Think Tanks Say Nuclear Arsenals Expanded, Modernized Last Year

June 12, 2023
By RFE/RL

A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired as part of Russia's nuclear drills from a launch site in Plesetsk, northwestern Russia, on October 26, 2022.

Nuclear-armed states have continued to expand and modernize their atomic arsenals amid a deterioration of the world's geopolitical situation, investing huge sums of money diverted from other development goals, an influential think tank said in a report published on June 12.

While the total number of the nuclear warheads dipped year-on-year from 12,710 to 12,512, the number of nuclear weapons ready for use at the start of this year -- 9,576, accounting for about two-thirds of the total --grew last year by 86, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.

The report said that several of the nine nuclear-armed states -- the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel -- deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems last year.

As a matter of official policy, Israel has declined to comment on whether or not it possesses nuclear weapons.

Separately, a report also published on June 12 by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said the nine nuclear-armed states spent a total of $82.9 billion on nuclear weapons last year, with the United States alone accounting for more than half of the amount ($43.7 billion). Russia and China were the second- and third-ranked nuclear spenders with $11.7 billion and $9.6 billion in expenditures, respectively.

Russia and the United States together account for more than 90 percent of all the world's nuclear weapons, SIPRI said, adding that transparency about both countries' nuclear weapons declined since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

China has also substantially increased the number of nuclear warheads that it possesses -- from 350 to 410 year-on-year, SIPRI said.

After many years of a slow decline in the number of nuclear weapons, SIPRI said the trend is reversing.

"The big picture is we've had over 30 years of the number of nuclear warheads coming down, and we see that process coming to an end now," SIPRI Director Dan Smith told French news agency AFP. 

With reporting by AFP

Nations Wasted $157,000 Per Minute on Nuclear Weapons in 2022: ICAN

The U.S. spent $43.7 billion on nuclear weapons last year—more than every other nuclear-armed nation combined, according to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group.

An anti-nuclear protester holds a placard at a rally in Sydney, Australia on February 5, 2018.
(Photo: Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS
Jun 12, 2023

A new report published Monday by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons shows that the world's nine nuclear-armed countries spent more than $157,000 per minute on their atomic weaponry last year, enriching private contractors at the risk of imperiling humankind.

Combined, nuclear-armed nations spent $82.9 billion on their arsenals last year, according to ICAN. The United States was the biggest spender, dumping $43.7 billion into its already massive arsenal in 2022—more than all of the other nuclear-armed countries combined.

"The U.S. Congress allocated $16 billion for the [National Nuclear Security Administration] in 2022 to spend on weapons activities," ICAN's report notes. "In 2022, the Department of Defense requested $27.7 billion for 'nuclear modernization,' including the 'Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, B-21 Bomber, Columbia class submarine, and Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications.'"

Overall, the report shows global spending on nuclear weapons increased for the third consecutive year in 2022.

ICAN describes such spending as immensely wasteful and dangerous to global safety, rejecting commonplace claims that investments in nuclear weapons—particularly as a tool of deterrence—are essential to security.

"Through an ever-changing and challenging security environment, from security threats of climate change to the Covid-19 pandemic to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nuclear weapons spending has steadily increased, with no resulting measurable improvement on the security environment," the report states. "If anything, the situation is getting worse."

"Luck, not reason or strategy, has kept nuclear weapons from being used in warfare for the past 78 years. But we can't count on our luck to hold in perpetuity."

ICAN argues that consistently growing nuclear weapons spending is an outcome of a vicious cycle whereby tax dollars finance the construction of nuclear weapons by private companies, which proceed to fund think tanks and hire lobbyists to make the case that nuclear weapons are essential to national security—leading governments to continue pouring money "down their nuclear weapons drains."

Last year, according to ICAN's findings, nearly $16 billion in new nuclear weapons contracts were awarded to private corporations.

The companies that received the contracts—such as Bechtel, Boeing, and General Dynamics—"turned around and invested in lobbying governments, spending $113 million on those efforts in the U.S. and France," ICAN notes.

"Together," the report continues, "nuclear weapon-producing companies, nuclear-armed governments, and those in nuclear alliances spent $21-36 million funding the ten of the most prominent think tanks researching and writing about nuclear weapons in nuclear-armed states."

The think tanks highlighted in ICAN's report include the Atlantic Council—which received funding from Bechtel, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other major contractors in 2021—and the Brookings Institution, which "received between $600,000 and $1,199,997 from three companies that produce nuclear weapons: Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman."

ICAN published its report on the same day that a new analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed that the number of operational warheads in nuclear-armed nations' arsenals grew last year amid soaring tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

According to ICAN, "Russia's invasion of Ukraine and overt threats to use nuclear weapons have induced fear across the planet, but have also spurred a resilience and re-thinking of outdated concepts like nuclear deterrence," which suggests the threat of nuclear retaliation is sufficient to deter nuclear-armed countries from using the civilization-threatening weaponry.

