India Nuclear News And Discussion

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somnath
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by somnath »

Santanam,

Note that China also has a liability limiting law for international commerce. So to say it not part of the "system" is not right. About the adverb of interim, well, all laws by definition are interim given that the legislature can amend it any time it wants to (the Indian constituion has been amended, what, 200 times?).

Per capita compensation is good in theory, but difficult to estimate in practice, and is also prone to argumetns over purchasing power parity etc - no international convention on liability limitation works on per capita as far as I know..In terms of population density, Japan has a similar density of population as us, the "habited" parts of China are equally densely populated...

I dont think there is any "scapegoating" of NPCIL here. The liability is on the operator, so it is NPCIL, in other words, GOI, that is fixing the upper cap on liability for itself.. In case we want the foreign designer to bear the liability, it is upto the govt to simply change the laws on foreign equity particiaption in nuke utilities. Most of the majors, GE to Areva, would welcome that.

To me, the question of compensation post an industrial accident is completely dependent on how the govt of the day behaves. The trouble with UCC was not the quantum of compensation (even 470 million in those days was a big number), but the way various governments went about in the relief and compensation work...That is a really different story...
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Neela »

Gentlemen,

A simple third party liability insurance in mainland Europe costs 65 Euros/year and insures a person for up to 10 million Euros.
I am aware that statistics plays a key role in arriving at 65 Euros - 10 million sum!

Can the gurus here throw light on how this $450m came to be?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by somnath »

Neela wrote:Gentlemen,

A simple third party liability insurance in mainland Europe costs 65 Euros/year and insures a person for up to 10 million Euros.
I am aware that statistics plays a key role in arriving at 65 Euros - 10 million sum!

Can the gurus here throw light on how this $450m came to be?
Insurance works on probability tables. A normal individual third party liability insurance (on say motor) is predicated on how many claims the insurance company will receive in a year, v/s the total primia it collects. the fact is that there will be very very few (relatively) speaking cases of people filing thrid party liability claims for motor accidents, compared to the number of people going in for such a policy (almost every car owner every year!)..

Compared to that, the probability of casualties in large number (and hence large compensation claims) post an industrial accident is very very high. An unlimited, without cap insurance policy would drive the economics of nuclear trade away completely - hence over time first by OECD, and then by IAEA, a sort of consensus on the upper cap was reached. Later, the two treaties got harmonised under a "joint protocol". These are of course subject to local laws, but they serve as the guiding principles.

As I mentioned before, the question of compensation and relief is often upto the national govt's attitude in terms of dealing with it, money is seldom the biggest issue...(even getting compensation out of the erring firm is a question of how the govt of the day deals with the issue)..
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Neela »

somnath wrote:
Neela wrote:Gentlemen,

A simple third party liability insurance in mainland Europe costs 65 Euros/year and insures a person for up to 10 million Euros.
I am aware that statistics plays a key role in arriving at 65 Euros - 10 million sum!

Can the gurus here throw light on how this $450m came to be?
Insurance works on probability tables. A normal individual third party liability insurance (on say motor) is predicated on how many claims the insurance company will receive in a year, v/s the total primia it collects. the fact is that there will be very very few (relatively) speaking cases of people filing thrid party liability claims for motor accidents, compared to the number of people going in for such a policy (almost every car owner every year!)..

Compared to that, the probability of casualties in large number (and hence large compensation claims) post an industrial accident is very very high. An unlimited, without cap insurance policy would drive the economics of nuclear trade away completely - hence over time first by OECD, and then by IAEA, a sort of consensus on the upper cap was reached. Later, the two treaties got harmonised under a "joint protocol". These are of course subject to local laws, but they serve as the guiding principles.

As I mentioned before, the question of compensation and relief is often upto the national govt's attitude in terms of dealing with it, money is seldom the biggest issue...(even getting compensation out of the erring firm is a question of how the govt of the day deals with the issue)..

