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Fifteen years ago,
India shocked the world by exploding an atomic device in the
Rajasthan desert. Not many then believed it was for peaceful
applications. Vithal C. Nadkarni recalls the
Pokhra test and reviews the achievements of the country’s atomic
energy programme.
The sandy wasteland of
Pokharan was probably the desert lizard’s idea of heaven. Few
people had heard of the place. It was one of those sites in the vast
emptiness of the Rajasthan desert near India’s international
border, dotted with stunted shrubs and camel thorn, inhabited by
wandering bands of chinkara gazelles, flocks of ring doves and sand
grouse.
Largely undisturbed by
the peripatetic goatherds who lived in a tiny camp six kilometres
away, these fork-tongued, slate-coloured scaly monitors lived
peacefully in this land of the scorching sun, as countless
generations of their ancestors had earlier. Incidentally, these
monitor lizards and famed as “ghorpads” in Indian military
history. Maratha warriors tied ropes to them and used them to scale
hill fortresses.
Then suddenly one day in
mid-1973, jeeploads of labourers, and other personnel belonging to
the Atomic Energy Commission of India began to drive up to Pokhran.
And to the sound of susurrating sands they added new sounds: of
digging treches and building machans.
Gauging an L-shaped
trench through the layers of sand, disintegrated shale and rholite,
they were preparing a bed for India’s first atomic implosion
device at a depth of over 100 metres.
After months of
meticulous preparation, which included setting up of closed circuit
TV, remote controlled triggers and elaborate sandbagging, the
scientists were ready. Recalls Dr. Raja Ramanna, then director of
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Bombay: “On the night
before, all members of the team were looking anxious but there was so
much collective confidence”. When Dr. Ramanna asked his
protégé, Dr. P.K. lyengar (who is Director of BARC
now), whether all precautions were taken, he replied that if the
device did not go off, then there was something wrong with the laws
of physics!
The next morning, on May
18, 1974 precisely at 8:05 hours, the device went off flawlessly.
The scientists monitoring the event from a watchtower fou5r
kilometres away of course heard nothing. Nor did they see anything
like the frightfully luminous mushroom clouds witnessed at the
world’s first nuclear blast at Alamogordo in U.S.A. (At that
time, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Manhattan Project,
recalled the epic words of Sri Krishna from the Bhagvad Gita “If
the light of a thousand suns were to blaze forth all at once in the
sky, that might resemble the splendour of that exalted being.”
By contrast, the Pokhran
blast was an ominously silent affair. The only touch of drama was
offered by the sudden creation of a massive mound of sand after the
implosion. As Prime Minister Indira Gandhi later told the nation, it
was a “good and clean job”.
So complete was the
“containment” of the atomic explosion that, within one
hours a party of scientists was able to fly 30 metres above the site
in a helicopter and as near as 250 metres on the ground. They
encountered not even a wisp of radioactivity. (They found theonly
casualty, an unfortunate crow, which had apparently been hit by a
surge of sand resulting from the blast!)
The first Photographs of
the crater (which Dr. Ramanna described as “beautiful”)
reminded you of lunar landscapes with their stark, otherworldly
splendour.
However, the 10 to 20
kilotonne explosion literally set off shock waves and tremors which
were detected by seismic instruments stationed in foreign countries
thousands of miles away. In the U.S., for instance, within a matter
of seconds, the seismic signals originating at 10.35 p.m. Eastern
Daylight time on May 17 were detected. These measured between 4.6
and 5.6 on the Richter Scale.
Compared to the megatonne
class of the superpowers, the Pokhran blast was something of a
schoolboy’s cracker caper – roughly equivalent to one of
the 20 kilotonne bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki during
the Second World War. Nor was India ever going to use atoms for
anything other than peace, reiterated the Prime Minister. Still, it
was a signal that India had gatecrashed into the so-called superclub
of nuclear “haves”.
Today, 15 years after the
implosion, Pokhran has again slid back into obscurity. Although the
crater remains as an enduring monument, gerbils, sandflies and
monitors have again taken it over.
What is more remarkable,
despite the international stir and euphoria at home that the Pokhran
test created, is that the event is hardly regarded as the milestone
of Indian Atomic Energy in India.
