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Smiling Buddha turns 41
Smiling Buddha Test Crater
1974: India detonates its first nuclear bomb
India today possesses so much plutonium that it theoretically could construct as many as 1,000 nuclear bombs. India has officially become a nuclear power on this day in 1974 when its first nuclear bomb was detonated 107 meters underground.
On this day in 1974, India detonated its first nuclear bomb.
While touring the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) on 7 September 1972 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave verbal authorization to the scientists there to manufacture the nuclear device they had designed and prepare it for a test . Following this okay, the practical work of engineering to implement the paper design began. Work also began on locating, surveying, and preparing a suitable test site. Throughout the development of this device, more formally dubbed the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive" or PNE, but commonly called Smiling Buddha, very few records of any kind were kept either on the development process or the decision making involved in its development and testing. This was intentional to help preserve secrecy, but it has resulted in the events being documented almost entirely by oral reports many years later.
In keeping with the great secrecy involved in India's efforts to develop and test its first nuclear explosive device, the project employed no more than 75 scientists and engineers working on it in the period from 1967 to 1974. Of course this does not count the thousands of individuals required to build and operate the infrastructure supporting BARC and to produce the plutonium for the device.
Outside of those actually working on the project, only about three other people in India knew of it - Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, her trusted adviser and former principal secretary P.N. Haksar, and her current principal secretary D.P. Dhar. No government ministers, including the Defense Minister, were informed.
The initiator was christened the Flower; Chengappa explains "it is believed that the Indian team deposited the polonium on a platinum gauze in the configuration of a lotus to allow maximum surface area". Chengappa claims that the polonium-bearing gauze was enclosed in a tantalum metal sphere, which was nested in a uranium metal shell that had embedded in it beryllium pellets. The system was designed so that the implosion shock wave would drive the beryllium pellets through the tantalum shell to mix with the polonium. Perkovich states that the beryllium was designed to create shape charges, implying a beryllium shell with wedge shaped grooves (like the Manhattan Project's Urchin), or conical or polygonal pits which would form penetrating jets of beryllium when the collapsed. Perkovich gives the diameter of the Flower and 1.5 cm, Chengappa as "about 2 cm".
The Flower was not ready until around 4 May 1974. To get it to Pokhran in time Iyengar and Murthy carried it aboard a regular Indian Airlines flight in a thermos bottle.
A final step in nuclear design verification was taken on 19 February 1974, when a "tickling the dragon's tail" experiment was conducted. The core for the test device was assembled and mounted on a track so that two large blocks of paraffin wax, simulating the high explosive that would surround the core, could be slowly advanced while the neutron emissions from the core were monitored. After 24 hours, the experiment was successfully complete showing that the design was safe to assemble, and that the criticality formulas were correct.
Also in February successful test firings of hemispherical assemblies of the implosion lens were conducted.
The task of sinking the shaft for the test was assigned to the 61 Engineering Regiment stationed in Jodhpur. Ramanna first contacted the regiment commander, Lt. Col. Subherwal, in May 1973 to dig the shaft. The Army did not cooperate until June when PM Gandhi ordered Gen. Bewoor to proceed. The unit had no prior experience in digging shafts and the work got underway with difficulty. The shaft construction project was code named Operation Dry Enterprise, and the engineers and soldiers were told that they were digging a well to supply the Pokhran test range. The project was set back in January 1974 when, unfortunately they did hit water when the shaft tunneled into an aquifer that underlies Pokhran (that this seems to have been a surprise indicates an astonishing lack of preparation, since exploratory drilling would have quickly revealed this). Efforts to pump out or contain the flow of water failed and the shaft had to be abandoned. A new shaft was begun at the site of the abandoned village of Malki which was known to have dug several dry unsuccessful wells many years before. Sinking the new shaft began in February 1974 and was completed only days before the 18 May test.
The fact that two shafts were constructed may account for reports that India actually made two tests in 1974, the first of which failed.
The completed core (probably packed as separate pieces) was transported to Pokhran from Trombay under the direct supervision of Chidambaram and Roy. They rode in an army convoy carrying the plutonium core packed in a special case for the 900 km journey, which took three days.
The explosive lenses and other components of the implosion system came from TBRL by truck along with high speed cameras to record the detonation.The device was assembled in a hut 40 m from the shaft.
The assembled device was hexagonal, yellow, about 1.25 m in diameter and weighed 1400 kg. The device was mounted on a hexagonal metal tripod, and transported to the shaft on rails which the army kept covered with sand.
The device was lowered into the shaft on the morning of 15 May. It was placed in a side cavity at the bottom of the L-shaped shaft. Moisture oozing from the shaft side gave concern about the integrity of the firing circuit, and Balakrishnan volunteered to go down the shaft to check it. Finally the shaft was sealed with sand and cement.
