Atomic bomb test

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Forty Four years ago, India tested successfully its first nuclear missile in Pokhran Rajasthan. Twenty years ago, on 11 May, 1998, India created history by conducting its second set of nuclear tests – Operation Shakti – in the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range. India test fired three nuclear bombs — Shakti I, Shakti II, Shakti III on that day. Two days later, on 13 May, 1998 two other nuclear bombs — Shakti IV and Shakti V were detonated.

[pieter]

In May of 1998, Pakistan tested a series of nuclear explosive devices. This video shows at least one of the tests in the Chagai mountains of Balochistan in southern Pakistan. Rockslides on the mountain can be seen resulting from the explosion. After the test, video from an aircraft shows the effects of the blast, and the resulting rockslides can be seen. Later, a helicopter carrying then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrives. Sharif tours the area, including instrumentation bunkers and tunnel entrances. Among the officials giving Sharif the tour is A.Q. Khan. He can be seen in several sections of the video wearing a solid sea-green suit.

You hear the Muslim islamic shouts of victory and exitement; Allahu Akhbar, Takfir!!!



In Pakistan

Takfir has been used against the Ahmadiyya, who describe themselves as Muslims but who many Muslims and Islamic scholars believe reject the doctrine of Khatam an-Nabiyyin, i.e. the belief that Muhammad was the last and final Prophet and Messenger of God, after whom there can be no other Prophet or Messenger. In 1974 Pakistan amended its constitution to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. In 1984, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the then military ruler of Pakistan, issued Ordinance XX, forbidding Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim. As a result, they are not allowed to profess the Islamic creed publicly or to call their places of worship mosques,[14] to worship in non-Ahmadi mosques or public prayer-rooms, to perform the Muslim call to prayer, to use the traditional Islamic greeting in public, to publicly quote from the Quran, to preach in public, to seek converts, or to produce, publish, and disseminate their religious materials.

Local ulama (Islamic scholars) have declared takfir on another group in Pakistan, the Zikri of Makran in Balochistan. The Zikri believe that Syed Muhammad Jaunpuri (born in 1443) was the Mahdi (redeemer) of Islam. In 1978 the ulama founded a movement (Tehrik Khatm-e-Nabuat) to have the Pakistan state declare the Zikris as non-Muslims, like the Ahmadis.

Pakistan and weapons of mass destruction: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Pakistan



Pakistan took advantage of the Atoms for Peace program by sending students abroad for training in nuclear technologies and by accepting an American-built research reactor, which began operation in 1965. Although its military nuclear research up to that point had been minimal, the situation soon changed. Pakistan’s quest for the atomic bomb was in direct response to its defeat by India in December 1971, which resulted in East Pakistan becoming the independent country of Bangladesh. Immediately after the cease-fire, in late January 1972, the new Pakistani president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, convened a meeting of his top scientists and ordered them to build an atomic bomb. Bhutto, always suspicious of India, had wanted Pakistan to have the bomb for years and was now in a position to make it happen. Earlier he had famously said, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have no other choice.”

Pakistan’s route to the bomb was through the enrichment of uranium using high-speed gas centrifuges. A key figure was Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist who had earned a doctorate in metallurgical engineering in Belgium. Beginning in May 1972, he began work at a laboratory in Amsterdam that was a subcontractor of Ultra Centrifuge Nederland, the Dutch partner of URENCO. URENCO in turn was a joint enterprise created in 1970 by Great Britain, West Germany, and the Netherlands to ensure that they had an adequate supply of enriched uranium for their civilian power reactors. Khan was soon visiting the enrichment plant in Almelo, Netherlands, and over the next three years gained access to its classified centrifuge designs. Soon after the 1974 Indian test, he contacted Bhutto. In December 1975 Khan abruptly left his job and returned to Pakistan with blueprints and photographs of the centrifuges and contact information for dozens of companies that supplied the components.

In 1976 Khan began work with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and in July he founded the Engineering Research Laboratories to build and operate a centrifuge plant in Kahuta using components that he had purchased from Europe and elsewhere. Khan would later use these contacts to form a vast black market network that sold or traded nuclear technology, centrifuges, and other items to North Korea, Iran, Libya, and possibly others. It would have been difficult for Khan to carry out some or all of these transactions without the knowledge of Pakistan’s leaders and its military and security services.


Forget North Korea: Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program Is Truly Terrifying

By April 1978 Pakistan had produced enriched uranium, and four years later it had weapon-grade uranium. By the mid-1980s thousands of centrifuges were turning out enough uranium for making several atomic bombs per year, and by 1988, according to Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, Pakistan had the capability to assemble a nuclear device. Khan likely had acquired the warhead design from China, apparently obtaining blueprints of an implosion device that was detonated in an October 1966 test, where uranium rather than plutonium was used.

