India Nuclear Milestones
The
Risk
Report
Volume
6
Number
4
(July-August
2000)
1948: Atomic Energy Commission is established under the direction of Dr. Homi J. Bhabha.
1960: Cirus reactor begins making weapon-grade plutonium.
1962: Heavy water production begins at German-built Nangal plant. Seven more production plants are built by 1991.
1964: Extraction of plutonium from Cirus spent fuel begins at Trombay.
1965: Canadian-built Rajasthan-1 power reactor starts, becoming the model for later unsafeguarded reactors.
1968: India refuses to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
1974: India tests a nuclear bomb.
1982-87: India smuggles, via a German broker, heavy water from the USSR, China and Norway and uses the heavy water in reactors to make plutonium for a nuclear arsenal.
1983: First unsafeguarded power reactor, Madras-1, begins operation; design is a copy of Canadian-supplied Rajasthan-1.
1984: West German firm Degussa re-exports to India 95 kg of U.S.-origin beryllium, usable as a neutron reflector in fission bombs, and is later fined $800,000 by U.S.
1985: Dhruva reactor starts producing weapon-grade plutonium.
1988: India and Pakistan agree not to attack each other's nuclear facilities.
1989: CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) says India appears to be designing a thermonuclear weapon.
1995: China agrees to fuel light water reactors.
1996: India cancels plans to test a nuclear weapon.
1997: Prime Minister I. K. Gujral says India will not sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) or any other "discriminatory" nuclear agreement that would hamper India's nuclear program.
January 1998: Scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) claim they have developed a low cost method of extracting tritium from heavy water used in nuclear power reactors.
May 1998: India conducts two rounds of nuclear weapon tests. After the first, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announces that "a fission device, a low-yield device and a thermonuclear device" had been successfully tested in the Pokhran desert. Two days later the government explodes two more sub-kiloton nuclear tests at the same testing range. The five underground tests range in yield from less than 1 kiloton to an estimated 45 kilotons.
May 1998: President Clinton imposes economic sanctions on India after it refuses American demands to disavow future testing or deployment of nuclear weapons.
May 1998: Russia refuses to join other countries in punishing India for its nuclear tests.
May 1998: In response to India's nuclear tests, the World Bank postpones the approval of $865 million in loans to India.
June 1998: Russia agrees to provide India with two 1,000-megawatt reactors costing $2.6 billion. They will be built in the state of Tamil Nadu over the next decade.
December 1998: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee tells parliament that India's nuclear doctrine will be centered on two elements: a small but credible deterrent, and a no-first-use policy.
April 1999: Dr. A.J.P. Abdul Kalam, head of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) says that "the Agni II [intermediate-range ballistic missile] is designed to carry a nuclear warhead if required," and claims that an Agni-class payload was tested during the underground nuclear tests in May 1998.
February 1999: The United States ends its opposition to extending World Bank loans to India, allowing the approval of a $210 million energy project.
June 1999: Officials at the Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) admit they are planning to build a new research-size reactor inside the BARC campus to increase its annual production of weapon-grade plutonium. Officials say the new reactor will be based on the existing Cirus and Dhruva reactors and predict that it will be operational by 2010.
August 1999: The Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) claims that India can manufacture nuclear weapons of "any type of size" based on information obtained during last year's nuclear tests.
February 2000: India increases its military budget by 28.2 percent.