The team retired to an observation bunker 5 km away for the test on 18 May. The entire team of senior leaders and contributors to the PNE project appear to have been present.In addition to the assembly team, also present were Ramanna, Sethna, Nag Chaudhuri, Chidambaram, Sikka, Srinivasan, Dastidar, presumably Murthy and Roy who had helped deliver the nuclear components, Gen. Bewoor, and Lt. Col. Subherwal.
The test was scheduled for 8 a.m., but it was delayed for five minutes because V.S. Sethi, an engineer from TBRL, became stranded at the test site while checking the high speed cameras when his jeep wouldn't start. Sethi hiked out in time for the test to go as scheduled, but the army's efforts to recover the jeep delayed the shot. Finally at 8:05 a.m. Dastidar pushed the firing button.
The "Smiling Buddha" device was manufactured from plutonium produced at the Cirus reactor at BARC. The basic design had been developed by 1972, when manufacture of the test device began at PM Gandhi's order. It took two years to separate, purify, and fabricate the plutonium metal, and to manufacture the implosion lens systems and associated electronics. Most of the work was done at BARC, but the explosive lenses were made by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The neutron initiator was a Polonium-210/Beryllium type (like those used in early U.S. bombs) code-named "Flower". Apparently both the development of "Flower" and the precise implosion electronics gave considerable trouble.
The test was conducted in the middle of the Thar Desert, at the location called “Pokhran Test Range”. It is a location in the Indian Rajasthan, about 80 kilometers from the border with Pakistan.
The yield of the PNE has also remained controversial. Although occasional press reports have given ranges all the way up to 20 kt, and as low as 2 kt, the official yield was set early on at 12 kt (post Operation Shakti claims have raised it to 13 kt). Outside seismic data, and analysis of the crater features indicates a lower figure. Analysts usually estimate the yield at 4 to 6 kt using conventional seismic magnitude-to-yield conversion formulas. In recent years both Homi Sethna and P.K. Iyengar have conceded that the official yield is an exaggeration. Iyengar has variously stated that the yield was actually 8-10 kt, that the device was designed to yield 10 kt, and that the yield was 8 kt 'exactly as predicted'.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974[/SIZE][/SIZE]
Smiling Buddha Test Crater
1974: India detonates its first nuclear bomb
India today possesses so much plutonium that it theoretically could construct as many as 1,000 nuclear bombs. India has officially become a nuclear power on this day in 1974 when its first nuclear bomb was detonated 107 meters underground.
On this day in 1974, India detonated its first nuclear bomb.
While touring the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) on 7 September 1972 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave verbal authorization to the scientists there to manufacture the nuclear device they had designed and prepare it for a test . Following this okay, the practical work of engineering to implement the paper design began. Work also began on locating, surveying, and preparing a suitable test site. Throughout the development of this device, more formally dubbed the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive" or PNE, but commonly called Smiling Buddha, very few records of any kind were kept either on the development process or the decision making involved in its development and testing. This was intentional to help preserve secrecy, but it has resulted in the events being documented almost entirely by oral reports many years later.
In keeping with the great secrecy involved in India's efforts to develop and test its first nuclear explosive device, the project employed no more than 75 scientists and engineers working on it in the period from 1967 to 1974. Of course this does not count the thousands of individuals required to build and operate the infrastructure supporting BARC and to produce the plutonium for the device.
Outside of those actually working on the project, only about three other people in India knew of it - Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, her trusted adviser and former principal secretary P.N. Haksar, and her current principal secretary D.P. Dhar. No government ministers, including the Defense Minister, were informed.
The initiator was christened the Flower; Chengappa explains "it is believed that the Indian team deposited the polonium on a platinum gauze in the configuration of a lotus to allow maximum surface area". Chengappa claims that the polonium-bearing gauze was enclosed in a tantalum metal sphere, which was nested in a uranium metal shell that had embedded in it beryllium pellets. The system was designed so that the implosion shock wave would drive the beryllium pellets through the tantalum shell to mix with the polonium. Perkovich states that the beryllium was designed to create shape charges, implying a beryllium shell with wedge shaped grooves (like the Manhattan Project's Urchin), or conical or polygonal pits which would form penetrating jets of beryllium when the collapsed. Perkovich gives the diameter of the Flower and 1.5 cm, Chengappa as "about 2 cm".
The Flower was not ready until around 4 May 1974. To get it to Pokhran in time Iyengar and Murthy carried it aboard a regular Indian Airlines flight in a thermos bottle.
