praveen007
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2010
- Messages
- 927
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
1974 NUCLEAR TEST: Keeping preparations under wraps was a feat | idrw.org
++
part 1
.
Successfully concealing preparations for the 1974
nuclear test was a significant achievement of
Indias scientific establishment. So said Dr Robert
Anderson, visiting Fellow at Cambridge and
Professor of the School of Communication at
Simon Fraser University in Canada.He is the
author of several works about Indias nuclear
research, including Building scientific institutions:
Meghnad Saha and Homi Bhabha, the more
recently published Nucleus and Nation and the
soon-to-be completed Negotiating Nuclear
Power.
Asked what is new and surprising about a
subject that he has researched for so many
years, he said, That a significant number of
physicists, technicians and engineers with respect
to the bomb could over three or four years work
together very quietly without producing paper,
without leaking this knowledge very widely.
So outside the Prime Ministers office very few
persons knew there was going to be a test and
when it would occur. They did create the
conditions and they tested it successfully without
anyones realisation.
In India, this is always described as impossible.
It is not me who is saying it, but an Indian self-
definition that they are not a nation very good at
keeping secrets.
Based on his research at the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) archives in Vienna,
Anderson added, I think we now know a great
deal about the planning and the pressures on the
people who eventually built the tunnels and
designed the devices and the triggers and so on
and who tested the weapon.
But Im also working on how the so-called
peaceful nuclear explosion was defined as early as
1968 although some definitions had been
around much earlier than 68. This was a
definition into which Indian voices could step into.
Ramanna was there at the meetings around the
peaceful nuclear explosion from 1970. So well
before the test in 74, Indians were present and
engaged in conversations about peaceful nuclear
explosions.
---------- Post added at 03:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------
part-2(last)
.
.
The MAN behind it:-
As an anthropologist, Anderson’s unique
contribution to a bette understanding of India’s nuclear programme are the insights he brings to
assessing the work and personalities of key scientists.
Homi Bhabha is the scientist who most often
comes to mind when discussing India’s nuclear
research, but Anderson points out that there
were many others who were just as important.
They include giants of their time like Meghnad
Saha, who predicted way back in 1939 that it would be possible one day to use a nuclear
bomb to blow up a battleship, KS Krishnan and Sir Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, Secretary of the
Atomic Energy Committee back in 1946 and the
first head of the Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research, who died in 1955.
Saha, Krishnan and Nazir Ahmed, later the first chair of the Pakistani Atomic Energ Commission,
were members of the Indian delegation of
scientists that toured Western research facilities in Britain, Canada and the US in 1944-45 –part of the Manhattan Project – where preparations were under way for the world’s first nuclear test in New Mexico in 1945.
They were in many ways the intellectual precursors of men like Bhabha, who was killed in an air crash in 1966, as well as Raja Ramanna and PK Iyengar who each played a key role in preparations for the 1974 test, described at the time as a peaceful nuclear explosion or PNE.
Peaceful blast?:-
Addressing the issue of whether 1974 was a
weapons test or a genuine bid to explore PNEs,
Anderson said, “The Russians were committed to it. They did underground testing. We have a paper now on Russian underground tests of
1955. They blew up mountains, whole mountains. They were testing very large weapons, but they were always interested in
seismic effects. I don’t know in the beginning to
what end, but by the 60s, they had engineers
who said they could create large cavities for oil, shale oil in particular.
“So these caverns or cavities were interesting to
them. Then, they and the Americans started talking in the 60s about removing geological
obstacles – it is called explosive engineering and
that’s quite an old business.“In 1958, the largest
non-nuclear explosion in history occurred in April 1958 near my village in British Columbia. It was
the destruction of the famous navigation obstacle
called Ripple Rock, using 1,300 tons of Nitramex
2H to blow up 370,000 tonnes of rock underneath 300,000 tons of water, all at 100m below the surface.
“This is precisely what the blast engineering
community was doing. I think there is a transfer
of the blasting idea to the nuclear testing
community, obsessed as it then was with
seismic detection and eventually to ‘advanced
warning’ of testing between Russians and
Americans.”