ICAN has argued that the idea of nuclear deterrence "makes nuclear use more likely because the threat of use of nuclear weapons must be credible, and so the nuclear-armed states are always poised to launch nuclear weapons."

"Luck, not reason or strategy, has kept nuclear weapons from being used in warfare for the past 78 years. But we can't count on our luck to hold in perpetuity," the group's new report states. "For the first time in decades, the general public was confronted with a very real threat of nuclear war in 2022. The threat that nuclear weapons pose, as long as they exist, became tangible, with iodine tablets selling out across Europe and an increase in demand for nuclear bunkers."

ICAN concludes its report by imploring all nations to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a legally binding international agreement that none of the nine nuclear-armed countries have signed. The United States and Russia, which together possess 90% of the world's nuclear warheads, have both opposed U.N. resolutions welcoming the TPNW and urging countries to swiftly ratify it.

To date, more than 90 countries have signed the treaty and nearly 70 have ratified it.


"The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the multilateral response to the irresponsible behavior of all nuclear-armed states," ICAN's report says. "It is the normative barricade against threats to use nuclear weapons. All countries should join this landmark international instrument to prohibit the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons and prevent their eventual use by ensuring their elimination."

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

YA THINK?!

Is There a Problem With Nuclear Energy?




From the “Not-my-circus-not-my-monkeys” department, after the 10th anniversary of the Fukishima disaster last March my curiosity ventured into the nuclear energy debate. See these observations from those who actually know something about the issue (read the articles themselves for the full story). Opinions vary widely:

Aubrey Hilliard’s Texican reports weekly on commodity prices and commentary on the markets. He has ideas about nuclear as a dependable carbon-free baseload source. He says the old fission power model is out and a complete rework is on the way from, for example, TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company developing a class of nuclear fast reactors called the traveling wave reactor. It uses depleted uranium as fuel and could reduce our 700,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. Eight metric tons could power 2.5 million homes for a year. Another project is NuScale, a small-scale modular nuclear reactor. In the meantime China has its sights on nuclear fusion.

At eenews.net Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian Thomas Wellock says, “Are nuclear reactors safe” is an impossible question to answer. The correct question is, “Are they safe enough? Can nuclear reactors be engineered to protect the public and the environment against plausible emergencies and accidents without so many layers of security that their energy becomes unaffordable?” He discusses the “defense-in-depth” and “probabilistic risk assessment” strategies for dealing with safety issues.

Michael Shellenberger in Forbes describes the many ways that HBO’s sensationalized Chernobyl gets the disaster wrong, in the process terrifying millions of people about nuclear technology, assisted by overreaction of media such as Vanity Fair and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Read the article for the show’s myriad inaccuracies.

In Nature, Aditi Verma, Ali Ahmed and Francesca Giovannini say that regardless of whether the climate crisis is as bad as some people think, the largest problem is the nuclear sector itself, which is opaque, inward looking and inequitable. Among the inequalities presented by reliance on nuclear energy, three-fourths of all uranium production globally comes from areas that are in or near indigenous communities, and mines are left un-remediated to poison lands and peoples.

Their questions: Will the sector ever overcome public disapproval, and are its benefits worth the risks and costs to people and the environment? According to the authors, after Fukushima left and undeniable mark on the public psyche, the industry consistently plays it down. The studies concluding that its economic impact wasn’t much fail to capture the harder-to-quantify collateral damage to people’s lives and the environment. An example: After Fukushima, Germany voted to phase out nuclear energy altogether by 2022.

And Nature appears to be pretty much against nuclear as an energy source.

Katie Tubb, at the Heritage Foundation, as you would expect, champions America’s domestic nuclear energy industry, crediting economic freedom. She offers these and other suggestions for our nuclear regulatory environment:
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act distorts the market by making taxpayers responsible for disposal of nuclear waste.
Re-evaluate outmoded regulations that overstate the risk from radiation exposure.
Update outdated reactor regulations that are unsuited to modern technology.
Avoid doing business with state-controlled “rogue nations” (you know who they are) and fix misguided barriers to collaboration with private companies in transparent and free countries.

And in California, ideology trumps sound policy. You knows its bad when climate alarmist the Los Angeles Times says so.

Lagniappe

In case you were wondering, nuclear energy supplies 10.3% of the world’s electricity through 414 nuclear power reactors in 32 countries. In the U.S. in 2020 renewables had a greater share of electricity generation (21%) than coal (19%) and nuclear (20%). Natural gas lead at 40%.

[View source.]