So does that mean in this case that the company that is in charge of the building plants, say Areva for example, has the same liability in mainland Europe ?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by SaiK »

somnath
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by somnath »

^^^In case Areva is the operator of the utlity, it would have to bear the liability of compensation as defined in the Indian law (which is currently rumoured to be USD 450 mio cap). The French laws require a 91 million euro financial security per plant.But Europe also has some EU specific provisions on liability covers.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

somnath wrote:Santanam,

. . . The liability is on the operator, . . .
somnath,

I take it that the above post is addressed to me.

After reviewing our recent exchange if ideas regarding accident compensation liability being loaded solely on the npp operator, irrespective of the mistakes of commission and omission that might have been made by the other actors involved, and "diktated" to be so, in the name of a "convention", by a cartel of nations who had adopted - and probably will continue to adopt - policies directed against India, and whose purpose now is only to fill their empty order books at India's cost, I, at least for the present, see that our view points are so divergent that they are irreconcilable. Obviously we have differing opinions on what is good for our country.

In view of the above, I beg to differ with you and leave it at that.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

Neela wrote:Gentlemen,

A simple third party liability insurance in mainland Europe costs 65 Euros/year and insures a person for up to 10 million Euros.
I am aware that statistics plays a key role in arriving at 65 Euros - 10 million sum!

Can the gurus here throw light on how this $450m came to be?
Neela,

I write this in jest, and hope you will not mistake me.

What does the small print in the insurance policies say? How are "pre-existing" conditions resolved when it comes to pay out time of the insurance claim? How "corruptible" is the system?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by kumarn »

Army should be confident of N-arsenal: Kakodkar

He ruled out the need for further thermonuclear tests and said the country has several hydrogen bombs with a yield "much more" than 45 kilo tons.

"Of course. Why do you put singular, use plural?" he shot back when asked whether India had a thermonuclear bomb.

"Much more than that. I said from up to low kilotons to 200 kilotons," Kakodkar said when asked whether the hydrogen bomb has a yield of 45 kilo tons.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by sum »

Guys, humble request:

Does anyone have a e-copy of Itty Abraham's " Making of atomic bomb" or Raj Chengappa's " Weapons of Peace"??

If so, please indicate. Will give my mail ID then.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Neshant »

"Much more than that. I said from up to low kilotons to 200 kilotons," Kakodkar said when asked whether the hydrogen bomb has a yield of 45 kilo tons.
unfortunately, the claims ring hollow in light of the revelation earlier this year that the h-bomb test was a dud.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Karan Dixit »

I urge all the Indians to increase the consumption of maple syrup to help out Canada.

---

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/93824 ... nanza.html
The text of the agreement has yet to be revealed, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that the agreement would "allow Canadian firms to export and import controlled nuclear materials, equipment and technology to and from India".
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by sanjaykumar »

Hehehe racist and arrogant-but I do suggest learning how to make pancakes-maple syrup has very few other uses.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Amber G. »

kumarn wrote:Army should be confident of N-arsenal: Kakodkar
...
"Of course. Why do you put singular, use plural?" he shot back when asked whether India had a thermonuclear bomb.
Worthwhile for interested to read the whole interview.
X-posted from the other thread (which also has the whole text) :
'Use plural, India has thermonuclear bombs'

Also, xposting (from Gerard's post)
Kakodkar a liar, says Santhanam
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Gagan »

Amber G
These are the videos from that link you posted. Anil Kakodkar's Interview on Devil's Advocate.
Link

As I watch these videos, Karan Thapar asks exactly the questions raised on the forum and very pointedly, and AK responds categorically.

This is a MUST watch video.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

Gagan wrote:Amber G
These are the videos from that link you posted. Anil Kakodkar's Interview on Devil's Advocate.
Link

As I watch these videos, Karan Thapar asks exactly the questions raised on the forum and very pointedly, and AK responds categorically.

This is a MUST watch video.
X posting from Pokhran Thread as Gagan ji's post above has also been posted there.