++
part 1
.
Successfully concealing preparations for the 1974
nuclear test was a significant achievement of
Indias scientific establishment. So said Dr Robert
Anderson, visiting Fellow at Cambridge and
Professor of the School of Communication at
Simon Fraser University in Canada.He is the
author of several works about Indias nuclear
research, including Building scientific institutions:
Meghnad Saha and Homi Bhabha, the more
recently published Nucleus and Nation and the
soon-to-be completed Negotiating Nuclear
Power.
Asked what is new and surprising about a
subject that he has researched for so many
years, he said, That a significant number of
physicists, technicians and engineers with respect
to the bomb could over three or four years work
together very quietly without producing paper,
without leaking this knowledge very widely.
So outside the Prime Ministers office very few
persons knew there was going to be a test and
when it would occur. They did create the
conditions and they tested it successfully without
anyones realisation.
In India, this is always described as impossible.
It is not me who is saying it, but an Indian self-
definition that they are not a nation very good at
keeping secrets.
Based on his research at the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) archives in Vienna,
Anderson added, I think we now know a great
deal about the planning and the pressures on the
people who eventually built the tunnels and
designed the devices and the triggers and so on
and who tested the weapon.
But Im also working on how the so-called
peaceful nuclear explosion was defined as early as
1968 although some definitions had been
around much earlier than 68. This was a
definition into which Indian voices could step into.
Ramanna was there at the meetings around the
peaceful nuclear explosion from 1970. So well
before the test in 74, Indians were present and
engaged in conversations about peaceful nuclear
explosions.
---------- Post added at 03:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------
part-2(last)
.
.
The MAN behind it:-
As an anthropologist, Anderson’s unique
contribution to a bette understanding of India’s nuclear programme are the insights he brings to
assessing the work and personalities of key scientists.
Homi Bhabha is the scientist who most often
comes to mind when discussing India’s nuclear
research, but Anderson points out that there
were many others who were just as important.
They include giants of their time like Meghnad
Saha, who predicted way back in 1939 that it would be possible one day to use a nuclear
bomb to blow up a battleship, KS Krishnan and Sir Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, Secretary of the
Atomic Energy Committee back in 1946 and the
first head of the Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research, who died in 1955.
Saha, Krishnan and Nazir Ahmed, later the first chair of the Pakistani Atomic Energ Commission,
were members of the Indian delegation of
scientists that toured Western research facilities in Britain, Canada and the US in 1944-45 –part of the Manhattan Project – where preparations were under way for the world’s first nuclear test in New Mexico in 1945.
They were in many ways the intellectual precursors of men like Bhabha, who was killed in an air crash in 1966, as well as Raja Ramanna and PK Iyengar who each played a key role in preparations for the 1974 test, described at the time as a peaceful nuclear explosion or PNE.
Peaceful blast?:-
Addressing the issue of whether 1974 was a
weapons test or a genuine bid to explore PNEs,
Anderson said, “The Russians were committed to it. They did underground testing. We have a paper now on Russian underground tests of
1955. They blew up mountains, whole mountains. They were testing very large weapons, but they were always interested in
seismic effects. I don’t know in the beginning to
what end, but by the 60s, they had engineers
who said they could create large cavities for oil, shale oil in particular.
“So these caverns or cavities were interesting to
them. Then, they and the Americans started talking in the 60s about removing geological
obstacles – it is called explosive engineering and
that’s quite an old business.“In 1958, the largest
non-nuclear explosion in history occurred in April 1958 near my village in British Columbia. It was
the destruction of the famous navigation obstacle
called Ripple Rock, using 1,300 tons of Nitramex
2H to blow up 370,000 tonnes of rock underneath 300,000 tons of water, all at 100m below the surface.
“This is precisely what the blast engineering
community was doing. I think there is a transfer
of the blasting idea to the nuclear testing
community, obsessed as it then was with
seismic detection and eventually to ‘advanced
warning’ of testing between Russians and
Americans.”