Is There a Problem With Nuclear Energy? | Gray Reed - JDSupra

August 5, 2021

NO SUCH THING
About Nuclear Energy: An Unbiased View

 August 9, 2021
By James Wilson

Nuclear energy has been around for decades, and it’s been a polarizing topic of discussion for almost as long. The use of nuclear energy has been under scrutiny by many factions worldwide since the first nuclear plant started generating power in the former Soviet Union during the 50s. And while it is still a constant source of debate, nuclear energy is also a source of great potential to solve the energy crisis and even tackle climate change. Regardless of political or conservational opinions, there’s a lot to learn about nuclear energy. Read on for an unbiased, non-political view about what this unique energy source is, and how it impacts the world.

The History of Nuclear Energy

As mentioned, the first nuclear plant became operational in the USSR when the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant began producing electricity in 1954. However, the idea of nuclear power was first discovered decades earlier by an Italian-American physicist named Enrico Fermi in 1934. Fermi researched subatomic behavior and was the first to render controlled chain reactions using nuclear fission, which earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938. Since Fermi’s work, the history of nuclear energy has continued to unfold all over the world. In 1956, the commercial nuclear station, Calder Hall, opened in England, and eventually, the first nuclear reactor was established in the US in Arco, Idaho. Currently, 450 nuclear reactors are operating in the world, according to the Atomic Energy Agency.

What is it and How is Nuclear Energy Created?

Nuclear energy starts with atoms, which are the smallest units of matter. Nuclear power is produced when atoms are split. The core of an atom is called the nucleus. When atoms are split, the nucleus releases energy. The common fuel for nuclear power is uranium, a heavy, radioactive metal mined worldwide. Uranium is used because its atoms are easily split apart when colliding with subatomic particles in a nuclear reactor.

This process, known as nuclear fission, generates heat directed to a cooling agent such as water. This produces steam which is then spun in a turbine connected to a generator. This chain of events culminates in the production of electricity. Presently, nuclear energy is the source of 11% of global electricity, and the US comprises about 20% of electric use from nuclear fission.


How is Nuclear Energy Used?

While it has many uses, nuclear power is primarily used for producing electricity. This seems like a general observation, but when you consider all the homes, businesses, cities, and communities using nuclear energy for electricity, it becomes a sobering factor. Read on to learn more about how companies and industries are using nuclear energy in different ways.

Agriculture: Radioisotopes created from nuclear energy are used to reduce invasive and harmful insect populations. This process sterilizes certain insects that threaten the growth of food crops crucial for feeding the world. The practice of using radioisotopes to control pests has replaced damaging and hazardous chemical pesticides.


Medical: Nuclear energy is used for medical imaging, which medical professionals use to detect and diagnose health issues such as tumors, blood disorders, bone problems, and other maladies. This type of imaging eliminates the introduction of toxic or harmful dies in the body, which often causes patients unsavory side effects. Radioisotopes are also used as a therapy to reduce tumor size, treat some cancers and alleviate pain.


Astronomy: Thanks to nuclear energy, space exploration has been made possible through the use of radioisotope power systems. These are nuclear-driven power sources that fuel space probes and have been vital to obtaining revolutionary information about planets including Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto.

Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy

Perhaps the greatest reason nuclear energy is hotly debated by politicians, humanitarians, and conservationists is that it poses both extreme benefits and extraordinary disasters. On the one hand, nuclear energy can save lives and allows millions of people to work, play and live. On the other hand, nuclear warfare and disasters have the potential to destroy life on this planet as we know it. Here are a few unbiased facts about the risks and benefits of nuclear energy.

Risks to Nuclear Energy: Opponents of nuclear energy are quick to cite catastrophes such as Chernobyl in 1986 and the devastating failure of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011. The Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine was caused by a faulty reactor design and human error, sparking a power surge that released vast amounts of radioactivity in the air. The Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan was caused by a series of natural events when an earthquake combined with a tsunami caused the evacuation of over 470,000 people to avoid radioactive exposure.

There are also growing concerns about the harmful side effects of producing nuclear energy. To explain, radioactive material is a byproduct of operating nuclear reactors. This waste is highly toxic and is known to cause certain cancers and have damaging effects on the environment. Furthermore, the radioactivity of nuclear waste is long-lasting and can remain in the soil and other materials for thousands of years. While the containment and disposal of radioactive waste are highly regulated, the process is under scrutiny because of the inherent risks of volatile nuclear waste.

Benefits of Nuclear Power: Unlike fossil fuels that pollute the environment with carbon dioxide, nuclear energy is an emissions-free source of electricity. As such, it reduces greenhouse gases when it is used as clean electricity to power corporations and communities around the world. For example, 800 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity produced by nuclear power in the US each year is the equivalent of 470 million metric tons of poisonous carbon produced by coal or natural-fuel sources of electricity. Furthermore, thermal energy from nuclear reactors can be used to remove carbon caused by industrial and transportation sectors.

