India capable of building N-deterrence up to 200 KT: Kakodkar

Emphasising that India's hydrogen bomb test Pokhran II was "successful" and achieved all the desired goals, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar today said the controversy over the yield was "unnecessary" as the country has deterrence capability of up to 200 kilotons.

"Once again, I would like to re-emphasise that the 1998 nuclear tests were fully successful. We achieved all objectives in toto," Kakodkar, who was the director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1998, said.

"It has given us the capability to build deterrence based on both fission and thermonuclear weapon systems from modest to all the way up to 200 kilotons and possibility of meeting all our security requirements," he said at a joint press conference with Principal Scientific Advisor to the government R Chidambaram.

Kakodkar and Chidambaram, the chief architect of Pokhran-II, were speaking on the controversy sparked off by a former DRDO scientist and a coordinator of the nuke tests, K Santhanam who has claimed that the thermonuclear device (H-bomb) test was a failure.

Describing the May 1998 thermonuclear test as "perfectly successful", Chidambaram said in the last 11 years several scientific peer reviews to explain the efficacy and yield were published.

"We scientists cannot go beyond that as proliferation sensitive information cannot be divulged," said Chidambaram, also a former AEC Chairman.