As I watched and listened to the programme live (on 13 Dec 2009 on CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate) , I felt dissatisfied and unconvinced with Dr Kakodkar's dismissal, in one fell swoop, of DRDO's report to the Govt, saying their instrumentation was faulty. There was no mention of "calibration" of the instruments being wrong -- a 'data point' that was being discussed in these (Pokhran) threads some time ago, and which was strongly contested by Dr. K Santhanam. In any case, if it was only a calibration error, perhaps there was/is some way to make post-facto correction(s) to the readings from those instruments - a form of "fudging" indulged in by many researchers :!: :)

I recollect that during the programme, both words, "instrumentation" (which to me, means a system comprising of multiple instruments and other equipment / subsystems such as measurement devices, recorders, transmitters, power supplies, cables, etc), and "instruments" (plural) were used to describe DRDO's measurement set up. I am sure that in a test of this kind, where the instrumentation might get destroyed due to the event, thereby leaving very little opportunity for later trouble-shooting analysis of what went wrong, a great amount of redundancy would have been built into the entire paraphernalia. Unless there was a common cause failure afflicting all the redundant equipment which had not been foreseen by the designers earlier (as otherwise it would not have been truly redundant), I am not convinced that the entire system could have become faulty and all readings from it rendered useless. If indeed that was the case, Dr Kakodkar could have just inserted a few words, without revealing any sensitive information about the cause(s) of failure, to indicate that in spite of redundancy, the entire system failed.

By the way, did DAE co-locate any of its own siesmic instrumentation near abouts where DRDO had placed theirs? Did these, and only these give "correct" readings?

I think this whole interview was meant for consumption by those who are supposed to be deterred by India's CMD as a means of reparing the 'damage' that might have been caused by the recent controversy about the yield of the only TN device tested, and not meant for Indian Citizens :!:
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

From The Hindu, 14 Dec 2009
Capping nuclear liability is a non-starter
Soli J. Sorabjee
The government proposes to introduce a Civil Nuclear Liability Bill to appease foreign investors. Any legislation that attempts to dilute the Polluter Pays and Precautionary Principle and imposes a cap on liability will be in blatant defiance of Supreme Court judgments and is likely to be struck down.

. . .

It is claimed that foreign companies are reluctant to invest in India as they do not want to run the risk of having to compensate without a cap for a nuclear accident on account of imposition of absolute liability. It is understood that the government to appease the foreign investors proposes to introduce a Civil Nuclear Liability Bill whereby inter alia the compensation payable in case of a nuclear accident is capped at $450 million.

In effect, this means that in case the actual damage and the cost of remedying environmental degradation exceeds the proposed ridiculously low cap of $450 million or any other sum, the government would have to bear the remaining burden. This would be directly contrary to the Supreme Court’s ruling that it is not the role of the government to meet the costs involved. The effect of a cap in reality would be to shift the financial burden of the consequences of the accident to the taxpayer. According to the Polluter Pays Principle that has been embedded in our jurisprudence, the liability and responsibility for compensating the victims of accident and remedying the environmental damage caused is that of the offending industry alone. No part of the liability can be limited nor passed on to the government.

. . .
(The author is a former Attorney General for India.)
If, as has been suggested earlier in this thread, NPCIL is to be made solely responsible (as the operator) of the foreign-set up npp, then, as a result of the proposed legislation, and by virtue of NPCIL being a PSU, the Govt would be serving only its own interests by capping the liability. Afflicted citizens' interests be dammed:!:
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Gerard »

SCIENCE AND THE LAYMAN
Scientists are also short changed by decision-makers. The Indian Neutrino Observatory — by Indian standards, a mega project with a projected investment of Rs 900 crore — was to be situated in a tunnel, already dug by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board in the Nilgiris, near Masinagudi. Ecological implications were thoroughly studied. The ministry of environment commissioned a thorough study by a top Indian scientist well-known for his work on elephants who has worked in the area for nearly three decades. In spite of this, the ministry has stopped the project without giving any reasons. Scientists in Canada, Italy and Japan have a head start of almost a decade.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by shiv »

