Pokhran II not fully successful: Scientist

[Prem Kumar]

I don't. The weapon tested was 200kt. However when the crater turned up small RC said ti was 43 which is the desgin (Pry+sparkplug+ secy) yield. Subsequent seismic data showed it was even less. And radio chem was bunkum. If you take the tolerances they say for the radius of cavity it too comes to ~27kt max.

However they have fixed all this by 2003. Not earlier.


Post Diwali any clarity.

Ramana: I doubt that the weapon tested was 200kT - many data points to the contrary:

a) Didnt you say yourself in a previous post that the observation site was designed to withstand a 60kT explosion?

b) Santy himself is claiming that it was a 60% success

c) Khelotai village would have been history if we tested a 200kT device

[ramana]

BARC paper in Nuclear Technology Vol 153, Issue 3

SHOCK-3D:

http://www.new.ans.org/pubs/journals/nt/a_3712

What it appears is they can simulate an event and check its crater etc.

[Prem Kumar]

No expert, but just two posts earlier:

"We have enough data. We have comprehensive simulation capability and therefore there is no need for any more tests," Kakodkar said, days after K Santhanam ignited a controversy that Pokhran-II was a fizzle and did not give the desired yield. "We are very confident about the simulation capability,"

Indian nuclear scientists had already validated and bench marked the validated tool of the three dimensional simulation for earth motion and displacement data collected following Pokhran II tests in 1998, he said.

"We used the data of Beneberry nuclear tests of US of December 18,1970 to validate our 3-D simulation for earth motion and displacement and this validated tool was used for bench marking," Kakodkar said.

NRao: So, my assumption was correct. They had a simulation model and it was tweaked based on the tests. But how do they know that the "tweaked model" is correct, without further tests?

Plus its quite peachy that Kakodkar says that they used the Beneberry tests to build the model. So, when it is convenient, K uses data from tests done halfway across the world to build a model. However, when the test yields are questioned by other monitoring stations, he claims that "no - your measurements & models are not accurate. Pokhran terrain is different. Trust our numbers"

Looks like he wants to have his cake and eat it too

[Prem Kumar]

Looks to me that the game is slowly escalating, without giving out the score.

From what K stated, it appears that PKI was not aware of "We used the data of Beneberry nuclear tests of US of December 18,1970 to validate our 3-D simulation".

Absolutely. This exercise is turning out to be a wonderful one. The public is hearing stuff they would have never heard of otherwise.

[Raveen]

Looks like he wants to have his cake and eat it too

Possible, but doesnt sound like it
Sounds like he thought he was close to his getting his cake, baked it, realized cake was 30-40% less tasty than anticipated and then tweaked recepie for cake

*Sorry, it was just a joke, not meant to bait anyone, but I appologize irrespective*

[negi]

Narayanan garu...it is not my intention to contest BARC's claims about the success of their TESTS but what is noteworthy is the fact that folks from scientific fraternity specially the one's from 'the team' are having to explicitly clarify that there is no need for more tests ....something completely unheard of from a similar research institution anywhere in the globe.Even the one's who have tested thousands of nukes and sitting on equal or more number of bombs still seek to test more under one pretext or another (RRW...hain ?) so what is this obsession with 'no need for tests' ?

While I can understand the logic behind GOI's 'no need for testing' stance if chanakain logic is to go by...I don't understand why the scientific fraternity has to tow such a political line .

I am least bothered about the ambience of this thread given the seriousness of the issue at hand ; unless ofcourse you are privy to things which allow you to remain calm and at us.

Having said that for time being if I come out of my EB mode...and were to impart a huge positive spin on these developments then perhaps one can draw solace in the fact that GOI is desperately trying to deflect the pressure to sign the CTBT by sending out a signal i.e. "India has achieved all the goals what it had set for its N weapons programme and hence has invoked a self moratorium on nuclear testing" ; the related scientific institutions (BARC et al) have been communicated about the same and this explains the increased clamor about 'No need to test' from the scientific fraternity.

[ramana]

How does this deflect the pressure to sign CTBT? If everything worked shouldnt you be ripe to sign up?

[negi]

^ We won't get it saar it ij 'chanakian' . (for a change)

Ok on a serious note it is my pov that like any other foreign policy move; GOI's reaction to any impending external pressure/threat is 'DEFENSIVE' in nature ; hence the latter by making a ostensible 'harmless posture' (i.e. self moratorium and no need for testing etc etc) is trying to project a picture of 'Country of Peace' image in the global fora.

Ofcourse economic repercussions,nuke deal etc etc are other variables which lend credence to the above school of thought.


Btw mods/admins I have sent an email to BRF webmasters kindly ..do the needful.

[sivab]

http://www.new.ans.org/pubs/journals/nt/a_3712

This paper highlights a three-dimensional (3-D) transient numerical simulation of the Baneberry event of December 18, 1970, with a 10-kT yield and a 278-m source depth, conducted at the Nevada Test Site. This site has complex geological features with preexisting faults and layered geological strata characterized by a hard Paleozoic layer below the source, and saturated tuff on the west side of the source and clay-rich tuff toward the east side, both overlaid by top alluvial layers. In addition, a layer of 50% montmorillonite is sandwiched between two layers of 20% montmorillonite on the east end. This event is reported to have vented because of fault rupture and shock-wave reflections from a closer hard Paleozoic layer near the source. Here, the shock-induced slip along the preexisting fault plane has an important bearing on the containment efficiency of this event. None of the earlier reported simulation studies address the above slip phenomenon and the influence of variation in geological strata in the presence of the preexisting fault in a 3-D framework for underground nuclear events. The paper describes the capabilities of the SHOCK-3D finite element code for simulating short-time shock-wave propagation, fault rupture leading to sliding along the fault plane, and subsequent crater formation at ground zero with a long-duration transient computation to study the quasi-static behavior of the Baneberry event. Precise modeling schemes of the composite geological strata and fault system demonstrate that a dip-slip mechanism had developed for this event, leading to final venting. The present numerical computation results with SHOCK-3D are in excellent agreement with site observations. In addition, the limitations of earlier reported simulation results from the TENSOR two-dimensional axisymmetric code presented by Terhune et al. have also been overcome.

