition without using fissile materials. In mid-July, Zerrifi told a press conference in Washington that research was focused on compressing thermonuclear materials by "drivers" using inertial confinement (lasers), z-pinch (X-ray) and electromagnetic means to trigger micro explosions. Former US weapons designer Richard L. Garwin says that despite his country's enormous lead in non-nuclear explosive techniques -- like the ICF or the hydrodynamic and subcritical tests -- it is unlikely to go in for newer designs of weapons because it has a stock of highly reliable ones.

Critics target the US Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programme as a major loophole in the CTBT. The ostensible purpose of the programme is to ensure that the US nuclear weapons remain safe even without testing them. To this end, the US has decided to fund the $1.3 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF), the most advanced ICF facility. Taken with other facilities, the US will have the scientific capabilities of studying every aspect of nuclear weapons' design and functioning.

The US isn't the only country pursuing such capabilities. In France, a facility similar to the NIF, called Laser Megajoule, will be built near Bordeaux. The Japanese have reached a high level of sophistication with their ICF laser programme. Germany is also conducting research in this area. According to B.D. Bhawalkar, director of the Centre for Advanced Technologies, Indore, it is unlikely that ICF systems will ever be used to trigger weapons given their bulk. But he concedes they can be used for validating the codes or computer models that enable a designer to examine and predict how a design may work. Bhawalkar heads the institution where India's key ICF facility is located. But he says Indian research is merely designed to keep abreast with the study of laser-produced plasmas, not ICF. "Compared to what the US and the others are doing, we are merely in kindergarten," he says. Plasma studies in India are also conducted by the Institute of Plasma Physics at Bhat in Gandhinagar in Gujarat, the Saha Institute for Nuclear Physics in Calcutta and the BARC in Trombay.

ICF is just one of the ways in which a test ban can be bypassed. Among others are the so-called hydronuclear and subcritical experiments. Compressing fissile material without self-sustaining chain reactions or yield are termed 'subcritical' experiments. Hydronuclear tests, banned by the CTBT, are those where a tiny amount of fissile material is used to produce yields equivalent to about 2 kg. Significantly, the official announcement after India's second series of tests on May 13 declared that they were undertaken to provide the nation the ability to use computer modelling in weapons' design which "may be supported by subcritical experiments, if necessary". Indian scientists have, after all, proved that they can keep up with the best, if adequately supported and financed.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication

© Living Media India Ltd