Smiling Buddha
Smiling Buddha (MEA designation: Pokhran-I) was the code name of India's first successful nuclear weapon test on 18 May 1974.
India set up an indigenous programme to manufacture uranium nuclear fuel for the reactor, as opposed to importing from other countries.
[1] In July 1958, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru authorized "Project Phoenix" to build a reprocessing plant with a capacity to produce 20 tons of plutonium fuel a year using the PUREX process, designed by the Vitro Corporation of America.
Nehru's discussions with Bhabha and Kenneth Nichols, a US Army engineer, showed his approach and intention to create nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence.
[5] With two reactors operational in early 1960s, Bhabha was involved in learning and development of know-how to manufacture nuclear weapons.
[6] The incoming prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was involved in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and later appointed physicist Vikram Sarabhai as the head of the nuclear programme.
[7] Meanwhile, the design work on the bomb proceeded under physicist Raja Ramanna, who continued the nuclear weapons technology research after Bhabha's death in 1966.
Upon his return to India, Iyengar set about developing a plutonium fueled fast breeder reactor named Purnima under Mahadeva Srinivasan.
[9][10] Simultaneous work on the fabrication of the bomb core and implosion design was conducted by teams led by physicist V. S. Ramamurthy.
Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL) of the DRDO developed the explosive lenses for the implosion system.
[9] In December 1971, during the Indo-Pakistani War, the U.S. government sent a carrier battle group led by the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) into the Bay of Bengal in an attempt to intimidate India.
The Soviet Union responded by sending a submarine armed with nuclear missiles from Vladivostok to trail the US task force.
The Soviet response demonstrated the deterrent value and significance of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile submarines to India.
[11] After India gained military and political initiative over Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, the work on building a nuclear device continued.
The hardware began to be built in early 1972 and the Prime Minister authorised the development of a nuclear test device in September 1972.
[14][20] The device was of the implosion-type design with a plutonium core, similar to Fat Man, the American nuclear bomb detonated over Nagasaki in 1945.
[14][21] Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gained much popularity after the test, which had flagged from its heights after the 1971 war with Pakistan.
[25] While Canada concluded that the test violated a 1971 understanding between the two states, and froze nuclear energy assistance for the two heavy water reactors then under construction, the United States concluded that the test did not violate any agreement and proceeded with a June 1974 shipment of enriched uranium for the Tarapur reactor.
In June 1974, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said that Pakistan considered this as an intimidation and would not accept India's superiority in the subcontinent.
Code named as Operation Shakti (officially known as Pokhran-II) was carried out at the Pokhran test site, using technology designed and built over the preceding two decades.