https://asc.llnl.gov/news/news_archive/baneberry.pdf

However, the geological profile of the Baneberry site is complex and inherently three-dimensional,
which meant that some geological features had to be simplified or ignored in the 2D simulations. This
left open the possibility that features unaccounted for in the 2D simulations could have had an
important influence on the eventual containment failure of the Baneberry event. To address this issue, a
new study was undertaken that encompassed 3D high-fidelity Baneberry simulations based on the
most accurate geologic and geophysical data available.
The computational model used included about 40 million zones and the simulation required
approximately 40,000 CPU hours to complete, thus making it the largest simulation of its kind. The
simulation helped establish a new capability to perform underground test containment simulations in
3D, thus making it possible—for the first time—to accurately represent complex geologic features in
the simulation.

Looks to me that the game is slowly escalating, without giving out the score.

From what K stated, it appears that PKI was not aware of "We used the data of Beneberry nuclear tests of US of December 18,1970 to validate our 3-D simulation".

Based on above it looks like a response to Homi Sethna's "collapsed" comment.

[Arun_S]

Obama wants India to humour him with Indian commitment to CTBT and/or FMTC (on paper or otherwise) to earn brownie point as non-proliferation Emperor, irrespective US Senate signs its or not.

Arun saar, I admire you having the knack of being on the right end of the debate everytime. But let me correct on this one. It isn't just about Obama's brownie points.

Do you mean I have knack of being on the right end of the debate everytime by changing my position at a later point, or that my original position seem to have to knack being on the right end of the debate?

[astal]

Disclaimer: I am the shortest and darkest of SDRE's being an e-con-o-myst (to many jingos, perhaps justifiably, we are in the same company as witch doctors and voodoo practitioners in terms of usefulness to society). I have no knowledge of any nuclear design or panwallas except what is discussed in previous posts on BRF. If mods (or mulla Anujan) feel this is incoherent or uninformed, I will be happy to delete the post and stay away from further discussion (probably beyond my pay scale).

I have a question that may actually help sort through the mud here. (We e-con-o-mists are quite skilled at creating and spreading muck with our own version of monetary maya).

It is claimed that what was tested in POK 2 what not a weapon but something that would establish India's capabilities to create a TN weapon. Now suppose Sikka and his team are designing a Matka for dahi handi celebration on Janmashtami. Their package has a coconut (first stage) which will supposedly be used for breaking the matka (second stage). Inside the matka, instead of just one type of fruit (pellet) like a big juicy mango, they put one succulent mango and some little grapes. The grapes are easier to manufacture. Mango's are more difficult and expensive, so we try both.

Due to the impact of the coconut on the matka, (RT instabilities etc) the mango(s) get spoiled but the smaller grapes are available for all to enjoy. Is this a remote possibility?

This interpretation would explain the exchange between the scientists and engineers. Some scientists are like us jingos and will not rest until we can deliver mango crates (tested for sweetness) to Islamabad, Pei-ching and various other places. Others say: "Our grapes are tested and they are sweet enough. Of course we will continue to develop mango's at our LIFS but we also need to buy coconuts in the market. Those awful monopolists who own the coconut market don't want us to be able to test sweet mango's. Let us play ball with them for now, and buy all the coconuts we can. We can test our mangos for sweetness later, when we have enough coconuts, and big crates (eg agni's and arihant's) that can send the fruits to their hallowed destinations."

Either way, when the GOI makes a statement for like Shayama Saran's about CTBT, it is hard to go back upon. I think KS's revealations are aimed at several different audiences.

1. To people in GOI who think we are ready to sign CTBT (from a scientific point of view) for some ephemeral foreign policy goal. Santhanam says NO!

2. To G8 and NSG members like UNKIL, he says, if the deal is not what it is worked up to be (No tech transfer, no enrichment and re-use etc.) we will test, and while we are at it, if the deals off, we may even proliferate. (Even an economist jingo can dream can't he?)

3. To the chicom-dragon, We are sdre only. We do not even have a big bum. Like our Naval chief Sureesh Mehta said the other day, we cannot match you in near future. Please leave us alone and focus on becoming super duper power. Oh and by the way, no matter how much you try to force us to sign CTBT and FMCT, unless you give up all your bums we will not sign CTBT. But if you interfere with the deal we would be glad to share our knowledge with Taiwan and Vietnam. Heck we could conduct a joint test on their soil. (Another jingo dream.)

So in summary, India may have an sdre TN device with many "grapes". Kalam and RC are not literally lying. But the mango fizzled (PKI and and KS are right too). It was not tested for high yield and could not be scaled to 1 Mt. We are not signing CTBT anytime soon. Don't push us and reneg on the deal or we will worship in dark places like the pits of Pokhran.

Sorry for gustakhi of making an amateur post in such an important thread.

