Designating Hyderabad as the ‘intellectual capital’ of India, R. Chidambaram, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and former chairman of the advisory committee to the Cabinet, shared his experiences of playing a pivotal role in the successful nuclear tests in May 1974 and May 1998. He was delivering a lecture at an event organised by the National and Telangana Science Academies, commemorating the golden jubilee of the May 1974 nuclear tests, which were called 'Smiling Buddha', at ICMR-IICT Hyderabad on Wednesday.
"It was in 1967 that Dr Raja Ramanna asked me to work on peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). At that time, there was scant literature on PNEs in the open domain. The difference between a nuclear weapon and a PNE device is in the delivery system and packaging,” Dr Chidambaram said.
“The size doesn't matter for a PNE device (up to a point). The excitement reached its peak when we had a successful PNE experiment on May 18, 1974. There were two important criteria for our PNE.
First, because of the obligations under the Partial Test Ban Treaty, we had to do the test underground. Second, we had to ensure the experiment did not vent any radioactivity.” “Dr Ramanna also wanted me to find a credible application—I suggested fracturing underground copper ore and recovering copper value by sending in dilute sulfuric acid.
This was presented by us at the first meeting on PNEs organized by the IAEA in Vienna in 1970," Dr Chidambaram recalled. He not.