As mentioned, other benefits of nuclear power include innovation in medical diagnosis, cancer treatment, and effective alternative therapies for improved health. It also contributes to advances in astronomy, allowing scientists and physicists to understand the universe and answer questions about our planet.

Clearly, the potential danger and benefits of using nuclear energy present extreme contrasts, which has made nuclear power the source of tremendous dispute and debate. Whether you are a proponent or an antagonist about the subject, it’s important to understand the facts about nuclear energy to assess both sides of this controversial argument.

About Nuclear Energy: An Unbiased View - Blue and Green Tomorrow

INDIA SECRETLY BUILT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The Challenge Of A Multi-Polar Nuclear Age – Analysis

Russia launches Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile at the Plesetsk testing field on April 20. Photo Credit: Russian Defense Ministry video screenshot

 June 11, 2022  

By IPCS

By Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar (Retd)*

Of Parity, Assured Destruction, & Mistrust

For the last 77 years, since the US first detonated nuclear weapons and annihilated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an eerie ambivalence has prevailed on the sect of nuclear use. On the one hand, some scholars and practitioners are convinced of the myth of usable nuclear weapons. On the other, governments are devising policies for their use. Meanwhile, Russia is toying with the idea of escalating the war in Ukraine to nuclear levels, simply in order to de-escalate the on-going conflict. On the other side of the globe, China is designing a strategy to provide greater flexibility in the use of nuclear forces.

Significantly, the first nuclear attacks also defined the basis of nuclear stability. The relationship between the bellicose nuclear-armed states was marked by three characteristics: the quest for parity in arsenals, the certitude of mutual destruction, and a bizarre level of mistrust that drove states to adopt grotesque stratagems. Noam Chomsky has pointed out just how abominable the US nuclear war plans could be: “This US nuclear war plan, if our first alert system had alerted a Soviet strike, would have delivered 3200 nuclear weapons to 1060 targets in the Soviet Union, China, and allied countries in Asia and Europe.” General Butler, a former commander-in-chief of US Strategic Command, put it succinctly when he denounced current nuclear programmes and systems as a death warrant for humanity.

Flawed New START

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was signed on 8 April 2010 by the US and Russia. The instrument was a continuum of a bipartisan process to reduce nuclear arsenals. In 2021, the two parties agreed to extend the Treaty by five years. The key provision of the agreement limits nuclear warheads, delivery vectors, and launchers and institutes a system of verification.

The Treaty is, however, amiss, both conceptually and in substance. Conceptually, it is neither inclusive of all nuclear-armed states nor does it identify ‘mistrust’ as a key factor that stokes scepticism. In substance, it fails to recognise that all nuclear weapons, including tactical, are weapons in the same category, because when used, they have the potential to escalate to mass destruction. In addition, the Treaty pays no heed to the fact that warheads held in reserve can very quickly be deployed. But where it is fatally flawed is its inability to institute measures that diminish the intent to use. It doesn’t demand all nuclear-armed states to abjure the first use of nuclear weapons as an essential doctrinal point that allays the perils of nuclear devastation.

Nuclear Weapons: An Umbrella for Conventional War

Just how consequential the threat of use can be has been demonstrated in the course of the Ukraine conflict. Russia has obliquely threatened the use of nuclear weapons to provide an umbrella for its war. This has turned the Cold War idea of deterrence on its head. Moscow is using the deterrence value of its nuclear arsenal not to protect Russia but rather to provide space for conventional action. The Kremlin introduced an explicit nuclear dimension through its various declarations. On 18 February 2022, Russia conducted nuclear force manoeuvres prior to invading Ukraine. The event left little doubt as to the linkage of the timing with the impending conflict. On 24 February, Moscow warned NATO in a declaration that there would be unprecedented consequences should a third state attempt to obstruct Russia’s designs. President Putin went further on 27 February, announcing that Russia’s nuclear forces had been placed on “special alert.” This kind of public announcement regarding nuclear forces was last proclaimed by the US during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later noted cryptically that a third world war would be “nuclear.”

The Bluff of Extended Deterrence

In this milieu, the very idea of ‘extended nuclear deterrence’ takes an outlandish turn. The logic of guarantee against a nuclear attack on a third country implies that the guarantor launches a retaliatory nuclear strike. It also implies that the guarantor accepts the consequences, irrespective of circumstance, extent of convergence of interests, or degree of mutuality. This, as recent events in Ukraine have shown, is not rational.

Extended nuclear deterrence demands that both guarantor and beneficiary accept the same conditions of nuclear use, magnitude of response, and norms for escalation, and share the same strategic interests. Since none of these propositions are indubitable, the substance of extended nuclear deterrence is ultimately dependent on the guarantor accepting catastrophic consequences on behalf of a third party. States under this canopy might want to re-consider the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence in contemporary strategic circumstances. The reliance on the nuclear deterrent capabilities of a major power is much more an act of clutching at a straw than a reflection of reality.