[ramana]

No-No Good summary. Means people are understanding the stuff posted here.
Amitab Matto writes in Telegraph:

THE NEW FIZZLE DEBATE
- The nuclear question concerns everybody, not just scientists

THE NEW FIZZLE DEBATE
- The nuclear question concerns everybody, not just scientists
Amitabh Mattoo & Rajive Nayan


The nuclear debate in India, after a brief lull, promises to become stormy over the next months. The contest is once again, after over a decade, in essence over the merits and demerits of India signing the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty or CTBT. A former senior official of the Defence Research and Development Organisation has proved to be the catalyst and a whistle-blower. At a closed-door seminar in the capital, where the Chatham House Rules were flouted with impunity, the official declared that the thermonuclear test India conducted in 1988 was a fizzle. A fizzle, in nuclear jargon, is another term for a test that has not delivered, at least not in terms of the expected yield. The implication was clear: India should not consider signing the CTBT because we still need to conduct further tests to ensure the credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrent. While the government has sought to distance itself from the controversy, it is clear that this is an issue that cannot be swept under the carpet. What is needed, therefore, is an independent panel of scientists and analysts who can address the issue of the thermonuclear test and the wider implications for India, its nuclear deterrent, and its engagement with the CTBT. All this needs fleshing out.

The CTBT was adopted by the United Nations general assembly in September, 1996. About 150 States have ratified the CTBT and another 32 States have signed but not yet ratified it. But the treaty cannot come into force unless the 44 States listed in Annex 2 of the treaty have ratified it. Nine of these States have not ratified the treaty, including India, China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States of America. During the Bush years, the CTBT was not an issue: the Republican administration believed more in direct action than in multilateral arms control, and the treaty was pushed into cold storage. The Obama administration is, however, different.

At Prague in April, Obama committed himself to radical steps on arms control and disarmament; it seems his administration has decided to make the ratification of the CTBT a cornerstone of its foreign policy. In other words, Washington will begin exercising serious pressure on the non-signatories, even as they build a consensus on ratification domestically.

The India story, however, is, as usual, more intriguing. On September 10, 1996, at the UN general assembly, India’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Arundhati Ghose, and a bhadramahila with a greater spine than most Indian diplomats, said: “Mr President, I would like to declare on the floor of this august assembly that India will never sign this unequal treaty, not now, nor later.” The reasons, on the face of it, were simple: India had been included in Annex 2, without its consent, the draft had been negotiated outside the conference on disarmament (where India blocked a consensus) and that the treaty was not explicitly linked to a plan for disarmament which India had demanded. But there was a deeper, less diplomatic, reality. India needed time: to be able to conduct nuclear tests at an opportune time when the international backlash could be contained, so essential to build a credible nuclear posture. This happened less than two years later.

On May 11 and 13, 1988, India conducted five nuclear tests at Pokhran. All the tests were then declared totally successful. Recall the statement issued by the official spokesman on May 11: “The tests conducted today were with a fission device, a low yield device and a thermonuclear device. The measured yields are in line with expected values. Measurements have also confirmed that there was no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.”

India quickly declared a unilateral moratorium on further testing, and New Delhi’s back channels seriously discussed signing the CTBT (as a way of normalizing relations and getting sanctions, imposed in the wake of the tests, lifted) with their American counterparts, but the Clinton administration was beset with its own problems. Then came the trouble-free Bush years. In March this year, however, the prime minister’s special envoy, Shyam Saran, said at a conference at the Brookings Institution at Washington: “It is also our conviction that if the world really moves categorically towards nuclear disarmament in a credible timeframe, then India-US differences over the CTBT will probably recede into the background.” Why are we then witnessing this hullabaloo? For at least three reasons.

First, many consider thermonuclear or hydrogen weapons essential for building a credible deterrent. While this is debatable in terms of Indian nuclear deterrence strategy, there has always been scepticism about the thermonuclear claim. Days after the test, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the international scientific academic community expressed reservations. The well known nuclear-seismologist, then at the University of Arizona, Terry C. Wallace, openly rubbished India’s claims on the basis of detailed seismic analyses. In India, P.K. Iyengar, a former chief of the department of atomic energy, also doubted the official claim.

In response, the Indian atomic science establishment published its findings. Key figures of the atomic energy establishment, S.K. Sikka, Falguni Roy. and G.J. Nair, argued - in a referred paper — rather naïvely it now seems — that large variations in the seismic magnitude were because of the “cancellation and superimposition of signals from these explosions separated in space by about 1 km”. The DRDO official’s assertion implies that Sikka et al were, at the very least, magnifying their achievements.

But we must not overlook the traditional rivalry between institutions and individuals. All nuclear States have had rivalries within driven by personal idiosyncrasies and institutional loyalties. The famous rivalry between Edward Teller (the father of the hydrogen bomb) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (the leader of the Manhattan Project which produced the first atomic weapons) is legendary and irretrievably divided the two main American nuclear labs: Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. When Oppenheimer opposed the hydrogen bomb, Teller accused him of being a Soviet spy.

In India, the rivalry between the atomic energy establishment and the DRDO is well known. Raja Ramanna openly expressed his uneasiness at the elevation of a well known rocket scientist to a high position. In the Atomic Energy Commission itself, nuclear scientists have looked down upon nuclear engineers — the traditional innovators’ contempt for mechanics. Two chairmen of the AEC, Raja Ramanna, a nuclear scientist, and Homi Sethna, a nuclear engineer, had always had an uneasy relationship.

Finally, of course, there are institutional interests. No organization will seek to undermine its own raison d’être. In the US, when the Clinton administration sought the support of the nuclear laboratories for the CTBT, they had to be almost bribed. As the physicist, Richard Garwin, described it: “What could they get? Sandia got the microelectronics research center, which had minimal relevance to the CTBT. Los Alamos got the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility. Livermore got the National Ignition Facility— the white elephant eating us out of house and home.”