A final step in nuclear design verification was taken on 19 February 1974, when a "tickling the dragon's tail" experiment was conducted. The core for the test device was assembled and mounted on a track so that two large blocks of paraffin wax, simulating the high explosive that would surround the core, could be slowly advanced while the neutron emissions from the core were monitored. After 24 hours, the experiment was successfully complete showing that the design was safe to assemble, and that the criticality formulas were correct.
Also in February successful test firings of hemispherical assemblies of the implosion lens were conducted.
The task of sinking the shaft for the test was assigned to the 61 Engineering Regiment stationed in Jodhpur. Ramanna first contacted the regiment commander, Lt. Col. Subherwal, in May 1973 to dig the shaft. The Army did not cooperate until June when PM Gandhi ordered Gen. Bewoor to proceed. The unit had no prior experience in digging shafts and the work got underway with difficulty. The shaft construction project was code named Operation Dry Enterprise, and the engineers and soldiers were told that they were digging a well to supply the Pokhran test range. The project was set back in January 1974 when, unfortunately they did hit water when the shaft tunneled into an aquifer that underlies Pokhran (that this seems to have been a surprise indicates an astonishing lack of preparation, since exploratory drilling would have quickly revealed this). Efforts to pump out or contain the flow of water failed and the shaft had to be abandoned. A new shaft was begun at the site of the abandoned village of Malki which was known to have dug several dry unsuccessful wells many years before. Sinking the new shaft began in February 1974 and was completed only days before the 18 May test.
The fact that two shafts were constructed may account for reports that India actually made two tests in 1974, the first of which failed.
The completed core (probably packed as separate pieces) was transported to Pokhran from Trombay under the direct supervision of Chidambaram and Roy. They rode in an army convoy carrying the plutonium core packed in a special case for the 900 km journey, which took three days.
The explosive lenses and other components of the implosion system came from TBRL by truck along with high speed cameras to record the detonation.The device was assembled in a hut 40 m from the shaft.
The assembled device was hexagonal, yellow, about 1.25 m in diameter and weighed 1400 kg. The device was mounted on a hexagonal metal tripod, and transported to the shaft on rails which the army kept covered with sand.
The device was lowered into the shaft on the morning of 15 May. It was placed in a side cavity at the bottom of the L-shaped shaft. Moisture oozing from the shaft side gave concern about the integrity of the firing circuit, and Balakrishnan volunteered to go down the shaft to check it. Finally the shaft was sealed with sand and cement.
The team retired to an observation bunker 5 km away for the test on 18 May. The entire team of senior leaders and contributors to the PNE project appear to have been present.In addition to the assembly team, also present were Ramanna, Sethna, Nag Chaudhuri, Chidambaram, Sikka, Srinivasan, Dastidar, presumably Murthy and Roy who had helped deliver the nuclear components, Gen. Bewoor, and Lt. Col. Subherwal.
The test was scheduled for 8 a.m., but it was delayed for five minutes because V.S. Sethi, an engineer from TBRL, became stranded at the test site while checking the high speed cameras when his jeep wouldn't start. Sethi hiked out in time for the test to go as scheduled, but the army's efforts to recover the jeep delayed the shot. Finally at 8:05 a.m. Dastidar pushed the firing button.
The "Smiling Buddha" device was manufactured from plutonium produced at the Cirus reactor at BARC. The basic design had been developed by 1972, when manufacture of the test device began at PM Gandhi's order. It took two years to separate, purify, and fabricate the plutonium metal, and to manufacture the implosion lens systems and associated electronics. Most of the work was done at BARC, but the explosive lenses were made by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The neutron initiator was a Polonium-210/Beryllium type (like those used in early U.S. bombs) code-named "Flower". Apparently both the development of "Flower" and the precise implosion electronics gave considerable trouble.
The test was conducted in the middle of the Thar Desert, at the location called “Pokhran Test Range”. It is a location in the Indian Rajasthan, about 80 kilometers from the border with Pakistan.
The yield of the PNE has also remained controversial. Although occasional press reports have given ranges all the way up to 20 kt, and as low as 2 kt, the official yield was set early on at 12 kt (post Operation Shakti claims have raised it to 13 kt). Outside seismic data, and analysis of the crater features indicates a lower figure. Analysts usually estimate the yield at 4 to 6 kt using conventional seismic magnitude-to-yield conversion formulas. In recent years both Homi Sethna and P.K. Iyengar have conceded that the official yield is an exaggeration. Iyengar has variously stated that the yield was actually 8-10 kt, that the device was designed to yield 10 kt, and that the yield was 8 kt 'exactly as predicted'.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974[/SIZE][/SIZE]
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