Prospects for Nuclear Stability: A Revisit

Many factors that deterred military conflict during the Cold War and after have weakened. The growing parity of arsenals, absence of moderating pressures, and power imbalances between states have exposed underlying stresses within the global system and increased the probability of conflict.

Russia’s case is symptomatic of the current anarchic state of affairs. Having lost the economic, technological, and political heft of the Soviet era, it retains great power aspirations, demands exceptionalism, and clings to nuclear superpower status. Its nuclear arsenal is a key component of leverage: it endows immunity from military pressure and the leeway to pursue an independent foreign policy.

Nuclear deterrence today can only work in conjunction with agreements, limitations, and transparency. Without these, it brings antagonistic powers to the brink of nuclear war in a crisis. In the present fragile conditions of deterrent relationships, the prospects for nuclear stability among the nine nuclear-armed states will remain forlorn.

The Challenge

Cold War nuclear paradigms cannot be further tweaked to provide an illusion of stability to the nine nuclear-armed states. Priority should be given to identifying methods to dispel mistrust while advancing the idea that globally, nuclear surety is neither served by ‘parity’ in arsenals nor ‘assurance’ of total devastation. The former has brought a multi-polar encore of an arms race into play, while the latter is a return to barbaric times when extinction was propagated as a solution.

Today, economics and interdependence are the engines of global power. Yet there is reluctance to step back from military situations such as what we see in Ukraine. Nuclear weapons cannot be reduced to a gambler’s game of dare. But to remove it from arsenals altogether is not practicable, especially since states are not ready to wean themselves from an instrument of power. The answer lies in transparency, shadowed by a withdrawal from this calamitous obsession through a general adoption of a policy of no first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. This is a first step towards disarmament.

*Vice Adm Vijay Shankar (Retd) is Distinguished Fellow, IPCS, and former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Forces Command of India.

IPCS (Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies) conducts independent research on conventional and non-conventional security issues in the region and shares its findings with policy makers and the public. It provides a forum for discussion with the strategic community on strategic issues and strives to explore alternatives. Moreover, it works towards building capacity among young scholars for greater refinement of their analyses of South Asian security.

India's Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons

Andy Zhao
May 24, 2016

Submitted as coursework for PH241, Stanford University, Winter 2016

Peaceful Beginnings

Bhabha's Three Phase ProgramAt India's conception in 1947, Prime Minister Nehru began an ambitious nuclear program to bring prestige and inexpensive electricity to India. [1] India's nuclear program began as a peaceful push for inexpensive energy, but the nuclear fuel for the reactors also produced plutonium for a potential nuclear weapon. With the assistance of Canada and the United States, a Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) was built that bombarded U-238 with neutrons to chain react to form Pu-239. The CIRUS reactor was built in 1960 with international aid with the intention that it was solely for peaceful energy use even though the plutonium byproducts would be potent bomb fuel. [2]

 Building this PHWR was the first step in a 3-phase program planned by Dr. Homi J. Bhabha (see Fig. 1) that would eventually exploit India's large thorium reserves for civilian energy. Bhabha, a Cambridge trained physicist that worked under the scientific giants Dirac and Bohr, was the visionary of India's nuclear program. In 1958, Bhabha claimed India had the capability to build a nuclear bomb within 18 months of the decision (2 years before France and 6 years before China had the capability). In 1972, the signal was given to the scientists and engineers to build the bomb, which culminated in India's nuclear test of 1974. [3]

Bhabha envisioned a three-stage plan for India's civilian nuclear program that also kept the nuclear weapons option open:

1. Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (HWR) were used to generate electricity by bombarding naturally mined U-238 with neutrons - leaving Pu-239 as a byproduct of the fission reaction. This was preferable to a Light Water Reactor, which would have required enriched uranium. India received assistance from Canada with the finished HWR CIRUS reactor in 1960 and heavy water from the U.S. on conditions that the reactor would only be used for peaceful purposes. [2] However the plutonium from the CIRUS reactor was diverted to India's bomb detonated in 1974. Bhabha decided in 1958, while CIRUS was being constructed, to build the Phoenix reactor that would be used to extract the plutonium from the spent fuel using the PUREX process developed by the U.S. and declassified under Atoms for Peace. [1]

2. Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) utilize the Pu-239 from the first stage to create more fissile material than they consume. A mixed-oxide fuel is produced and reacted with enriched uranium to create more Pu-239. After enough Pu-239 is gathered, thorium will be used in the reactor to produce U-233. [4]

3. Advanced Heavy Water Reactors utilize U-233 and India's vast thorium reserves to create significant amounts of energy for the country. Other options existed as well, but the ultimate goal was to exploit the country's thorium reserves to produce cheap, sustainable energy for the nation. [4]

