How Pakistan ‘copied’ design of India’s 1960 Cirus reactor | India News
MUMBAI: A little-known incident in the history of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme is a purported attempt made by the country in the early ’70s to copy the design of India’s Cirus reactor — a 40 MW thermal neutron research facility, which first achieved criticality at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay, near Mumbai, on July 10, 1960. An acronym for Canada India Reactor Utility Services, Cirus was constructed with Canadian assistance at a shared cost of $14.14 million, according to news reports.
Pakistan’s attempt to copy the design of the reactor was revealed by none other than Feroz H. Khan, a man who played a role in the neighbouring country’s nuclear weapons programme. In his book “Eating Grass: The Making Of The Pakistani Bomb”, published in 2012 by the Stanford University Press, Feroz wrote, “Munir Ahmed Khan, later chairman of the PAEC [Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission], recalled that in October 1965 he had met Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto [the then Pakistan foreign minister] in Vienna. Munir explained to him that he had been to India’s Cirus facility at Trombay in 1964 and saw for himself that India was well on its way to making the [nuclear] bomb. Bhutto asked Munir to meet Ayub Khan in December during Ayub’s upcoming visits to the United Kingdom and the United States and try to convince the president of the urgency of a weapons programme.” The country eventually carried out its first nuclear weapons tests on May 28 and 30, 1998.
Feroz’s disclosure, though now 12 years old, assumes immediate significance in the context of the US last week announcing fresh sanctions on Pakistan’s ballistic missile development programme. For the first time, the measures target Pakistan’s state-run National Development Complex, for its role in the country’s mission development programme. US deputy NSA Jon Finer has said, “Pakistan has developed increasingly sophisticated missile technology… If these trends continue, Pakistan will have the capability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.”
Copying Cirus
Feroz’s writing about the Cirus reactor is important because the plutonium for India’s Smiling Buddha project — the country’s first nuclear weapons test at Pokhran on May 18, 1974 — was from this reactor.
According to Feroz, “Pakistani leadership wanted the rights to copy technological designs for its indigenous programme without incurring penalties and while remaining on the ‘good side’ of the international system.” He recalled: “While work to commission KANUPP [Karachi Nuclear Power Complex] went on, Munir Ahmed Khan said that there would be a secret team headed by a nuclear official, Sardar Ali Khan, to work on replicating India’s Cirus reactor.
The author quotes Pervez Butt, who was purportedly part of the secret “copying’’ team and was chairman of PAEC between 2001 and 2005, as telling him, “Our team worked tirelessly, I did the mechanical part. When we merged our work and presented, Munir Khan could not believe it.”
Feroz, however, has questioned Pakistan’s decision to copy the design of the Cirus reactor because there were some fundamental differences between Cirus and Kanupp.
The team had modified the basic Cirus design.