The fact is that we need oversight by an independent authority. In the US, there were at least two panels which, in recent years, addressed issues related to the CTBT and inter-institutional rivalry. In 1995, an Energy Advisory Board Task Force on Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories was set up. The panel concluded that while some of the finest scientific research in America was done in the national laboratories, “the current system of governance of these laboratories is broken and should be replaced with a bold alternative”. An earlier committee, which remains a model, is the bipartisan JASON committee, consisting of top research and industrial scientists. One of its most important reports was on safety, reliability, and performance margins of nuclear weapons in the wake of a possible CTBT. We need to recognize that the nuclear question is too important to be left to scientists or the armed forces alone. It concerns us all.

Amitabh Mattoo is professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Rajive Nayan is with the IDSA, New Delhi

Also Dr. Mattoo was on the first NSAB. While I agree with most of his stuff, I dont agree with his second reason that it was instituional rivalry that caused this revelations. Besides the NSAB was supposed to coordinate all these issues but was unable during is own membership due to relcutance of some of the members to submit themselves to peer review by their own former bosses. All committees end ups designing camels when tasked to design horses. If there is no integrity and ego predominates its useless to setup more committees.

[enqyoob]

That's essentially the message that RC & Kakodkar want us to swallow. My bullshit meter needle is swinging wildly when I hear that - even without knowing the details of the simulations or its predictions.

I don't disagree with your concern as such, but I am saying that we need to read all these ppl's messages VERY carefully. Also, negi asks why the SCIENTISTS are claiming that we don't need more testing, when everyone knows testing is the way to more work and baksheesh.

And in all this, the main thing to remember is that I cannot know the real answer, all I can do is sit here and "vent" from my Paleontological layer or whatever.

So the answer to "how did BARC's advisor sign off on it's PhD thesis with only one experiment?"

Actually, Premji, my answer would amaze you but come as no surprise to the many veterans here who KNOW that I am an idiot. I got my PhD, and it was all experimental, after exactly ONE successful "test" with the fire lit and the hydrogen and other stuff jetting out. Well... maybe one "60% successful" experiment to allow me to put in the thesis proposal, and then one "399.5% successful" experiment to finish off the work. In near-record time. Maybe my advisor wanted to get me outta there ASAP. But b4 that ONE successful experiment, I went through more dismal and morale-shattering failures than King Bruce, the Egyptian Army and Pakistan combined. In addition to the hajaar upon hajaar painstaking hours and days and nights getting the many pieces built, tested validated etc. etc. None of those meant squat unless the all-up experiment worked, and I even gave up once and went to my advisor and told him I wanted to quit, pretty early on. Somehow he didn't seem worried at all - except that when I saw the expression on his face after I got through my thesis proposal I understood what being a really world-class thesis advisor involved. I was very very very fortunate to have such an advisor.

If my first experiment had succeeded, would I have got away with only one? Well.. but my advisor was not going to get banned from the Faculty Lounge if I ran another experiment, so the comparison is not accurate there.

We finally start seeing the answer in the BARC case, though. They got their PhD by running validation against ancient data (from 1970), which must have got de-Classified by about 1987. That is what they are publishing: comparisons against AMIRKHANI data. Of course, if AmirKhan put a few phundamental errorj in the results to confuse anyone developing simulations, that's another matter. Maybe they had some other way of verifying that this was not the case. I have a feeling that this was "Dual-Use" and the ITAR and DUST folks are going to scream about the stupidity of making nuke test data available for Earthquake Research.

So, IOW, they had hajaar data points to validate against. This is a perfectly valid reason to get a PhD.

Then they ran ONE all-up experiment where everything was put on the line - and ONLY they could get the really important data - the output from the sensors that were placed between S1 and S2. The test was very carefully designed so that NO ONE ELSE had a prayer of getting the same data, unless one or the other test was a total flop and the seismic waves were from just one.

Beyond that, all the yada yada yada is just Maya.

So does this mean that India should sign CTBT? Absolutely not. India should not sign CTBT because China has been violating CTBT through Pakistan and NoKo (and iran, coming up). India should not sign because Pakistan is violating everything, and the US is funding Pakistan's race to build nuclear weapons to kill Indians. Also because China is being very aggressive, and is likely to go unstable in the near term.

Instead of CTBT, India should insist, as India has always insisted, on TOTAL disarmament. When the US and Russia get down to about 400 warheads each, UQ and France and China should start disarming. When they all get below 100, India and Pakistan and NoKo should join in, and if there can be totally verified disarmament, everyone can go down to zero. THEN there can be a CTBT. Until then, no deal.

So why are scientists joining the clamor of "no testing needed"? Because, besides being loyal Indians, they can also see the common sense in this: no "live", full-up testing, means the investment goes into world-class labs where the phenomena can be really explored, and we can go on far beyond what can be achieved in a "test" program.

Shouldn't the weapons be tested? Yes, we would all like that, but it's not as important as other things that we need. It's that simple.

What is NOT right, is sneering at the Indian deterrent development process just to make political points and attack the Prime Minister and the Ex-President and the serving directors of these programs as traitors, idiots, "feeble-minded" etc, etc. THAT is idiotic, and we seem to have a fair share of those here.

[svinayak]

So the answer to "how did BARC's advisor sign off on it's PhD thesis with only one experiment?"

Actual maal may have been give to them by the interested country which wants to pass the global CTBT etc

[Arun_S]

Shiv-ji

Depends on what you mean by "thermonuclear".