Expanding Nuclear Program

Bhabha executed his plan without any domestic opposition and full support from Prime Minister Nehru. India's Atomic Energy Commision's (AEC) budget increased from 1954 to 1956 by 12 times; by 1958, AEC acquired 27% of all government investment in research and development, creating one of the world's largest teams of nuclear scientists and engineers, sending 1,104 Indian scientists to get trained at Argonne Laboratory School of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 1955 to 1974 (when the U.S. began to declassify thousands of reports, including papers on plutonium separation). [1]

Bhabha prevented the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from interfering with his Three Phase Program (that kept the military option open). The international community wanted to ensure that resources were not being diverted to militarize countries' nuclear programs. However, Bhabha revised a statute to prevent interference in the economic development of states and cited how linked India's nuclear program was to India's economy. There was no resistance from the IAEA or domestically over Bhabha's nuclear stance. Parliament was silent in discussing India's nuclear weapon option. [1]

Indian scientists were able to secretly push towards a nuclear explosion, which demonstrates the lack of military and Parliamentary involvement. In 1968 scientists began to design the device used in the Pokhran explosion in 1974 without any direction, not even from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. [1] During this secret phase of operation, Rajagopala Chidambaram was tasked to derive the equation of state for plutonium to find how the density of plutonium related to temperature and pressure. This knowledge was essential to achieving a critical mass during symmetric compression of plutonium to get a fission chain reaction. Further, the construction of the Purinma reactor that began in 1970 was commissioned by the AEC under the guise of a fast breeder reactor. The true reason behind Purinma was to reconfirm the fast fission cross-section data of Pu-239 since the published data by the U.S. was not trusted. [1]

Peaceful Nuclear Explosion and Weaponization

In 1972, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi authorized developments for a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE). And in May 1974, the PNE was detonated in Pokhran and it was the culmination of India's entire nuclear program up until that point. Subsequent nuclear testing and weaponization was not a priority after the PNE because bomb building was not Indira Gandhi's purpose for the PNE . After the PNE, India was extremely slow to further develop its nuclear weapons capability. Canada felt betrayed and cut India off from further nuclear assistance. This led India to fully transition into a self-sufficient homegrown nuclear program without international aid. While the nuclear scientists wanted to conduct further tests, Indira Gandhi saw the marginal benefits for India's security were not worth the mounting costs and backlash. India would not test another nuclear explosion for twenty-four years. The final push for weaponization did not gain momentum until the late 1980's. Historical evidence shows that Indian policy planners were acutely aware by the spring of 1988 that the window of opportunity for preventing Pakistani nuclearization had closed. And instead of practiced restraint, there was urgency among them to bring weapons online. [5] India elected to weaponize their nuclear devices in 1989, but the process of integrating them with aircraft delivery system took until about 1994-1995. There were significant technical hurdles to overcome since India's nuclear program was never tied to the military that controlled the delivery systems. India's nuclear compartmentalization caused the Air Force to purchase French Mirage combat aircraft without understanding the challenges of a nuclear device being on board. [5]

India's Current Nuclear Status

India's nuclear program is unique because it has been so separate from military and legislative structures in India. This severance has ultimately led to an autonomous domestic nuclear program, but it has come at the cost of international segregation and inadequate nuclear power plants due to the lack of support from international nuclear bodies. In January 2015, India sought to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) with the support of the U.S. While India seeks to be brought into the international nuclear order, they still have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as they continue to produce fissile materials in their reactors and rely on nuclear weapons for their national security. [6] India's current nuclear capacity includes 21 reactors with 5789 MW in operation (by the end of March 2014, nuclear energy was 1.68% of India's energy capacity), 1000 MW under commissioning, and 2800 MW under construction. [7]

© Andy Zhao. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.

References

[1] G. Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (University of California Press, 1999)

[2] R. Rajaraman, "Estimates of India's Fissile Material Stocks," Science and Global Security, 16, 74 (2008),

[3] O. Marwah, "India's Nuclear and Space Programs: Intent and Policy," International Security 2, No. 2, 96 (Fall 1977).

[4] S. Parekh, "India's Three Stage Nuclear Program. Physics 241, Stanford University, Winter 2014.

[5] G. Kampani, "New Delhi's Long Nuclear Journey," Int. Security 38, No. 4, 79 (Spring 2014.

[6] B. Karnad, India's Nuclear Policy (Praeger Security International, 2008).

[7] Central Statistics Office, Government of India Energy Statistics 2015. March 2015.

Indian Nuclear Program

History Page Type: 

International Nuclear Programs

Profiles: 

Homi J. Bhabha

Raja Ramanna

Date: 

Thursday, August 23, 2018

 

India tested its first atomic bomb in 1974 but did not develop a significant nuclear arsenal until more than two decades later.