In response to the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998, Pakistan claimed that it had successfully detonated five nuclear devices on May 28 in the Ros Koh Hills in the province of Balochistan and a sixth device two days later at a site 100 km (60 miles) to the southwest. As with the Indian nuclear claims, outside experts questioned the announced yields and even the number of tests. A single Western seismic measurement for May 28 suggested the yield was on the order of 9 to 12 kilotons rather than the official Pakistani announcement of 40 to 45 kilotons. For the May 30 nuclear test, Western estimates were from 4 to 6 kilotons rather than the official Pakistani figure of 15 to 18 kilotons. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that Pakistan had joined the nuclear club and that, with various ballistic and cruise missile programs under way, it was in an arms race with India.



Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

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The United Kingdom



Atomic weapons

The British atomic weapon project started informally, as in the United States, among university physicists. In April 1940 a short paper by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, expanding on the idea of critical mass, estimated that a superweapon could be built using several pounds of pure uranium-235 and that this amount of material might be obtainable from a chain of diffusion tubes. This three-page memorandum was the first report to foretell with scientific conviction the practical possibility of making a bomb and the horrors it would bring. A group of scientists known as the MAUD committee was set up in the Ministry of Aircraft Production in April 1940 to decide if a uranium bomb could be made. The committee approved a report on July 15, 1941, concluding that the scheme for a uranium bomb was practicable, that work should continue on the highest priority, and that collaboration with the Americans should be continued and expanded. As the war took its toll on the economy, the British position evolved through 1942 and 1943 to one of full support for the American project with the realization that Britain’s major effort would come after the war. While the British program was sharply reduced at home, approximately 90 scientists and engineers went to the United States at the end of 1943 and during 1944 to work on various aspects of the Manhattan Project. The valuable knowledge and experience they acquired sped the development of the British atomic bomb after 1945.


The Manhattan Project

After the war a formal decision to manufacture a British atomic bomb was made by Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government during a meeting of the Defence Subcommittee of the Cabinet in early January 1947. The construction of a first reactor to produce fissile material and associated facilities had got under way the year before. William Penney, a member of the British team at Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S., during the war, was placed in charge of fabricating and testing the bomb, which was to be of a plutonium type similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. That Britain was developing nuclear weapons was not made public until February 17, 1952, when Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared plans to test the first British-made atomic bomb at the Montebello Islands, off the northwest coast of Australia; Churchill made the official announcement in a speech before the House of Commons on February 26, at which time he also reported that the country had the manufacturing infrastructure to insure regular production of the bomb. On October 3, 1952, the first British atomic weapons test, called Hurricane, was successfully conducted aboard the frigate HMS Plym, with an estimated yield of 25 kilotons. By early 1954, Royal Air Force (RAF) Canberra bombers were armed with atomic bombs. Under a program known as Project E, squadrons of Canberras as well as Valiant bombers were supplied with American nuclear bombs—until early 1965 for Bomber Command in the United Kingdom and until 1969 for the Royal Air Force in Germany—before being replaced with British models.


The first British atomic weapons test, called Hurricane ( footage.framepool.com/en/shot/127419984-montebello-islands-operation-hurricane-australia-nuclear-explosion-chronometry )

Thermonuclear weapons



The formal decision to develop thermonuclear weapons was made in secret on June 16, 1954, by a small Defence Policy Committee chaired by Churchill. The prime minister informed the cabinet on July 7, arguing that Britain needed the most modern weapons if it was to remain a world power. A discussion ensued that day and the next to consider questions of cost, morality, world influence and standing, proliferation, and public opinion. Cabinet agreement was reached later that month to support plans to produce hydrogen bombs. More than six months would pass before the public learned of the decision. Minister of Defence Harold Macmillan announced in his Statement on Defence on February 17, 1955, that the United Kingdom planned to develop and produce hydrogen bombs. A debate in the House of Commons took place the first two days of March, and Churchill gave a riveting speech on why Britain must have these new weapons.

At that point British scientists did not know how to make a thermonuclear bomb, a situation similar to their American counterparts after President Truman’s directive of January 1950. An important first step was to put William Cook in charge of the program. Cook, chief of the Royal Naval Scientific Service and a mathematician, was transferred to Aldermaston, a government research and development laboratory and manufacturing site in Berkshire, where he arrived in September to be deputy director to William Penney. Over the next year the staff increased and greater resources were committed to solving the difficult scientific and engineering problems they faced. The goal was to produce a one-megaton weapon. Megaton was defined loosely, and boosted designs (with yields in the hundreds of kilotons) were proposed to meet it. To achieve a modern Teller-Ulam design, a consensus began to form around a staged device with compression of the secondary. These ideas were informed by analyzing the debris from the 1954 Castle series of tests by the United States as well as Joe-19, the Soviet Union’s successful test in November 1955 of its first true two-stage thermonuclear bomb. Precisely how the essential ideas emerged and evolved and when the design was finalized remain unclear, but by the spring of 1956 there was growing confidence that solutions were close at hand. The British thermonuclear project, like its American and Soviet counterparts, was a team effort in which the work of many people led to eventual success. Among major contributors were Keith Roberts, Bryan Taylor, John Corner, and Ken Allen.