The all-encompassing design principle they talk about, is to initiate fusion, through fission. The fusion neutrons then cause more fission.

How we do it is altogether another question. Technique no 1, could be to have some LiD in the middle of a pu-pit. The compression due to explosives and high temperature due to fission in the Pu causes fusion in LiD, causing more fission in the Pu. Technically this is a thermonuclear bum with the same design principle as elaborated above -- Fission-fusion-more fission.

But we can do better, if we compress LiD more.

Then comes staged weapon, where the radiation from the fission is used *to heat as well as compress* (this is key idea, using radiation to compress), LiD, to create more fusion and hence more fission from neutrons from the fusion. Adding a fissile tamper, etc etc are just icing on the cake to squeeze out the last bit of efficiency.

Anujan: It is not as simple as you explain. The above is erroneous on many counts. In staged weapon radiation from the fission is used compress the secondary fuel and not heat it. In fact heating is to be avoided as much as possible. And conscious effort made to avoid the thermal precursor to compression.

For ab-initio the NPA provided primer do a good job to introduce teh subject. Of course after you ar ehooked they will spike it with poison to take you to a tangent to make sure "un-washed" stay as they are.

Pls read NPA Cary-sublett's intoduction, to get the basics right. E.g.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-4.html

What I am trying to say is that FBF, by this definition is also "thermonuclear" and adopts the same "principle" for higher efficiency.

Proposed view of Boosted fission explosive as being on same "principle" as staged TN is wrong. The term FBF is used for boosted fission bomb and is recognized to be distinct from Sloika (single stage thermonuclear) bomb, which in turn is very different from staged TN.

[negi]

Narayanan ji

So does this mean that India should sign CTBT? Absolutely not. India should not sign CTBT because China has been violating CTBT through Pakistan and NoKo (and iran, coming up). India should not sign because Pakistan is violating everything, and the US is funding Pakistan's race to build nuclear weapons to kill Indians. Also because China is being very aggressive, and is likely to go unstable in the near term.

Instead of CTBT, India should insist, as India has always insisted, on TOTAL disarmament. When the US and Russia get down to about 400 warheads each, UQ and France and China should start disarming. When they all get below 100, India and Pakistan and NoKo should join in, and if there can be totally verified disarmament, everyone can go down to zero. THEN there can be a CTBT. Until then, no deal.

So why are scientists joining the clamor of "no testing needed"? Because, besides being loyal Indians, they can also see the common sense in this: no "live", full-up testing, means the investment goes into world-class labs where the phenomena can be really explored, and we can go on far beyond what can be achieved in a "test" program.

Ok...makes sense.

What is NOT right, is sneering at the Indian deterrent development process just to make political points and attack the Prime Minister and the Ex-President and the serving directors of these programs as traitors, idiots, "feeble-minded" etc, etc. THAT is idiotic, and we seem to have a fair share of those here.

Yes...and hence I proposed Jirga issue warning against the offenders instead of repeatedly complaining about it .

So yes, "testing" is useful, and I am sure the engineers and scientists who planned S1 and S2 would dearly love to be vindicated, but the howling of jackals from the "International Expert" community and British Lords and Knights and American Editors, does not impress me. I've been there and seen their standards.

I go by what the Indian scientists who planned and conducted the Shakti program say about the validity of the results that they presented.

Valid points...


The only caveat is you have presented an ideal scenario wherein things seem to fall in place as per GOI's policy and nothing wrong with that; my only point is why diss the other pov i.e. there is/might be a segment in the upper echelons of the GOI which believes that CTBT can be ratified (and this has nothing to do with MMS and his Govt.) and recent developments i.e. KS's outburst etc etc are related to this.

-- and I see that my request has not been acted upon....Mods ..please

[enqyoob]

Well.. the NPA-supporters inside GOI and the Nuclear Establishment (there was a segment who yelled in 1998 too) may be using the argument that India should sign CTBT right away, and KS may have come in "loaded for bear" as they say, to that meeting and said what he said. The back-and-forth since then, amplified by the ddm, has made things much worse, and we see the usual cacophony in the "phoren brej" happy to pick up on that.

MMS can make things a whole lot better by coming out and saying:

As a nuclear weapon state, India reserves the absolute right to test if we feel that our security situation compels it. The behavior of China and Pakistan do not contribute to security in our neighborhood, and we are determined to build and maintain a credible minimum deterrent for our security.

Then let BO & Co decide if they can still sell stuff to India, or get left out of all deals. Float an RFQ for 20 reactors and enrichment technology projects the same day.

Maybe the situation is that there are still a lot of delicate deals to be done, say with Kangaroostan and Canadastan, also with Frogistan, and there is no sense in rocking the boat before those are done. Also, GOI should recruit Arundhati Ghose back in to head the Disarmament discussion team.

[shiv]

Just got access to one paper I was looking for - posting a quote

New Scientist

June 13, 1998

Making waves

BYLINE: Debora MacKenzie

Although India said it exploded 60 kilotons in its first test, the seismic stations recorded only 25 kilotons. However, Roger Clark, a seismologist at the University of Leeds, found that when data from 125 stations - closer to the number required by the treaty - are taken into account, the estimate is nearer to 60. Moreover, the tests could have had their seismic signals muffled, possibly by "decoupling" the devices - suspending them within caverns in the ground or burying them in sand. In theory, 10 kilotons of explosive force can be completely hidden in this way.

