Pakistan doubling nuclear-bomb capacity: Reports

New Delhi: As the Obama Administration concluded its two-day strategic dialogue with Pakistan, a report prepared by the Washington based Institute for Science and international security says Islamabad may be operating a second nuclear reactor under the country's nuclear weapons programme.

The report cites GoogleEarth satellite images showing steam distorting the view of some cooling tower fan blades at the second plutonium production reactor at Khushab, which indicates that the reactor is in some state of initial operation such as a power start-up.

Only a few nations in the world have nuclear production capability, the start-up operation of the second Khushab reactor, leading to a possible doubling of plutonium output in Pakistan, is significant.

The report also said that Pakistan had started constructing the Khushab-II reactor back in 2002 and in 2007 construction activity for a third reactor was noticed in satellite images.

"For many years all Pakistan had was its uranium enrichment programme. Sometime in 2002, Pakistan began building a second reactor and then again sometime around 2006-07, Pakistan began building a third reactor at Khushabh. So what we are seeing here is a really massive expansion of Pakistan's plutonium production programme. And the issue here is that Pakistan does not really need a new reactor as it has a unranium enrichment programme and a plutonium production programme," said Paul Brannan, Senior Analyst, ISIS, Washington, DC.