| Pokhran | |
| — city — | |
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| Coordinates | |
| Country | India |
| State | Rajasthan |
| District(s) | Jaisalmer |
| Population | 19,186 (2001[update]) |
| Time zone | IST (UTC+05:30) |
| Area |
• 233 metres (764 ft) |
Pokhran (also spelled Pokaran) is a city and a municipality located in Jaisalmer district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is a remote location in the Thar Desert region and served as the test site for India's first underground nuclear weapon detonation.
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Pokhran located at .[1] It has an average elevation of 233 metres (764 feet).
Surrounded by rocky, sandy and five salt ranges, Pokaran means “the place of five mirages”. It is en route both from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer and Bikaner to Jaisalmer.
As of 2001[update] India census,[2] Pokhran had a population of 19,186. Males constitute 55% of the population and females 45%. Pokhran has an average literacy rate of 56%, lower than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy is 68%, and female literacy is 41%. In Pokhran, 19% of the population is under 6 years of age.
Fort Pokaran, the 14th century citadel also known as “Balagarh”, stands amidst the Thar Desert. This monument is the premier fort of the chief of the Champawats, the clan of Rathores of the state of Marwar-Jodhpur.
The famous, touristic city and fort of Jaisalmer is a couple of hours away by road.
Pokharan is a pilgrimage site in Jainism. A Jain temple dedicated to the 23rd Tirthankara, Parshva, is situated here.
There is a Historical Sikh Gurdwara Present at Pokhran called Gurdwara Damdama Sahib. Guru Nanak Dev visited this place during his travels.
| Indian Army — Pokhran Test Range (PTR) | |
|---|---|
| Type | Nuclear test site |
| Location | near Jaisalmer in India |
| Area | Unknown |
| Operator | Indian Army |
| Status | active |
| In use | 1970-present |
| Testing | |
| Subcritical tests |
not known |
| Nuclear tests |
6 |
Pokhran is an apex research and testing site of the Indian nuclear programme. The site was built by Indian Army Corps of Engineers and is under the control of Indian Army. It is unclear when the site was built but it shot into the international limelight on 7 September, 1974 when the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi verbally authorized scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay to detonate small and miniaturized nuclear device. Throughout its development, the device was formally called the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive (PNE)" by Indian Government, but it was usually referred to as the Operation Smiling Buddha. The Indian government, however, declared that it was not going to make nuclear weapons even though it had acquired the capacity to do so. It claimed that the Pokhran explosion was an effort to harness atomic energy for peaceful purposes and to make India self-reliant in nuclear technology, but subsequently, India conducted five nuclear tests on 11 May and 13 May 1998
On May 11th of 1998, 24 years after the first operation, the Atomic Energy Commission of India and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) carried out the joint operation, known as Pokhran-II. The AEC India detonated its four devices as part of the underground nuclear testing on Pokhran Test Range. On May 11th, a thermonuclear device, under codename Operation Shakti was also tested but its yield produces by the device was significantly lower than expected. Since then, India has declared a moratorium on the testing.
The team was Headed by Rajagopala Chidambaram. The team consisted of Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Tamil Nadu),Dr. Raja Ramanna(Karnataka) , P. K. Iyengar (Kerala), Rajagopala Chidambaram (Tamil Nadu), Nagapattinam Sambasiva Venkatesan (Andhra Pradesh) and Dr. Waman Dattatreya Patwardhan (Maharashtra). The project employed no more than 75 scientists and engineers from 1967-1974. Keeping it small served to aid in the preservation of secrecy, according to the researcher Jeffrey Richelson.
The device used a high explosive implosion system, developed at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)'s Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), Chandigarh, based on the American design from World War II. But the Indian design was simpler and less sophisticated than the American system. The detonation system to detonate implosion devices was developed at the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) of DRDO at Pune. The 6 kg of plutonium came from the CIRUS reactor at BARC, Trombay, Mumbai (then Bombay). The neutron initiator was a polonium-beryllium type (again like those used in early U.S. bombs of the Fat Man type) code-named "Flower." The complete core was assembled in Trombay before transportation to the test site.
The fully assembled device had a hexagonal cross section, 1.25 m in diameter and weighed 1400 kg. The device was detonated at 8.05 a.m. in a shaft 107 m under the army Pokhran test range in the Thar Desert (or Great Indian Desert), Rajasthan. Coordinates of the crater are [show location on an interactive map] . Officially the yield was reported at 12 kt, though outside estimates of the yield vary from 2 kt to 20 kt.
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