IEEE Spectrum July, 2007 - 26

book, India's Nuclear Bomb. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,
the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also
contemplated helping India conduct "peaceful nuclear explosions," purportedly for excavating mines and canals.
On 18 May 1974, India detonated a nuclear device with an
official yield of 12 kilotons, a bit smaller than the "Little Boy"
bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The plutonium that fueled the Pokhran blast came from reprocessed spent fuel from the Canadian-supplied CIRUS reactor.
As a result, as the Canadian minister of trade and commerce,
Mitchell Sharp, put it, "Trust between the two countries was
gone." Years later, Raja Ramanna, the architect of the 1974 test,
said at a public meeting, "The Pokhran test was a bomb, I can
tell you now." Prodded by journalists, he added: "An explosion
is an explosion, a gun is a gun, whether you shoot at someone
or shoot at the ground."
India's test triggered serious international repercussions.
Most significantly, it prompted various Western countries to
form the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which restricts the export
of nuclear technologies and materials to countries such as India
that refuse to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. To some
degree, the NSG's restrictions achieved their desired effect. All

2006 The Indian
Department of Atomic
Energy predicts it will be
able to generate 20 GW of
nuclear energy by 2020 and
more than 200 GW by 2052.
2000 For the first
time, the Fast Breeder
Test Reactor operates
continuously for 53 days.

October 2004 Construction begins on
India's first industrial-scale breeder reactor,
the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor.

2000

2006 President George W.
Bush approves a controversial law that could eventually
allow India to buy American
nuclear reactors and fuel.

2005
September 2001
U.S. lifts sanctions
that were imposed
on India and
Pakistan after
the 1998 tests.

March 2006 Bush
and Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh
sign a nuclear
agreement to
provide fuel and
technology.

February 2007
India and Pakistan
sign an agreement
to reduce the
risk of accidental
nuclear war.

2010 Anticipated
date of completion
of Prototype Fast
Breeder Reactor.

2010

Trombay facility; called CIRUS (for Canada India Reactor United nuclear facilities built in India since 1974 have experienced
States), it used heavy water supplied by the United States. France, delays and have repeatedly been scaled back. Replacement parts
for its part, collaborated with India to build the Fast Breeder Test became harder to acquire, and Indian nuclear engineers found
Reactor at Kalpakkam, based on the French Rapsodie breeder.
their foreign counterparts far less willing to help them solve
The United States' involvement was motivated in part by a technical problems.
Cold War-era desire to enlist India in countering China's growBut the sanctions did nothing to discourage India from
ing military might. Inspired by U.S. strategic thinkers' rational- surreptitiously continuing its research and development of
izations for massive nuclear arsenals, some of India's hawkish nuclear weapons. In 1998, the country finally came clean. On
defense intellectuals began advocating nuclear weapons as a sta- 11 and 13 May, it conducted two tests that each consisted of
bilizing force between the two countries. This stance, in turn, multiple explosions, including one that India claimed was a
prompted neighboring Pakistan's quest for nuclear weapons. In 45-kiloton hydrogen bomb-though independent analyses of
1965, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then the foreign minister of Pakistan, seismic data indicate that the bomb's yield was actually a fracfamously declared that if India developed an atomic bomb, tion of the size. Two weeks later, Pakistan followed suit with
Pakistan would follow, "even if we have to eat grass or leaves or its own nuclear tests. South Asia had become, in the words of
to remain hungry."
U.S. President Bill Clinton, "the most dangerous place in the
Nonetheless, the United States' hostility toward China dur- world"-and also the focus of renewed U.S. strategic interest.
ing the period led to some extraordinary ideas about what the
U.S. government deemed to be acceptable levels of nuclear coop- a dIplomaTIc TransITIon did not take place overeration. Senior officials in the U.S. State Department and the night. Although Clinton traveled to New Delhi in 2000 to
Pentagon considered preparing troops in India to use low-yield meet with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and
tactical nuclear weapons supplied by the United States, accord- discuss "strategic" partnerships, his administration refused
ing to a state department memo cited by George Perkovich in his to resume civilian nuclear cooperation, despite much interest

38 IEEE Spectrum | July 2007 | NA

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from lEft: bAbu/rEutErS; SoNdEEP ShANKAr/
bloombErg NEwS/lANdov; b mAthur/rEutErS

keeps ahead of things, we must develop atomic energy."
To realize that vision, successive prime ministers have set
large budgets for the nuclear establishment. In the late 1950s,
the DAE cornered more than a quarter of all resources devoted
to science and technology development in the country, and not
much has changed since then. In 2005-2006 the DAE's budget was roughly $1.2 billion, compared with $87 million for the
Renewable Energy Ministry, which is responsible for 10.4 GW
of installed electrical capacity.
For the first 25 years or so following India's independence, the
international community was more than happy to assist the new
country in its pursuit of atomic power. India's leading nuclear
scientists asked for and received both technical and financial
aid from the United States, Britain, Canada, and other countries.
Between 1955 and 1974, more than 1100 Indian scientists were
trained at U.S. nuclear facilities, while more than 250 trained
in Canada. The first Indian reactor, built in Trombay, at what is
now the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, was based on a British
design and used British-supplied fuel rods. The design for the
first reprocessing plant for separating materials such as uranium
and plutonium from spent fuel, also located at Trombay, came
from U.S. blueprints. Canada donated a research reactor to the

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