For first time,Govt reveals: We can make nukes up to 200 kiloton

the capability that we have and on the basis of data which we have got out of these tests,

we can carry on with the building of a national deterrent… If you ask a question,are more tests required,my answer is no, Kakodkar told a news conference.

The May 1998 tests were fully successful in terms of achieving their scientific objectives and the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields upto 200 kilotons, said R Chidambaram,Principal Scientific Advisor,Government of India,who led the team of scientists during the tests.

Computer simulation capability to predict the yields of nuclear weapons fission,boosted fission and two-stage thermonuclear related to the designs of the devices tested by us has now been established, he said,adding that a great deal of further scientific and technical development work has taken place since May 1998.

India had conducted five nuclear tests of advanced weapon designs in May 1998 at Pokharan in Rajasthan,which also included a 45 kiloton thermonuclear device. But K Santhanam had claimed that the thermonuclear design exploded by India had not worked according to expectations.

Earlier,Kakodkar described the controversy as unnecessary, and added that India was the only country which has given out so much information about the tests in a scientific manner and scientific medium. The tests in 1998were fully successful and had achieved all their objectives in toto, said Kakodkar,adding that India had the capability to build a deterrent based on fission and thermonuclear systems.

Chidambaram added that Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) scientists had published their findings about the tests in peer reviews. He stressed they had shown by a variety of methods that the yields were exactly what they had designed and added that heavy rhetoric was not a substitute for good science.

Chidambaram said they had not revealed anything about the design of the thermonuclear device. When we publish our papers a peer review automatically takes place, added Chidambaram while replying to questions about the need for a peer review of the tests. As computers became powerful,the need for testing went down.

In his presentation,Chidambaram pointed out that the Prototype International Data Centre for verifying the compliance of CTBT first announced the 1998 nuclear explosion seismic recordings as an earthquake at a depth of 56 km on the India-Pakistan border but this was later corrected to explosions with a combined yield consistent with the announced yield (by India).