Sanatanan wrote: I recollect that during the programme, both words, "instrumentation" (which to me, means a system comprising of multiple instruments and other equipment / subsystems such as measurement devices, recorders, transmitters, power supplies, cables, etc), and "instruments" (plural) were used to describe DRDO's measurement set up. I am sure that in a test of this kind, where the instrumentation might get destroyed due to the event, thereby leaving very little opportunity for later trouble-shooting analysis of what went wrong, a great amount of redundancy would have been built into the entire paraphernalia. Unless there was a common cause failure afflicting all the redundant equipment which had not been foreseen by the designers earlier (as otherwise it would not have been truly redundant), I am not convinced that the entire system could have become faulty and all readings from it rendered useless. If indeed that was the case, Dr Kakodkar could have just inserted a few words, without revealing any sensitive information about the cause(s) of failure, to indicate that in spite of redundancy, the entire system failed.
This particular part of the interview suddenly triggered new thoughts. Kakodkar says that the two shafts were 1.1 km (not 1.5 km) apart . The interesting part to me is that how can a seismometer have the resolution to differentiate between two simultaneous seismic events that are situated 1100 meters apart?

Until Santhanam came up with his seismic objections I was under the impression that individual shafts had close-in accelerometers that would send some signals from one shaft long before signals of the other shaft reached them.

Seismographic readings record signals that last 10 or 20 seconds and videos of ground motion during a nuclear test show motion lasting for several seconds. On the other hand seismic signals travel at about 5000 meters per second.

That means that the signal recorded by any seismometer at Pokhran would have initially received signals from a nearby shaft and in about 200-300 ms the second signal (from the other shaft's simultaneous explosion) would have arrived. Since each seismic signal lasts several seconds - the seismic signal recorded by a given instrument would be a superimposition of the signatures of two explosions and would therefore give a sum total of the signals of both explosions.

How can one reliably resolve the yield of a single shaft from this composite graph? This was exactly the problem faced by "international" seismographic experts who concluded that Pokhran 1974 was 2-8 kt and that 1998 was 25 kt. What kind of magic could be used by Santhanam to resolve a single superimposed seismographic signal into two separate signals? I would like to see some credible science/math in response and not "There are methods of doing that". The point being that if "there are methods" they would be like RC/Kakodkar's national secrets unless they can be revealed in public. Santhanam has hidden behind the hijab of mumbo-jumbo as much as his erstwhile colleagues and is himself unable to make a scientifically credible argument to support his views. He accuses others of fooling the public but he is doing exactly that himself. Anyone with an interest and a science education can pick as many holes in Santhanam's views as he has picked in other views.

This is not proof that he is wrong. This is only a pointer that he has not provided any proof while he relentlessly criticizes someone else's idea of proof.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by ramana »

DAE has a seismic array at Gauribidnaur. A seismic array is a number of seismometers located such that they can sense motion in different directions.

KS says that DRDO has its own seismic array at Karnal, Harayana run by ARC.

His other point is that this ARC array is more modern than Gauribidnaur.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

Gerard wrote:SCIENCE AND THE LAYMAN
Scientists are also short changed by decision-makers. The Indian Neutrino Observatory — by Indian standards, a mega project with a projected investment of Rs 900 crore — was to be situated in a tunnel, already dug by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board in the Nilgiris, near Masinagudi. Ecological implications were thoroughly studied. The ministry of environment commissioned a thorough study by a top Indian scientist well-known for his work on elephants who has worked in the area for nearly three decades. In spite of this, the ministry has stopped the project without giving any reasons. Scientists in Canada, Italy and Japan have a head start of almost a decade.
Is it posible that the tunnel is being "reserved" for PNE testing purposes?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by ShauryaT »

apart from yield measurements made by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) team led by Santhanam, comprehensive experimental data was collected by the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), a highly specialised science and technology agency of the government. The ARC used its state-of-the-art seismic array, tailor-made for detecting and measuring the yield of nuclear tests. Independent of both the DRDO and the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Barc), the ARC unambiguously established in its classified report to the government the following: 1) the yield of the TN device was substantially lower than 45 KT; 2) An atom bomb, also separately tested and the first-stage ‘trigger’ of the TN device, had a yield of 20-25 KT. Thus, the TN device yield would, at best, be 20 KT only.
I guess, the ARC data would be dismissed due to the wave forms being cancelled in the east-west axis?