Clarke notes that there could be peculiarities in Rajasthan's geology that weakened the signals. That problem will diminish with experience of monitoring earthquakes, he says. "The more stations we have feeding seismic data into the system, the more details like that we will understand." Seismologists point out that the network detected both of Pakistan's tests.

[amit]

MMS can make things a whole lot better by coming out and saying:

As a nuclear weapon state, India reserves the absolute right to test if we feel that our security situation compels it. The behavior of China and Pakistan do not contribute to security in our neighborhood, and we are determined to build and maintain a credible minimum deterrent for our security.

Then let BO & Co decide if they can still sell stuff to India, or get left out of all deals. Float an RFQ for 20 reactors and enrichment technology projects the same day.

Maybe the situation is that there are still a lot of delicate deals to be done, say with Kangaroostan and Canadastan, also with Frogistan, and there is no sense in rocking the boat before those are done. Also, GOI should recruit Arundhati Ghose back in to head the Disarmament discussion team.

A lot of things will be clearer after MMS meeting with OB later this year. IMO, this whole controversy gives MMS an excellent opportunity to say, with clasped hands and SDRE demeanor, what to do Saar, much as I love CTBT I can't sign because some very, very bad scientists have raised so many questions that have upset so many people. So sorry but I'd lose my post if I did etc. A nice wiggle room for the good Sardar I'd say. And hats off to KS, PKI and others for providing this.

I also think despite whatever simulation facilities we've got we need to test, if for noting else than just show the Chincoms what kind of flower petals will rain on Shanghai and Beijing on a bright sunny day if they act smart.

However, I think the time to test is not right now but right after France and Russia are brought into the nuclear investment deal with closer embrace. There will be a period of "sanctions" after any test and right now such "sanctions" could result in the gains from the nuclear deal unravelling. However, once building of reactors have started, fuel commitments made and yellow cake in sufficient quantity lands in India to ensure that pulling out will be as harmful to the foreign companies then's the time to go for the dhamaka.

I wonder if the Chincoms and their stooges the Pakis realise this and hence want to force our hand with all the transgressions in Arunachal and reports of the Pakis making more bombs?

The thing I worry the most is that the time line is cut very fine.

JMT

[Anant]

Can one of you gurus elucidate this further? Dr. Kakodkar cites a specific series of US tests and remarks on simulation capabilities. Thank you all.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No-m ... 966230.cms

Is he referring to this?

http://tinyurl.com/n9nnsh

Anant

[amit]

Can one of you gurus elucidate this further? Dr. Kakodkar cites a specific series of US tests and remarks on simulation capabilities. Thank you all.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No-m ... 966230.cms

Is he referring to this?

http://tinyurl.com/n9nnsh

Anant

I'm no expert but AK seems to be talking about this:

Area 8 hosted the "Baneberry" shot of Operation Emery on December 18, 1970. The Baneberry 10 kiloton test detonated 900 ft (270 m) below the surface but its energy cracked the soil in unexpected ways, causing a fissure near ground zero and the failure of the shaft and cap. A plume of fire and dust was released three and a half minutes after ignition, raining fallout on workers in different locations within NTS. The radioactive plume released 6.7 million Curies of radioactive material, including 80 kCi of 131I. After dropping a portion of its load locally, the hot cloud's lighter particles were carried to three altitudes and conveyed by winter storms and the jet stream to be deposited heavily as radionuclide-laden snow in Lassen and Sierra counties in northeast California, and to lesser degrees in southern Idaho, northern Nevada and some eastern sections of Oregon and Washington states. The three diverging jet stream layers conducted radionuclides across the US to Canada, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Two US Federal court cases resulted from the Baneberry event. Two NTS workers who were exposed to high levels of radiation from Baneberry died in 1974, both from acute myeloid leukemia. The district court found that although the Government had acted negligently, the radiation from the Baneberry test did not cause the leukemia cases. The district decision was upheld on appeal in 1996.

In March 2009, TIME magazine identified the Baneberry Test as one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

It seems there was massive "venting" in this underground explosion. Do also note it's a 10KT dhamaka.

[amit]

OK Anant,

I see you beat me to it with your amended post.
However, I still let my previous post stand as the link has some other interesting information on Yucca Flat test range.

[ramana]

But as Prem Kumar says one cant be selective to use out of country data when occasion warrants.

If you dig deep the SHOCK-3D code appears to be fixed mesh size finite element program. I don't know how it handles the two phases of the event of cavity formation: heat melting the soil to form gas and the gas cooling and dropping down due to gravity. These both would require different time steps for the integration. One very minute for the gas phase and one much larger for the gravity phase.Then there is the matter of geometry non linearity due to the above phase transformations. How do they handle the discontinuity due tot eh gassification? Do they have what is called adaptive mesh resizing as they do for elasto-plastic phenomenon like high speed impact with mesh removed? Also Trehune data is based on 2-D formulation of the 3-D problem with material and geometric non-linearities. So any 3D code will give better than Trehune's 1970s solution.

Also when K Santhanam is asking about yield and PKI is asking about radio-chem analysis of S-1 what does it matter to talk about 3-D simulation of craters in other countries?

And my simple mind is asking all these questions based on FEM long, long ago at the best college in the world IIT Madras.

Those were the days of figuring out shape functions(not Hema Malini's) and coding on IBM cards and cry when the deck falls down on the way to computer center after dinner, for you have to put them back in order.

[Dileep]

So, the problem is un-availability of data. For PKI, For KS, and for NPAs. Same reason onlee!!

Beeeeeeautiiiiifuuuul!!

This cant apply to KS right he was the program director of testing.

What if he was NOT shared with the data by BARC?

