New Delhi: Seeking to put a lid on the controversy over Pokhran-II nuclear explosions, former President A P J Abdul Kalam has said that the tests were successful and had generated the desired yield.
"After the test, there was a detailed review, based on the two experimental results -- seismic measurement close to the site and around and radioactive measurement of the material after post shot drill in the test site," Kalam said.
"From these data, it has been established by the project team that the design yield of the thermo-nuclear test has been obtained," said Kalam, who as Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), spearheaded the nuclear tests in 1998.
India conducted five nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan which included a 45 kiloton (KT) thermonuclear device, called as hydrogen bomb in common parlance.
The other tests on May 11 included a 15 KT fission device and a 0.2 KT sub-kiloton device. The two simultaneous nuclear tests on May 13 were also in the sub-kiloton range -- 0.5 and 0.3 KT.
Kalam, also Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, R Chidambaram who was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Anil Kakodkar, then Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, were key players in the Pokhran-II nuclear tests.
Earlier, K Santhanam, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) representative for the tests conducted when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the prime minister, fuelled a controversy when he suggested Pokhran-II was not a full success. But his claim had few takers in the government and the nuclear establishment which dismissed it as absurd and puzzling.
Santhanam had said that there was no question about backing away from his assertion that the 1998 atomic tests did not achieve the desired results.