However, there is more to it than just the seismic arrays.
The DRDO’s site instrumentation included its own CORRTEX system, accelerometers, ground motion sensors and high-speed imaging systems. Recording and processing of readings from this comprehensive instrumentation package was undertaken by special DRDO computers. The CORRTEX system also gave a far lower TN yield than the Barc-claimed figure of 45 KT.
Furthermore, KS has said that in addition to the DRDO CORRTEX system, the BARC had provided to the DRDO, a prototype CORRTEX system, that did not work.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Gagan »

How does one expect Santhanam to reveal the plain truth as it is without the OSA getting hold of him?
Of course he will obfuscate when he lays out his allegations. He will have to couch it in language that will create the necessary doubt in the minds of lay people.
It is always difficult to go against an establishment, and here we see an example of that.

This is not to say that KS is correct or that AK or RC are correct one way or the other.

A technical question: Does a huge blast like say 15 kT one release all its energy in a few milliseconds? Or does the blast wave develop over a few milliseconds?
This is important because the recording seismograph has to acquire and store that signal before the signal from the other neighbouring explosion arrives and muddies the picture.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by negi »

shiv wrote: This particular part of the interview suddenly triggered new thoughts. Kakodkar says that the two shafts were 1.1 km (not 1.5 km) apart . The interesting part to me is that how can a seismometer have the resolution to differentiate between two simultaneous seismic events that are situated 1100 meters apart?
I might be completely wrong here but as per my understanding seismographs at remote sites measured the cumulative yield of the tests conducted ,even the abstracts available on the web citing LLNL findings clearly indicate they were unable to resolve between the 3 tests from the available teleseismic data .

I don't know how much better the seismic arrays at Karnal are when compared to the Unkil's in TSP (which is about 760km from Pokharan).Btw from a cursory glance at the map it appears that Karnal is at least 500km from Pokharan . :-?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by shiv »

ShauryaT wrote:
apart from yield measurements made by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) team led by Santhanam, comprehensive experimental data was collected by the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), a highly specialised science and technology agency of the government. The ARC used its state-of-the-art seismic array, tailor-made for detecting and measuring the yield of nuclear tests. Independent of both the DRDO and the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Barc), the ARC unambiguously established in its classified report to the government the following: 1) the yield of the TN device was substantially lower than 45 KT; 2) An atom bomb, also separately tested and the first-stage ‘trigger’ of the TN device, had a yield of 20-25 KT. Thus, the TN device yield would, at best, be 20 KT only.
.
This makes great reading but it remains the same mumbo-jumbo to fool the public without informing. "State of the art" and "highly specialised" are great expressions to read and feel happy about but are completely meaningless in the context of explaining how anyone can take one seismic signal and say that it consists of two parts of which one is of yield X and the other is of yield Y. There is no reference on the net that I can find that tells me how anyone can do that and as far as I can tell You cannot resolve a single seismic signal into component parts of two separate simultaneous sub-signals and gauge the intensity of those sub-signals. Santhanam claims to have done exactly that without saying how he has done it even as he questions he statements of others. "Calibrated 100s of times", "highly sophisticated" "Kalam did not know which way to turn" etc are not useful statements in saying how he has done what others cannot do.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by shiv »

negi wrote:
shiv wrote: This particular part of the interview suddenly triggered new thoughts. Kakodkar says that the two shafts were 1.1 km (not 1.5 km) apart . The interesting part to me is that how can a seismometer have the resolution to differentiate between two simultaneous seismic events that are situated 1100 meters apart?
I might be completely wrong here but as per my understanding seismographs at remote sites measured the cumulative yield of the tests conducted ,even the abstracts available on the web citing LLNL findings clearly indicate they were unable to resolve between the 3 tests from the available teleseismic data .

I don't know how much better the seismic arrays at Karnal are when compared to the Unkil's in TSP (which is about 760km from Pokharan).Btw from a cursory glance at the map it appears that Karnal is at least 500km from Pokharan . :-?
The point is that you cannot resolve the individual location and intensity of two simultaneous signals separated by 1100 meters using seismometers. You need other methods. How can Santhanam do it then? The statement that others are bluffing does not constitute an explanation of how he can do the impossible.
Last edited by shiv on 15 Dec 2009 09:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by vasu_ray »

Fourier transforms are for that purpose, no? any waveform can be expressed as a summation of many component sine and cosine waveforms

the transform and its inverse helps you in shuttling between the components and its composite, no clue about the pre requisites to enable this since not all have solutions
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by sanjaykumar »

