NEW DELHI: Repeating his assertion that the 1998 thermonuclear test had failed, former DRDO scientist K Santhanam on Monday said India must test again before it came under pressure to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
“I have recommended crossing of the Rubicon,” he told reporters in Delhi, implying that India had to test.
He played down the possible diplomatic and economic impact of another nuclear test but added it was up to the government to factor in the possible consequences with what scientists like him were recommending.
Santhanam, who participated in Pokhran II, is at the centre of a controversy over the performance of the fusion device tested along with the fission devices. According to him, the fission devices performed as expected but the thermonuclear bomb failed.
Santhanam dismissed the idea that there was no need to conduct as full-scale test since the test ban treaty allowed sub-critical tests in any case. He said the technology needed to conduct a subcritical nuclear test was even more complex.
He argued that without a successful thermonuclear test, India would hardly have a nuclear deterrent. There was no point in sending an Agni III missile tipped with just a 20-kiloton fission bomb 4,000 km away, he said.
Taking on National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, who said on Sunday he was sure India had thermonuclear capabilities, Santhanam said, “This assertion by the NSA has to be taken with a kiloton of salt.” Santhanam released a 1998 photograph of the hydrogen bomb test site that showed no crater — proof, he said, that the test had failed. He trashed the NSA’s remark that he was not privy to the test data.