[NRao]

NRao: So, my assumption was correct. They had a simulation model and it was tweaked based on the tests. But how do they know that the "tweaked model" is correct, without further tests?

Plus its quite peachy that Kakodkar says that they used the Beneberry tests to build the model. So, when it is convenient, K uses data from tests done halfway across the world to build a model. However, when the test yields are questioned by other monitoring stations, he claims that "no - your measurements & models are not accurate. Pokhran terrain is different. Trust our numbers"

Looks like he wants to have his cake and eat it too

PK:

Personally I do not see a problem with this. It has been done in other field(s?). But, how much does it apply to this one area I do not know. I have to suspect that the "tweak" is WRT geology, the rest I think/hope/suspect/etc is fairly common - shared model/s. IF that is true, then it may explain the difference between the Indian SciCom and those from abroad. The two models being (radically?) different, there would be a world of difference in the outcome - "tweaks" being different, the result set has to be different.

IF all that is true, then the offer for peer review necessarily needs to include the revelation of these "tweaks".

I suspect that both PKI and SK are not privy to the innards of this "model".




You know, I am beginning to think that everyone is right - this is somewhat like the elephant and the blind men. With the exception of a very few people, rest are all in the dark about something - experts as much as they all are. They are all motivated by the right thing and under the circumstances are saying the right things - granted from their view point/s.

[ramana]

Dileep,

From the Expressbuzz editor V.Sudarshan, KS was one of the authors of the November 1998 DRDO report on the tests.

[enqyoob]

Wow! You can see what would have happened to Khetolai if the "100%" S1 had occurred per some of the arguments presented here. Curious, isn't it, that the BARC decided to use this as the simulation case? It must be delightful to present papers analyzing this to NPA audiences who sneer at Indian efforts as lacking the finesse and safety precautions of bheshtern nyookulear technology.

Now I see how they could indeed have refined their calculation to predict the effects at Khetolai. Really impressive work.

Rupture occurred 210 seconds after ignition!!! How long does it take for a pressure wave traveling at, say, 1500m/s to travel the 247 meters back up to the surface? Not 210 seconds!!! So it sounds like the fireball melted a lot of the cavern, and ate its way through whatever layer that slowly developed fissures, then came out like a volcano. Maybe they hit a water layer and that produced a lot of steam that boosted the pressure? Shows why avoiding the groundwater layer is also very important.

If the 43 kT blast had come out of the hole, it would have been an unmitigated disaster. Imagine the mushroom cloud floating out over TSP and PRC!!! Or if it floated over the Ganga Plain, Dilli Billis would be glowing. No snow storms to force the stuff down in May in North India, so it would have stayed in the air and very slowly settled down, causing widespread cancer etc.

[amit]

Ramana,

I really don't understand the technical details as my field is different. However, from a simple reading of the link I posted it seems to me that the Baneberry (BTW all Indian publications seemed to have spelled it Beneberry?) test wasn't very "successful".

Then why data from that test? Could it be because of the legal aspects the data was released by the US Govt? Or is it the soil composition is very similar to POK

[enqyoob]

For ur enjoyment:
Baneberry Test

Picture shows sensor cables laid out- imagine these between the S1 and S2 sites to see how the two would have been independently captured in the brief time before their seismic waves met each other.

The Ultimate Darwin Award Competition

Reporters from across the country wearing protective goggles gather at News Knob at the test site to witness the Charlie nuclear weapons test, involving a 31 kiloton bomb dropped from a B-50 bomber. This April 22, 1952, test was broadcast live on national television.

Didn't they know then that radiation would penetrate their whole bodies, not just damage the eyes?

Technical Explanation for Baneberry Event

Court records of Baneberry case:

William Nunamaker vs. the United States and Harley Roberts vs. the United States, as they came to trial January 1979, in Federal District Court, Las Vegas.

Both died long before the cases ended.

[amit]

If the 43 kT blast had come out of the hole, it would have been an unmitigated disaster. Imagine the mushroom cloud floating out over TSP and PRC!!! Or if it floated over the Ganga Plain, Dilli Billis would be glowing. No snow storms to force the stuff down in May in North India, so it would have stayed in the air and very slowly settled down, causing widespread cancer etc.

You know N^3 when I first read your postulate, I thought hey a great new angle and trust it to come from N^3

However, now I beginning to think that you've hit a very valid issue and despite all the huffing and puffing and ground zero tourism reports etc, I haven't seen a convince explanation to your simple poouch!

[John Snow]

probably for two reasons

1) how not to do it (like that)

2) how to avoid similar circumstances

[ramana]

When I was researching the POKII for the BRM article about ten years ago, I did read up on the Banberry event. This one is a bad one because the shaft vented in what they thought was stable area and they had been testing for quite sometime. The reason why it vented was due to the 'slip' that is shearing of the soil. As it was a spectacular event with court cases it has been analysed quite extensively. Trehune came up with a 2_D formulation to give first order estimates in the early 70s. So what BARC is saying is they proofed the SHOCK-3D on the Banberry event and got good results and that they might have used it to check what was gotten at POKII. The S-I was more energetic than the Banberry event and my question is how was the phase transformation and material discontinuity handled.

I don't want to know. Its just a comment.

[enqyoob]

What I am beginning to see is that this was the biggest headache that the test designers faced - what happened if the test WORKED - not what if it did NOT work. So they seemed to have focused their efforts on this aspect.

I still can't see why they didn't move the test site deep into the Thar, far away from the villages - there don't seem to be very many other villages around, ands Khetolai (and the Logistics Base) are fairly green areas, denoting plenty of ground water. So this remains a mystery. But given that they had to be here, it's pretty clear that the safety calculation had to be the dominant theme.