Well it would depend on the wavelength generated. Seismological detection from remote locations neccessarily depend on deep penetrating low frequency waves. Instrumentation closer to the test site may well be able to discriminate between such events.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by shiv »

vasu_ray wrote:Fourier transforms are for that purpose, no? any waveform can be expressed as a summation of many component sine and cosine waveforms

the transform and its inverse helps you in shuttling between the components and its composite, no clue about the pre requisites to enable this since not all have solutions
Then the people who read the signals at various international seismic stations should be able to say that this waveform comes from two simultaneous explosions of Y and Y energy situated at these coordinates no?

All that Santhanam has to do is to point to the seismological data/ papers that have done this and his case is made and he will have my vote.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by sanjaykumar »

High-frequency spectra of regional phases from earthquakes and chemical explosions

http://bssa.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/con ... /84/5/1365

A very interesting abstract, relevant to many points applicable to Pokharan
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by shiv »

sanjaykumar wrote:Well it would depend on the wavelength generated. Seismological detection from remote locations neccessarily depend on deep penetrating low frequency waves. Instrumentation closer to the test site may well be able to discriminate between such events.
What is the wavelength of the seismic wave whose source it to be resolved given that the separation between the two sites is 1100 meters. The separation of the two sites is less than one wavelength.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

ShauryaT wrote:
apart from yield measurements made by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) team led by Santhanam, comprehensive experimental data was collected by the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), a highly specialised science and technology agency of the government. The ARC used its state-of-the-art seismic array, tailor-made for detecting and measuring the yield of nuclear tests. Independent of both the DRDO and the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Barc), the ARC unambiguously established in its classified report to the government the following: 1) the yield of the TN device was substantially lower than 45 KT; 2) An atom bomb, also separately tested and the first-stage ‘trigger’ of the TN device, had a yield of 20-25 KT. Thus, the TN device yield would, at best, be 20 KT only.
I guess, the ARC data would be dismissed due to the wave forms being cancelled in the east-west axis?

However, there is more to it than just the seismic arrays.

. . .
Would the wave form get cancelled if one is supposed to have travelled through alluvium and the other through granite? My guess is that it may not get cancelled because the waves generated by the explosions might get attenuated and distorted differently.

Added later:
But were there not some "near field" (as in being closer to each shaft, than being located father away, symmetrically between the two shafts) instrumentation comprising of accelerometers etc, deployed by DRDO (may be by BARC too) to measure the yield? Did every thing done by DRDO only fail or turned out to inapplicable? (I am not referring here to the correctness or otherwise of analysis part of any data that might have been gathered by these instruments (as is being discussed in the last few posts in this as well as the Pokhran thread), but to the failure ascribed by BARC to the instrumentation itself)
Last edited by Sanatanan on 15 Dec 2009 11:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Sanatanan »

From The Financial Express, 15 Dec 2009:
Indo-Russian N-plant faces supply hurdle

fe Bureau
Posted: Tuesday, Dec 15, 2009 at 0400 hrs IST
Updated: Tuesday, Dec 15, 2009 at 0400 hrs IST

New Delhi: Even as India hopes to leverage the Indo-Russian nuclear deal, recently signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Moscow to scale up its nuclear power plans, implementation work on a key nuclear power project is being held up due to delay in supply of major components by the Russian contractor. Despite Indian envoys taking up the matter with their Russian counterparts on several occasions, the power plant remains a non-starter.

The delay has hit the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd’s (NPCIL) 2,000-mw nuclear power project at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, despite the public sector firm spending nearly 95% of the envisaged capital expenditure. Russian nuclear reactor supplier Atomstroyexport had won the contract to execute the NPCIL plant in 2002 but after seven years, the plant is yet to be commissioned.

“There has been delay in supply of equipment/components from the Russian Federation. The matter has been taken up with the Russian Federation at the highest level of government on several occasions,” Sriprakash Jaiswal, minister of coal as well as statistics and programme implementation told the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

As of October this year, NPCIL had already spent Rs 12,446 crore against the expenditure of Rs 13,171 crore approved by the government for the project, Jaiswal pointed out. NPCIL's project is just one of the many projects that are behind schedule.

