Future shock waves

The debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) might just be swinging towards India signing up, but in tandem has emerged a rat...

The debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) might just be swinging towards India signing up, but in tandem has emerged a rather large anxiety among nuclear scientists here: how will rogue countries get reined in? This worry stems from a little known fact of Pokharan 1998, that India literally got away by testing two nuclear devices on May 13 simply because signals of these tests did not appear at all on the radar screens of the Western world.

Ironically, the childlike glee that Indian nuclear experts might have felt over having played truant successfully has now transformed into a deep mood of introspection. “It is a worrying fact even for us that the CTBT monitoring mechanism did not work very well,” says Anil Kakodkar, director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai on being asked about it.

A major consequence of the May 13 signals having been missed out was that some American experts even began to doubt whether India had actually tested any nuclear devices in the second round atPokharan. This, in spite of the fact that India had very quickly released photos of the craters formed due to these small tactical weapon tests.

Now, looking back at the blasts in May, a matter uppermost in the minds of many nuclear experts — nationality no bar — is how the international community can ensure that no country gets away by clandestinely conducting a nuclear test and escaping detection. This assumes serious proportions considering the fact that there is an extensive global network to police the CTBT and to catch the offenders. To this end, Western powers and the United Nations have already put in place a hi-tech global web of 35 seismic monitoring stations called the International Monitoring System (IMS), supported in turn by another 58 auxiliary stations. Over the next four years it is expected that complementary systems are likely to be added to provide different kinds of data to back up basic seismic information. These include 80 sensors that monitor radionuclides in the atmosphere (15 arenow running), 11 hydroacoustic devices to pick up blasts at sea, and a group of 60 infrasound microphones to detect airborne low-frequency waves from a distance.

The Indian tactical weapon blasts aptly dubbed as chhotus’ should have been picked up at the nearest international monitoring centre at Nilore in Pakistan, which is about 740 km west of Pokharan. Interestingly, even Nilore failed to detect the sub-kiloton tests of May 13. After analysing data from this international network, S K Sikka a senior scientist at BARC says “while the CTBT monitoring mechanism does appear to detect high yield tests, the claims on its capability to correctly estimate the yield, to detect multiple tests and to detect low yield tests appear doubtful”.

Implications of such shortfalls in the monitoring mechanism are clear — if India could evade detection of a nuclear test probably by muffling its noise, so could others. Then can Pakistan conduct a nuclear test and get away without our knowing about it? “Most probablynot,” says Kakodkar, “but 100 per cent surety cannot be guaranteed as detection is not an exact science, … and one cannot monitor very low yields for there is a limit of sensitivity for everything.” In the same breath he adds that “India’s capability to detect nuclear tests is very strong.”

It is surprising that it is India’s controversial tests that got all the doubting Toms of America shouting themselves hoarse about the drawbacks in the monitoring system. So, even as the Clinton administration went about announcing sanctions against India, there is little doubting the fact that it was the tests of May 13 that revealed the real chink in their armour.

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Meanwhile, the scientific issues here are being dragged into the international political arena. At one end is the Indian Prime Minister who has been — supposedly under US pressure — preparing ground to sign the CTBT, all the while trying hard to convince opposition parties that after having successfully completed this round of nuclear tests signingup would not be such a bad idea as now we have all the data we need. At the other end is the scenario in the US where there is strong opposition to the quick ratification of the CTBT with the US Congress refusing to ratify the treaty.Science and politics have combined in a heady mix with some US Congressmen saying CTBT is an unverifiable’ entity so don’t bind the US to it. This is based on the inadequacy they say, of the international monitoring network which could still not be fully trusted to detect small nuclear explosions. In fact, they cite the example of it having failed to detect the Indian nuclear explosions of May 13.

Kakodkar also worries that the scientific data generated from this international network is distorted and misused for political gains. So, although Indian scientists have given a go-ahead to the government to sign the CTBT, globally, the jury is still out on the question of effective monitoring. It goes without saying that these large loopholes in the surveillance network will needto be plugged at the earliest for the CTBT to be a really effective tool.

(Pallava Bagla is India correspondent of Science)