Nuclear Weapons

India's nuclear weapons program was started at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay. In the mid-1950s India acquired dual-use technologies under the "Atoms for Peace" non-proliferation program, which aimed to encourage the civil use of nuclear technologies in exchange for assurances that they would not be used for military purposes. There was little evidence in the 1950s that India had any interest in a nuclear weapons program, according to Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1). Under the "Atoms for Peace" program, India acquired a Cirus 40 MWt heavy-water-moderated research reactor from Canada and purchased from the U.S. the heavy water required for its operation. In 1964, India commissioned a reprocessing facility at Trombay, which was used to separate out the plutonium produced by the Cirus research reactor. This plutonium was used in India's first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, described by the Indian government as a "peaceful nuclear explosion."

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, India began work on a thermonuclear weapon in the 1980s. In 1989, William H. Webster, director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that "indicators that tell us India is interested in thermonuclear weapons capability." India was purifying lithium, producing tritium and separating lithium isotopes. India had also obtained pure beryllium metal from West Germany