By June 2009, 474 out of 951 central sector projects (over Rs 20 crore) were delayed. The delays have triggered a cost over run of 13.52% over the original cost of these projects—Rs 3,10,178 crore. In terms of value, the delayed projects constitute more than half of the 951 projects, whose original cost estimate was Rs 6,07,188 crore.
Importing a NPP into India, be it be from anywhere, does not ensure, that the project will get completed in time as media and others constantly try to portray.

Areva's EPR is hopelessly delayed in Europe. So it might turn out to be in India too.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by ankit-s »

shiv wrote:You really need to check the people who handled tritium but are not themselves contaminated.


Kaiga leak: Probe zero in on five employees...


http://www.expressbuzz.com/.../story.as ... iga...leak... -
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by ankit-s »

India gets tough on NPT signing



NEW DELHI: India has made it clear that it will never sign the "flawed and discriminatory" Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has voiced reservations about a report released Tuesday that seeks to club New Delhi with Islamabad without taking into account their different nuclear histories.


The report by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, a joint Australia-Japan initiative, came out with a report Tuesday that targets 90 per cent reduction in world's nuclear stockpile by 2025 and asks the US and Russia to reduce the number of their warheads to 500 each.


The commission comprises 15 commissioners, including India's former national security adviser Brajesh Mishra and Lt. Gen (retd.) V.R. Raghavan, and twenty six other advisers.


"The key recommendation is to get serious about a world without nuclear weapons because there are far more risks associated with the continuation of nuclear weapons these days than there are with any benefits," former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, a co-char of the commission, said in Melbourne.


India has welcomed some aspects of the report like the emphasis on deligitimisation of nuclear weapons and an exhortation to eight nuclear armed states to adopt a non-first-use or a modified no-first-use policy, but has issues with some of its contentious formulations, informed sources said.


The report advocates applying equivalent non-proliferation and disarmament obligations to the three nuclear weapon states outside the NPT, which includes India, Pakistan and Israel (it calls them "three elephants outside the room"). India feels this ignores the differentiated nuclear histories and records of all the nuclear armed states, the sources said.


The advocacy of non-proliferation disciplines for non-NPT states also ignores India's existing commitment and responsible behaviour in comparison with the the five official nuclear weapon states and Pakistan.
India has suffered on account of proliferation activities allegedly indulged in by China that aided Pakistan's nuclear programme and the proliferation network managed by Dr A.Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapon programme, analysts point out.


India has said it will never sign the NPT and will like to move to a Nuclear Weapons Convention aimed at universal nuclear disarmament.


"We should not expect any changes in the NPT to accommodate India. Any possibility of including India will open a Pandora's box," the sources with access to official thinking said.


Early this month, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, India's designated sherpa for the Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by the US in April next year, attended a preparatory meeting of the summit in Tokyo where she reiterated India's established positions on NPT and CTBT, but indicated India's endorsement on the ongoing global discussion on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.


Prime Minister Manhmohan Singh goes to Washington for a nuclear security summit in April next year that will focus on securing nuclear materials and combating atomic smuggling.


"India welcomes the renewed international interest in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. We have been a consistent advocate of a world free of nuclear weapons," Manmohan Singh had said in Washington.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by putnanja »

Ghost of Tarapur haunts reprocessing agreement with U.S.
An attempt by American negotiators to re-open parts of the ‘123’ agreement governing nuclear commerce with India has emerged as the main obstacle, as the two countries seek to finalise a deal on the conditions under which U.S.-origin spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed in Indian facilities.

After five rounds of talks, the last of which was held on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last month, Indian and American negotiators remain stuck on two issues, one minor and one major, Indian officials say. And though National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan told reporters on November 29 that the agreement would be finalised in “10-12 days,” U.S. and Indian officials say the next round of talks is yet to be scheduled.
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The biggest sticking point remains the conditions under which the U.S. can suspend reprocessing consent rights.