 

Early Development

In August 1947, the partition of British India created the independent Republic of India and Dominion of Pakistan. Shortly afterwards, a group of Indian scientists led by physicist Homi Bhabha—sometimes called “the Indian Oppenheimer”—convinced Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to invest in the development of nuclear energy. The subsequent 1948 Atomic Energy Act created the Indian Atomic Energy Commission “to provide for the development and control of atomic energy and purposes connected therewith” (Bhatia 67).

Caption: 

A U.S. satellite photograph of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, 1966

In its early stages, the Indian nuclear program was primarily concerned with developing nuclear energy rather than weapons. Nehru, who called the bomb a “symbol of evil,” was adamant that India’s nuclear program pursue only peaceful applications (66). Nehru nonetheless left the door open to weapons development when he noted, “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.” India also opposed the United States’ Baruch Plan, which proposed the international control of nuclear energy, on the grounds that it “sought to prohibit national research and development in atomic energy production” (67).

Serious development did not start until 1954, when construction began on the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay. Essentially the Indian equivalent to Los Alamos, BARC served as the primary research facility for India’s nuclear program. This period also saw a massive increase in government spending on atomic research and heightened efforts for international scientific collaboration. In 1955, Canada agreed to provide India with a nuclear reactor based on the National Research Experimental Reactor (NRX) at Chalk River. The United States also agreed to provide heavy water for the reactor under the auspices of the “Atoms for Peace” program. The Canada India Reactor Utility Services—more commonly known by its acronym, CIRUS—went critical in July 1960. Although billed as peaceful, CIRUS produced most of the weapons grade plutonium used in India’s first nuclear test.

 

Peaceful Nuclear Explosions

Although tension with Pakistan was later a contributing factor to India’s nuclear weapons program, it was actually conflict with China that first prompted India to build an atomic bomb. In October 1962, war broke out between the two countries over a disagreement regarding the Himalayan border. India appealed to both the Soviet Union and the United States for assistance, but the two superpowers were at the time distracted by the ongoing Cuban Missile Crisis. The month-long Sino-Indian War ended in victory for China and humiliation for India.

Caption: 

Homi J. Bhabha

China also tested its first atomic bomb in October 1964, heightening the need for a nuclear deterrent in the eyes of some Indian officials. Homi Bhabha, for example, urged the Indian government to approve an atomic bomb program, arguing in one speech that “atomic weapons give a State possessing them in adequate numbers a deterrent power against attack from a much stronger State.” Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was opposed to the bomb, but Bhabha convinced him that India could use nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes, such as engineering. According to Bhabha, India was not developing nuclear weapons, but “peaceful nuclear explosions” (PNEs). Shastri, for his part, affirmed, “I do not know what may happen later, but our present policy is not to make an atom bomb and it is the right policy” (Perkovich 56).

During this period, Bhabha frequently appealed to the United States to support Indian PNEs through its Project Plowshare program. In February 1965, Bhabha visited Washington, DC to pitch the idea of nuclear cooperation. He met with Under Secretary of State George Ball, who reported, “Dr. Bhabha explained that if India went all out, it could produce a device in 18 months; with a U.S. blueprint it could do the job in six months” (Perkovich 60). Although the accuracy of this statement was debatable, it was clear that Bhabha badly wanted the bomb. In the end, however, the United States decided against nuclear cooperation with India.

The year 1966 saw significant changes in the Indian nuclear program. In January, Prime Minister Shastri died of a heart attack and Indira Gandhi—the daughter of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and a strong proponent of nuclear weapons—took his place. Less than two weeks later, Homi Bhabha died in a plane crash. Physicist Raja Ramanna, who worked under Bhabha beginning in 1964, was named the new head of BARC and was the principal designer of India’s first nuclear device.

 

Smiling Buddha

The decision to finally test a bomb was largely motivated by India’s desire to be independent from Western interference. In 1968, for example, India caused an international controversy when it refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT established the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom as recognized nuclear weapons states, while its non-nuclear signatories pledged not to develop nuclear weapons programs. India accused the nuclear powers of “atomic collusion” and took particular issue with the fact that NPT did not differentiate between military and peaceful nuclear explosions (Bhatia 78).

In August 1971, India took another step away from the West when it signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union. In December 1971, war broke out between India and Pakistan over the separatist movement in East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh). China and the United States sided with Pakistan, and President Richard Nixon even ordered the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal. The war nevertheless ended with an overwhelming Indian victory and soured relations between India and the West.

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The Thar Desert in Rajasthan, the location of the Pokhran Nuclear Test Range. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Sankara Subramanian

In September 1972, Prime Minister Gandhi officially approved a nuclear test after touring the Bhabha Atomic Research Center. “There was never a discussion among us over whether we shouldn’t make the bomb,” affirmed Raja Ramanna. “How to do it was more important. For us it was a matter of prestige that would justify our ancient past. The question of deterrence came much later. As Indian scientists we were keen to show our Western counterparts, who thought little of us those days, that we too could do it.”

