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India May Test Again Because H-Bomb Failed, U.S. Believes

By Mark Hibbs, Nucleonics Week, November 26, 1998 (reprinted with permission)

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One of India's May nuclear blasts, which was described by the New Delhi government as a successful thermonuclear weapons test, was in fact a failure, senior U.S. nuclear intelligence analysts have concluded after months of study.

 

Discrepancies between claims made by India after the tests and actual seismic data recorded by several international organizations have prompted speculation that at least one of three tests at the Pokaran test site India said were successful on May 11 did not go off. Last week, however, Washington officials told Nucleonics Week that analysts at the Z Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, responsible for making estimates of progress in foreign nuclear weapons programs based on classified data, have now concluded that the second stage of a two-stage Indian hydrogen bomb device failed to ignite as planned.

 

As a result of the apparent failure, U.S. official sources said, the Indian government is under pressure by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), responsible for India's nuclear weapons design and production effort, to test the H-bomb again, in the face of ongoing bilateral talks in which the U.S. seeks to persuade India to agree to a global nuclear test ban.

 

Measured in terms of verified capabilities, apparent progress in delivery systems, and military control of the bomb program, one U.S. official said, ''Pakistan may have pulled even or gone ahead'' of India in the South Asian nuclear arms race, by virtue of tit-for-tat tests Islamabad carried out two weeks after India's detonations.

 

Only days after the blast, DAE announced to the world that the test was a complete success, and that India now had demonstrated a thermonuclear weapons capability.

 

When India announced it had tested an H-bomb, U.S. officials and some ex-DAE officials suggested that, because Indian officials in the past had used the term ''thermonuclear'' loosely, the biggest Indian shot on May 11 was a boosted fission weapon, not a true hydrogen bomb (NW, 14 May, 12). After several months of analysis of seismic, human, and signals intelligence data, however, U.S. officials directly responsible for interpreting the information have concluded that they are satisfied that DAE tried to test an H-bomb.

 

A boosted fission weapon is a nuclear weapon in which neutrons produced by thermonuclear reactions serve to enhance the fission process, which itself is set off in the type of weapons designed by India by the implosion of a core of metallic plutonium. In a boosted fission bomb, the contribution of the thermonuclear reaction to the total yield is relatively small.

 

A full-fledged thermonuclear weapon is a two-stage weapon in which the main contribution to the explosive energy results from the fusion of light nuclei, such as deuterium and tritium. The high temperatures required for the fusion reaction, produced in the secondary stage of the device, are initially produced by means of an initial fission explosion, generated by the primary stage.

 

According to well-placed sources, U.S. analysts now strongly believe that, on May 11, the primary stage of an Indian H-bomb detonated, but its heat failed to ignite the secondary stage. ''If India really wants a thermonuclear capability, they will have to test again and hope they get it right,'' one U.S. official said.

 

After the May blasts, India declared that a ''thermonuclear device'' code-named Shakti-1 had produced a nuclear yield of 43 kilotons. At the same time, India asserted that a ''fission device'' was exploded yielding 12 kilotons, and that a ''low-yield device'' had produced a yield of about 0.2 kilotons. But seismic and intelligence data analysed by U.S. experts have prompted the conclusion that ''the secondary didn't work,'' one source explained. According to data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the expected mid-point of a range of probable yields for all blasts on May 11, given the seismic recordings of between 4.7 and 5.0 on the Richter scale, would be only about 12 kilotons.

 

Sources said that, while the U.S. has not made any public comment about what it knows about the Indian H-bomb test, the Clinton administration has raised the subject with the Indian government in secretive, high-level talks with New Delhi over terms under which India would agree to comply with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Indian side has asserted that the discrepancy between measured yield and the DAE claim of 43 kilotons is accounted for by a precautionary reduction by DAE of the amount of fuel used in the secondary, in order to prevent damaging the village of Khetolai, located only a few miles from the test site. U.S. analysts have concluded that was not the case. ''The Indians are hopping mad that we don't believe their H-bomb worked,'' one source said.

 

But the matter has now severely complicated the U.S.-Indian talks on the test ban, diplomatic sources observed last week. Because the H-bomb test failed, DAE ''is under intense pressure to test again,'' one U.S. official said. According to an official at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, ''The U.S. has been preparing to let India climb down'' from heavy sanctions which were applied nearly immediately after the May test series, provided India agrees to the CTBT. But if DAE didn't deliver on the H-bomb test, he said, the U.S. ''will have to give India a lot more in return'' for a firm agreement to agree to the CTBT. Diplomatic sources said that, in 1997, India had asked the U.S. for test simulation data, such as that the U.S. agreed to supply France a few years ago, in order to permit India to accept the CTBT, but that the U.S. had refused. One analyst said that ''it would now be logical'' for India to renew that request. But sources said a U.S. transfer of such data to I

 

In the heady hours following what appeared to be a series of successful nuclear weapons tests in May, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had declared that India would not carry out further tests and would negotiate accession to the CTBT (NW, 14 May, Extra). But since then, U.S. officials said, DAE has bid to test the H-bomb again. At the same time, one Indian analyst said last week, Vajpayee is ''terribly worried'' about the prospect that the Indian military might get control of the nuclear weapon program. ''The military is looking at what was apparently a DAE failure and it sees what's happening over in Pakistan where the military is directly in control of its weapons program,'' one U.S. official said. -- Mark Hibbs, Washington

Mark Hibbs is European Editor of Nucleonics Week and Nuclear Fuel, leading specialist newsletters on international nuclear affairs, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. Hibbs, based in Bonn, Germany, covers nuclear energy and proliferation problems in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia.

Mark Hibbs' coordinates:
Tel: x49-228-215051
Fax: x49-228-218849
E-mail: mhibb@mh.com

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