The reason is that
Pokhran was just an experiment. And as Dr. Homi Sethna, then
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Programme published in August 1988
after 40 years of atomic energy in India.
The reasons is that
Pokhran was just an experiment. And as Dr. Homi Sethna, then
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission said, “Other nations
have also exploded similar devices. But after making explosions on
the land or in the sea. The Russians tried out many blasts before
trying them underground in Siberia. The same applies to the American
Ploughshare experiments and to the French tests in the Sahara. What
is significant (about Pokhran) is that the a first experiment made by
India was conducted deep under the earth without endangering life of
any kind. Our aim has not been to try it out as weaponry but for
collecting geological and other data.”
Indeed, India’s
nuclear policy has remained unchanged since the inception of the
atomic energy programme. Displaying remarkable foresight, Homi
Bhabha, the architect of this programme, initiated the effort in
March 1944, barely 16 months after completion of historic Chicago
experiment that established the feasibility of achieving a
self-sustaining unclear fission reaction.
The Chicago experiment
was tightly guarded secret then. And very few individuals in the
U.S., Britain and Canada knew about it. Fewer still were the people
who believed that nuclear fission would one day provide economically
viable power. Bhabha, a visionary believer, was in that vanguard.
And what Bhabha most
wanted to achieve was self reliance; for, as he said, “when
nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production,
say, in a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look
abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand.”
Nuclear research in India
was started in 1945 with the setting up of the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Homi Bhabha the Director. But this
got a real impetus only after independence, with the passing of the
Atomic Energy Act on April 15, 1948 and the setting up of the Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) on August 10, 1948.
In 1948, the total number
of people working for AEC was less than 50. In 1952, it rose to 273.
Today, the total staff strength has grown to over 33000. Similarly,
the extent of growth can be seen from AEC budget estimates. In
1952-53, these were about Rs. 68 lakhs; in 1987-88, they stood at Rs.
1775 crores.
As foreseen by Bhabha,
the relevance of atomic energy has also grown in the last four
decades. For instance, while the total generating capacity in India
grew 32-fold – from 1700 MW in 1950 to 55000 MW in 1987-88, the
number of consumers also leap-frogged 33 times (from 1.5 million to
50 million). As a result, despite a 13-fold rise in per capita
consumption of power, the country still faced power shortages
(estimated at present at 11 per cent).
It is such a scenario
that power planners find nuclear power attractive. Also because the
country has deposits of uranium and vast thorium resources. To
utilize these, an ambitious three-phase plan for atomic power has
been chalked out. The first phase started with natural uranium
fuelled pressurized heavy water reaction (PHWRs). These produce
power and plutonium as by-products. The commissioning of Tarapur
Atomic Power plant in 1969 launched this phase. The reactors at Kota
(Rajasthan), Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu) and Kakrapar (Gujarat) belong to
this series.
The second phase
envisages the use of plutonium of fuel fast breeder reactors (FBRs).
These produce power more efficiently and more Plutonium than they
consume as well as uranium (233) form thorium. Progress towards this
goal was achieved with the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam
attaining criticality in October 1985.
In the third phase,
reactors will be based on the thorium cycle producing more uranium
than they burn. Indeed, as Dr. M.R. Srinivasan, Chairman, Atomic
Energy Commission, says: “Considerable progress has been
achieved in the past few years in the implementation of our long-term
nuclear programme. Drawn up in 1948, this envisages a total
installed capacity of about 10000 MW of nuclear power by the turn of
the century.”
Nuclear power is just one
of the aspects of the peaceful use of atomic energy. Use of
radioisotopes for medical use is another vital aspect. Says Dr. P.K.
lyengar, Director of BARC, “Currently, every year BARC processes
and supplies more than 40000 consignments of different radioisotope
products to over 1400 institutions in the country and abroad. India
is not only self-sufficient in radio isotope technology, but it ranks
among the top six countries in the world in this peaceful use of
atomic energy.”
With all this it almost
seems tautological to say that Indian scientists are at the forefront
in aspect of nuclear science and technology. But you expect nothing
else of a culture that slaw the connection between atoms and atman
thousands of years ago and made peace, prosperity and enlightenment
for all its supreme goal.
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