Where would they conduct a 200kT or 1 MT test? Someplace in MP? Are there any uninhabited areas in the mountains there?

despite all the huffing and puffing and ground zero tourism reports etc, I haven't seen a convince explanation to your simple poouch!

Understandably that bisses off some of the ** community real bad. Knocks the whole "Coverup!" ro-dho for a loop, and makes the test yield expectation transparent. Trouble is, it doesn't depend on any ambiguous technical gobbledegook, just very simple human common sense, so I don't see how it can be circumvented. The damage pictures still exist on the web. The kids were out in the schoolyard barely over the horizon from Ground Zero, and I bet they weren't even wearing the goggles. A more powerful blast would have been an absolute catastrophe.

[amit]

probably for two reasons

1) how not to do it (like that)

2) how to avoid similar circumstances

I think you're right.

So can we take it that the POKII team learned from the mistake of others and perfected it?

I'm sure you'll agree that that's a perfectly logical POV, even if you don't subscribe to it.

NRao is right we've got Five Blind Men of Hindoostan discussing this here and that's resulted in 46 pages of pure entertainment. I think we need Anu Mullick and Farah Khan to moderate here.

Added later: See the entertainment quotient. I did a guess work on 46 pages and this post becomes the first post on page No 46.

[amit]

I still can't see why they didn't move the test site deep into the Thar, far away from the villages - there don't seem to be very many other villages around, ands Khetolai (and the Logistics Base) are fairly green areas, denoting plenty of ground water. So this remains a mystery. But given that they had to be here, it's pretty clear that the safety calculation had to be the dominant theme.

Where would they conduct a 200kT or 1 MT test? Someplace in MP? Are there any uninhabited areas in the mountains there?

Could it be that they stuck to the test site because the holes were dug and ready and digging new holes further inside the Thar could have been a give away (like in 1995) which could have resulted in unbearable pressure from Unkill not to test - remember the Democrats were in power then.

Just speculating.

[shiv]

Where would they conduct a 200kT or 1 MT test? Someplace in MP? Are there any uninhabited areas in the mountains there?
.

N# it is technically easy to dig a hole down to 600 meters - well below the water table and then do a test. They could have done that but they did not. Possible reasons (in my view and entirely my opinion based on reading of open sources). Acc to Chengappa S1 shaft was "more than 200 meters" - but that, and the fact of wetness in the earth does not mean it is not above the water table. It could be on the upper reaches of a water table but still above. We just don't know

1) They did not want/have a mega bomb to test
2) They were deliberately trying to mask yields and test above the water table in sandy soil just to see what information the CTBT monitoring apparatus could get. That of course would automatically have forced a low yield test

[enqyoob]

That is the only answer I can see too.
Thermonukes were already built and deployed, but the scientists were pleading to let them validate the bare minimum needed - the separate components.

So the instruction to the team was:
1. Go ahead, but keep new activity to an absolute minimum.
2. Cannot move the village because that would be a giveaway.
3. Cannot move the logistics from the present base because that would be a giveaway.
4. Cannot start digging deeper in the Thar because they know the oil prospecting data there already, can't use that as cover.
5. Cannot bring in many people because that increases the risk of leaks.
6. Venting etc. absolute no-no.
7. Scientists claimed that they could downsize the yield from an existing 200KT weapon. So they were asked to downsize to where it could be tested in existing hole without damaging Khetolai.
8. Team pushed that to the absolute limits that the Govt would approve, with 43 KT.

So we have to conclude that the GOI gave the scientists only the absolute bare minimum that was absolutely essential to have some confidence that the deployed weapons would work. As it happened, things worked ALMOST too well, but certainly validated the design.

If they have to test again, it will have to be a totally new facility much deeper in the desert, or in other places. Maybe that site is ready now... hence the noise?

[munna]

Where would they conduct a 200kT or 1 MT test? Someplace in MP? Are there any uninhabited areas in the mountains there?

Maybe trans Jaisalmer waste lands or Barmer-Sanchore region of Rajasthan (MP would be too central in case something went wrong with the sizzler)! But then that area is pretty close to international border and hence easy areas to pick up any new activity and would have been too belligerent a point made. I guess utilizing an existing site made it easier for our SDRE scientists to kick the nu@s of TFTA Amir Khani Khufiiya bandobast by ensuring quick setup of the necessary paraphernalia.

[Arun_S]

2) They were deliberately trying to mask yields and test above the water table in sandy soil just to see what information the CTBT monitoring apparatus could get. That of course would automatically have forced a low yield test

One life time opportunity to test and serve Indian security interest v.s. play cat and mouse with CTBT monitoring apparatus !!

What do you say were the orders to the team? And finally what was the purpose of the test series, some abstract and irrelevant experiment?

If latter is true, then they are truly the best laughing stock and deserving beings holding high the Indian flag.

[John Snow]

I think its time for all current scientists BARC or BARC to just shut up not give any more inofrmation. It is better that we preserve the very litlle crdibility that we have.

Everynody kept everybody partially or totally out of the loop. A true atomic scientist would never says we have had enough tests. The very concept of sub critical testing is required points to the fact that testing is always and will be required leave alone to improve but just to preserve and gaurentee the performance of existing designs.

The more our scientsits are talking they are taking everybody into quick sands and becoming laughing stock.

No SHitty Bitty. if some one tests or we feel threatened )percieved or real we exercise our sovereign option)
No three or four lettered treaties, complete and unconditional disarmament, only then we open shop for talks. period.