Origin of India's Nuclear Weapon Program
India's indigenous efforts in nuclear science and technology were established remarkably early. The first step was taken by
Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha in
March 1944 when he submitted a proposal to the Sir Dorab Tata Trust (established in honor of Bhabha's own uncle, Sir Dorab Tata) to found a nuclear research institute, over three years before independence and a year before the first nuclear weapon test.
This led to the creation of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on 19 December 1945 with Bhabha as its first Director.
The new government of India passed the
Atomic Energy Act, on 15 April 1948, leading to the establishment of the
Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) not quite one year after independence.
At that time
Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru declared:
We must develop this atomic energy quite apart from war - indeed I think we must develop it for the purpose of using it for peaceful purposes. ... 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."
In 1954 the Indian nuclear program began to move in a direction that would eventually lead to establishment of nuclear weapons capability.
On 3 January 1954 the IAEC decided to set up a new facility - the Atomic Energy Establishment,
Trombay (AEET), later to become the
"Indian Los Alamos".
On 3 August 1954 the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was created with Dr. Bhabha as Secretary. This department answered directly to the Prime Minister and has continued to do so down to the present day.
The program grew swiftly. The atomic energy budget increased 12-fold from 1954 to
1956. By 1958 the DAE consumed
one third of India's research budget. By 1959 AEET
employed over one thousand scientists and engineers.
1955 construction began on India's first reactor, the 1 MW
Apsara research reactor, with
British assistance.
And in
September 1955, after more than a year of negotiation, Canada agreed to supply India with a powerful research reactor - the 40 MW
Canada-India Reactor (CIR).
Under the Eisenhower Administration's
"Atoms for Peace" program the US agreed to supply
21 tons of heavy water for this reactor in
Februrary 1956, and the reactor was dubbed the Canada-India Reactor, U.S. or
CIRUS
The acquisition of Cirus was a watershed event in nuclear proliferation. Although the sale was made with the understanding that the reactor would only be used for peaceful purposes (the heavy water contract at least made this explicit), it occurred before any international policies were in place to regulate such technology transfers and no provision for inspections were made.
And in fact India was careful to ensure that no effective regulation would accompany the reactor.
India refusing to accept fuel from Canada for the reactor and
set up a program to manufacture the natural uranium fuel for Cirus indigeneously so as to keep complete control of the plutonium produced there.
This program, led by
metallurgist Brahm Prakash, succeeded in developing the techniques for producing the
precisely manufactured, high purity material demanded by the reactor.
The reactor was a design ideal for producing weapons-grade plutonium, and was also extraordinarily large for research purposes, being capable of manufacturing enough plutonium for one to two bombs a year.
The acquisition of Cirus was specifically intended by India to provide herself with a weapons option and this reactor produced the plutonium used in India's first nuclear test in 1974; provided the design prototype for India's more powerful Dhruva plutonium production "research" reactor; and is directly responsible for producing nearly half of the weapons grade plutonium currently believed to be in India's stockpile. The sale further set a precedent for similar technology transfers which greatly assisted Israel in obtaining its own plutonium production reactor from France shortly thereafter.
The Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay was formally inaugurated by PM Nehru on
20 January 1957. It acquired its present name --
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) -- on 12 January 1967 when PM Indira Gandhi renamed it in memory of Dr. Bhabha who died in an airplane crash on 24 January 1966.
Apsara, fueled by enriched uranium from the UK, went critical on
4 August 1957,
becoming the first operating reactor in Asia outside of the Soviet Union (though only days ahead of Japan's first reactor).
Cirus achieved criticality at BARC on 10 July 1960.
Due to its
vast domestic resources of thorium (a potential fuel for breeder reactors) but limited supplies of uranium, from the start of its nuclear program India has always placed strong emphasis on the development of breeder reactor fuel cycles. Breeder reactors require highly concentrated fissionable material for reactor fuel: either highly enriched uranium or plutonium. This provided a peaceful rationale for developing a plutonium separation capability,
but the principal impetus for the India's first fuel reprocessing plant was to obtain a nuclear option.
In July 1958 PM Nehru authorized
project Phoenix to build a plant with a capacity of 20 tonnes of fuel a year - sized to match the production capacity of Cirus. The plant was based on the U.S. developed Purex process and an American firm, Vitro International prepared the plans for it.
Construction of the plutonium plant began at Trombay on 27 March 1961 and was commissioned in mid-1964.
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