India Ready To Go Nuclear: Aec Chief

India is technologically prepared to go nuclear in the event of a decision to that effect by the

new government, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman R Chidambaram has said.

We are technologically prepared to go nuclear, but it is for the policy-makers to decide whether to go nuclear or to keep the options open, Chidambaram said here.

To a question whether the country was prepared to go nuclear as outlined in the Bharatiya Janata Partys manifesto, he said the country was technologically ready and the capability was proved longback, referring to the peaceful Pokhran explosion in 1974. This preparedness itself was a testimony to the deterrent capability the country possessed, he said.

 

Asked if the country could go ahead only with the help of simulations and by avoiding actual experiments, he said then what is the use in some countries going in for 2000 explosions.

Expressing himself in favour of nuclear explosions to increase the database for the country, he said, computer simulations alone was not enough and that huge actual database was required for simulations.

There is a difference between theoretical studies and practical experiments, he said, adding if you are weak, people will try to take advantage of it.

Referring to the recent US regulation on export of supercomputers to India and some other countries, he said we have developed our own supercomputers and we do not need any high power machines even if offered.

The AEC chairman said the international community considered India a `developed rather than developing country in nuclear technology.

This was due to the fact that the country had always been a designated member in the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

By 2020, he said, 20,000 mw nuclear power would be generated in the country with a share of little more than 50 per cent produced by indigenously developed pressurised heavy water reactors and the rest by light water reactors.

India would have two to three fast breeder reactors of 500 mw capacity by then. Work on the first reactor would start by the end of the ninth plan.

The Russian technology used in the light water reactors of the proposed Kudankulam project in Tamil Nadu would be transferred and indigenised, he said. Press Trust of India