Ramanna led the BARC team of approximately 75 scientists who designed and built the plutonium implosion device. Test preparations were kept as secret as possible. The Indian Army was charged with digging a test shaft 330 feet underground at the Pokhran test site, approximately 300 miles southwest of New Delhi. On May 18, 1974, the 3,000 pound device exploded with a force equivalent to 8 kilotons of TNT. Ramanna reportedly informed Gandhi of the successful test through a coded message: “The Buddha is smiling.” Although officially known as Pokhran I, the 1974 test was informally named “Smiling Buddha” and is frequently referred to as such.

Smiling Buddha was billed as a peaceful nuclear explosion, but Ramanna later admitted that “the Pokhran test was a bomb” and was “not all that peaceful” (Reed and Stillman 237). Canada pulled its support for the Indian nuclear program shortly afterwards. The United States likewise considered the test a violation of the Atoms for Peace program and responded with sanctions against India. As Secretary of State Henry Kissinger affirmed, “The Indian nuclear explosion…raises anew the spectre of an era of plentiful nuclear weapons in which any local conflict risks exploding into a nuclear holocaust” (Bhatia 73).

 

Weaponization

Caption: 

An Agni-II intermediate-range ballistic missile during a parade in New Delhi, 2004

After testing its first bomb in 1974, India took over two decades to build a nuclear arsenal and delivery system capable of military deployment. In the years after Smiling Buddha, India had significant difficulty procuring nuclear materials from a suddenly hostile international market. Despite these challenges, the BARC leadership managed to construct their biggest nuclear plant to date—the Dhruva reactor—at Trombay in 1977. It would produce most of the plutonium for India’s nuclear weapons program, but did not reach full power until 1988. The Indian government also approved a ballistic missile program in 1983. Over the next decade, the Defense Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) built the short-range Prithvi missile and the long-range Agni missile. Both were eventually equipped with nuclear warheads.

During the 1990s, India faced renewed international pressure—particularly from the United States—to curb its nuclear program with the advent of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which sought to put an end to all nuclear explosions, including underground tests. India did not ratify the treaty; somewhat ironically, neither did the United States. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee explained India’s motivation to develop nuclear weapons at a UN meeting in 1997: “I told President Clinton that when my third eye [an old Indian proverb] looks at the door of the Security Council chamber it sees a little sign that says ‘only those with economic power or nuclear weapons allowed.’ I said to him, ‘it is very difficult to achieve economic wealth.’”

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The Shakti-I bomb prior to detonation during the Pokhran-II test series, 1998

Physicist Rajagopala Chidambaram, the head of BARC, was soon authorized to proceed with additional nuclear tests. Preparations were carefully concealed and engineers worked at night to avoid detection by American satellites. Operation Shakti—also known as Pokhran II—took place on May 11, 1998. India tested five nuclear devices, although not all of them detonated. Indian officials claimed that the bombs had a yield equivalent to 45 kilotons of TNT, but independent estimates put the number closer to 16 kilotons (Reed and Stillman 241). “India is now a nuclear weapons state,” declared Prime Minister Vajpayee days after the tests. "We have the capacity for a big bomb now. Ours will never be weapons of aggression.”

India faced almost universal condemnation in the aftermath of the Pokhran II tests. The United States said it was “deeply disappointed” in India’s decision, the United Kingdom expressed its “displeasure,” and Germany called the tests “a slap in the face” of the countries who had signed the CTBT. As Pakistani Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan asserted, “India has thumbed its nose to the Western world and the entire international community.” Less than three weeks later, Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests.
 

India’s Nuclear Weapons Today

Caption: 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, 2014. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Government of India

Soon after announcing its nuclear capabilities, India established the National Security Advisory Board, which devised a no-first-use policy for Indian nuclear weapons. This policy was later amended to consider a biological or chemical attack against India to be sufficient grounds for a nuclear response.

Although the United States implemented economic sanctions against India after the 1998 tests, Indo-American relations have since warmed. In 2005, the two countries agreed to the India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement. The treaty allowed India access to nuclear materials through the international Nuclear Suppliers Group in exchange for safeguards on civilian nuclear facilities, including inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Separate cooperation agreements have since allowed additional inspections.

Today, the civilian Nuclear Command Authority chaired by the prime minister has sole authority to authorize a nuclear strike. Some estimates put India’s nuclear arsenal at 135 nuclear warheads.

More Historical Resources: 

Bhatia, Vandana. "Change in the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Toward India (1998–2005): Accommodating the Anomaly." University of Alberta (Canada), 2012.

Perkovich, George. “Bhabha's quest for the bomb.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56, no. 3 (May/June 2000): 54-63.

Reed, Thomas C. and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2009.