Sites in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at Christmas Island and at Malden Island were chosen to test several designs of prototype weapons in the spring of 1957. Three devices were tested in May and June at Malden, the second one a huge fission bomb, slightly boosted, producing a yield of 720 kilotons. Though the first and third tests did demonstrate staging and radiation implosion, their yields of 300 and 200 kilotons were disappointing, indicating that there were still design problems. On the morning of November 8, a two-stage device inside a Blue Danube case was successfully detonated at 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) over Christmas Island, with a yield calculated at 1.8 megatons. Britain now had an effective thermonuclear bomb. Further refinements in design to make lighter, more compact, and more efficient bombs culminated in a three-megaton test on April 28, 1958, and four more tests in August and September. Conducted just before a nuclear test moratorium that began in October 1958 and lasted until September 1961, this final series of British atmospheric tests solidified the boosted designs and contributed novel ideas to modern thermonuclear weapons.

The British deterrent force


HMS Victorious, a Trident missile-armed Vanguard-class submarine leaving its base at HMNB Clyde on a training exercise in 2013

From 1962 to 1991 Britain conducted 24 underground tests jointly with the United States at the U.S. test site in Nevada to develop warheads for several types of aircraft bombs and missile warheads. During the 1950s the RAF’s “V-bomber” force of Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor aircraft was introduced into service to carry a variety of fission and fusion bombs. In June 1969 the strategic deterrent role was transferred to the Royal Navy’s Polaris submarine force, and in the 1990s these boats were replaced by Vanguard-class submarines carrying American Trident II ballistic missiles armed with British warheads. RAF aircraft continued to serve in other roles until March 1998, when the last British nuclear bombs were withdrawn from service.

Source: www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon/The-spread-of-nuclear-weapons#ref275654

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The Day After is an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during its initial broadcast, it was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show up to that time and set a record as the highest-rated television film in history—a record it still held as recently as a 2009 report.

The film postulates a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, and of several family farms near nuclear missile silos.

The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume, produced by Robert Papazian, and directed by Nicholas Meyer. It was released on DVD on May 18, 2004, by MGM.

Uniquely for a Western movie made during the Cold War, it was broadcast on the Soviet Union's state TV in 1987.

[pieter]

It is crazy to imagine that a nuclear submarine can survive for a long time with supplies under water and that such a war machine gan wipe out an entire country with it's nuclear weapons. I remember the fear for a Nuclear war during the seventies and eighties and the peace movement during the eighties and the huge anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in the Netherlands which gathered half a million people during the eighties.


Anti nuclear arms poster in Amsterdam


Anti nuclear arms poster in The Hague


The doors of the trains could hardly be closed due to the crowds and all tour buses in the Netherlands were in use. On October 29, 1983, a gigantic demonstration against nuclear weapons took place at the Malieveld (Maliefield) in The Hague. 550,000 participants held signs with protest texts in the air: a massive fist against nuclear weapons. Now that President Donald Trump and his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin threaten to end the years-old nuclear weapons treaty, Omroep West is diving into the past.


"Welterusten, meneer de president" (Sleep well, Mr. President) is a Dylanesque song from 1966, sung by Boudewijn de Groot. Like most of his other songs, it was written with songwriter Lennaert Nijgh. The music was composed by Boudewijn de Groot himself. The song is a protest against the war in Vietnam and the US president of the time, Lyndon B. Johnson and solidified De Groot as a protest singer.

The song consists of six parts and contains much sarcasm.

[Jaga]

Hello Pieter, what an interesting overview of hydrogen weapons all around the world. Referring to nuclear submarines, they are not "exploding bombs". Here in Idaho we actuallybspecialuze with testing and storing nuclear engines for submarines. The nuclear power is good because it can be used to power rockets in the deep space as well as nuclear submarines. Nuclear power when harnessed properly is really good

[karl]

Pieter

I do agree with Jaga in the manner of Nuclear power as very useful source of energy, there still remains the means of disposal of spent fuel as how to reuse it safely, but nothing is impossible just a matter of unknowns until discovered.

It is interesting of the firm of your employment designs and builds nuclear power systems for submarines, it sounds as a very interesting work.

Pieter, your presentation is very factful and some what scary if to consider these nuclear weapons designed and used by such a vast number of countries is so vivid. It would appear each country is trying to empress one another with what they can build and blow up such as very expensive and dangerious toys. And to think what the consquences could lead to if such nonsense as a malfunction of a piece of equipment could cause an accident that would be missjudged by another power as an act of aggression and there goes the apple cart in one big wizz bang.

It would so appear, the lessons of war are so soon forgotten and what happens to he people as an after thought. For life goes on, but at what cost?

Karl