This is what I love about BRF. So I ask a simple question, and 15 pages later here is this Einsteinian response from "Sudeepj":
That question is beyond silly. The entire village was evacuated, people asked to come out of their homes, before the experiments.
Yes, but the answer is totally brilliant, so it should make up for the stupidity of the question, thank Allah!
So your position is that Indian engineering design consists of doing something utterly disastrous, but evacuating the people from their homes that are about to be demolished and rendered radioactive if the design succeeds!!!!!
As opposed to digging the hole far enough away from their village to anticipate the maximum intensity of the blast.
Awesome! This is what one pays money to get on the internet and read on BRF. The sheer brilliance of that reasoning!!!!
I can see that sudeepj must be one of India's greatest engineers and intellectuals, but unfortunately I cannot aspire to such brilliance. In the slums where I slog, we have to do something really unfashionable, called "THINKING" before we approve a test plan. When people ask nasty questions like "how do you know that this won't cause a lot of collateral damage?" we cannot answer: "That's OK, I'll ask people to run away before I run my test!"
The simple question remains: If the predicted yield did not occur, why was there damage outside the test area? Wouldn't that have been utterly, criminally, irresponsible design, saved from total catastrophe only because the test did not yield even half the predicted yield? Don't the villagers of Rajasthan have any rights as Indian citizens? DRDO engineers get to demolish their homes at will?
Or was the test safety design in the hands of GTRE Kaveri program managers, comfortably assuming that the bomb would not work?
The argument that villages were evacuated from all surrounding areas, was an elementary precaution. There may have been venting, resulting in radioactive clouds drifting around. So there was no way to leave unsuspecting villagers in harm's way.
Note that I am not asking:" WHY was there ANY damage at all at the village?"
I am asking: "If the yield was indeed only 60% of design, then what would have been the damage at these villages with 100% design yield?"
The answer is clearly unacceptable, and leaves the simple conclusion that the yield was everything the designers hoped it would be. Regardless of how many chest-thumping experts give out abuse about the simplicity of the question, there is no other answer, and they only hold a mirror to themselves when they say "SILLY!"
Munna, as for "why is there Rona-Dhona?" the answer is
Because someone saw a way to embarass the govt.
The guy who came out with the declaration knows that no one can release the data (and if they do no one will believe it). This applies to ALL the people ranting here, and we go back to the other point raised in the Nuclear Deal tamasha:
1. The data are Classified.
2. The official version makes sense, per the papers published by approval.
3. No one who really knows the answer is allowed to explain it fully, or indeed to talk about it.
4. If someone claims to know some Inside Info, they are (a) spies (b) liars or (b) about to be arrested. Take your pick.
It so happens that the politics inside India have changed, so even people who were convinced, and who convinced us, that the official claimed yields were accurate, are now changing their story to make it appear that the Govt lied. Sad display of petty politics winning over national interest.
And I am citing the simple, well-documented, photographed evidence that proves beyond doubt (unless you believe that Indian test designers are as incompetent and criminally callous as sudeepj fancies Indian engineers to be) that the S-1 test yielded the maximum or more, of the expected yield.
Why was S1 limited to 43KT? Was it because Indians did not know in 1998 how to design a 150KT or 200KT weapon? Maybe. So I don't argue that it would be good to have an opportunity to test again - if it is compatible with other national priorities.
All good things come with a little bit of sacrifice.