These rights will be “brought into effect” by the construction of an Indian reprocessing facility and the conclusion of an agreement on “arrangements and procedures” under which reprocessing will take place in the new facility. The question of suspension is addressed in Article 14(9) of the 123 agreement, which vaguely states that “the arrangements and procedures … shall be subject to suspension by either Party in exceptional circumstances, as defined by the Parties…”

In the negotiations, India has taken the stand that these “exceptional circumstances” have to be linked to the obligations it undertakes with respect to reprocessing — such as the implementation of safeguards, physical security and safety — and not to circumstances extrinsic to reprocessing. The Indian side noted that the 123 agreement already provides for fairly open-ended conditions under which bilateral cooperation can be terminated, and that Article 6(3) granting reprocessing consent has been explicitly included in the list of Articles which “shall continue in effect” even after termination.

India’s agreements with France and Russia both provide for safeguarded reprocessing and have no provision for suspension or termination of consent.

Indian officials believe the stand being taken by the U.S. is tantamount to rewriting the 123 agreement, a charge, they say, their American interlocutors readily own up to. Members of the U.S. negotiating team recalled how the reprocessing consent which they did not want to grant India was included in the 123 text only after President George W. Bush and his national security adviser Stephen Hadley overruled them. New Delhi’s assessment today is that by reopening some of these clauses, State Department officials hope the Obama administration will be less accommodating of India.
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With the ghost of Tarapur, where vast acres of spent fuel have accumulated since the 1960s, still haunting them, Indian officials say any uncertainty on consent would be a deal breaker and would make the purchase of U.S. reactors next to impossible.
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The second issue holding up the reprocessing agreement is a dispute over whether it will apply to a single new safeguarded reprocessing facility or all safeguarded reprocessing facilities India may choose to establish. Article 6(3) uses the singular when it says that “to bring [the reprocessing consent] rights into effect, India will establish a new national reprocessing facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards…”. But later in the same paragraph, the 123 agreement states: “The parties agree on the application of IAEA safeguards to ALL facilities concerned with the above [i.e. reprocessing] activities” [emphasis added].

According to Indian officials, there is no contradiction here. The reference to “all facilities” makes it clear that there could be more than one plant reprocessing U.S.-origin spent fuel and that the arrangements and procedures would apply to all. But to bring the consent rights into effect, all that India is required to do is to establish one plant and not all the reprocessing plants it may eventually wish to build.
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by NRao »

ankit-s wrote: India gets tough on NPT signing

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The report by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, a joint Australia-Japan initiative, came out with a report Tuesday
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332 Pages:

ELIMINATING NUCLEAR THREATS
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by Amber G. »

vasu_ray wrote:Fourier transforms are for that purpose, no? any waveform can be expressed as a summation of many component sine and cosine waveforms

the transform and its inverse helps you in shuttling between the components and its composite, no clue about the pre requisites to enable this since not all have solutions
Well known fact in Physics world: If you put garbage in and perform a FT, you will get..Fourier transformed garbage. :)
Resolving power depends on wavelength, does not matter if you look at FT or color it with high tech crayons. :)
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by rachel »

There is a question been bugging me but everytime i ask, no one answers.. probably cuz they think it's too stupid or basic.

Very fundamentally: before the US-India nuke agreement, we had already bought Russian reactors and uranium for them.

I'm confused. Why did we need the US-India agreement then? Just to be able to buy American and Areva reactors?

Why do we need to buy French and American reactors? Are they that much superior to Russian reactors? I'm sure if we need a huge number of reactors, the Russkies can build em fast enough for us.. can they not?

Or is the key issue the fact that with the US-India agreement, we now have the right to buy uranium for any safeguarded reactors, Indian or foreign?

With all this cr*p re: buying US reactors, I dont see why we need the buggers at all? Russia is giving us full re processing rights, no BS involved. Just stick to them.

Or is it the case that we have to buy a few French and Yankee junk-ractors just to thank them for their blessed agreement, which allows us to buy Kazakh uranium for all our unsafeguarded reactors?
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Re: India Nuclear News And Discussion

Post by rachel »

Russians are so much easier to work with on this nuke stuff.

If the agreement ever gets broken, they will not ask for return of anything: reactors, uranium, or reprocessed material.
They dont mind if we reprocess, I think they will even sell us reprocessing technology if we want.

They're so much better than the Yanks.
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