Pokhran row: Former AEC chief supports rebel scientist

Mumbai: This one refuses to go away. Even as Indian Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Anil Kakodkar, and principal scientific advisor to the union government, R Chidambaram, made a high-powered presentation for the media yesterday, arguing that the Pokhran-II thermo-nuclear blast had done all that it was designed to do, former Atomic Energy Commission chairman PK Iyengar has now re-entered the fray asserting that the views of former DRDO scientist K Santhanam on the issue are the "clincher".

There is a "strong reason to believe that the thermonuclear device had not fully burnt and, therefore, further testing was called for," Iyengar said in a statement yesterday.

Iyengar also rejected the statement attributed to him by Chidambaram on the outcome of the 1998 thermo-nuclear test, saying he was "misquoted" by him on something he had written in 2000.

Iyengar was among the three top atomic scientists who oversaw the original Pokhran-I 1974 tests.

According to Iyengar, an attempt by Chidambaram to imply that he was in agreement with the official version about the yield of the thermonuclear test of 45 kilotons and so agreed that the thermonuclear device was a success was ''incorrect''.

"This is not correct. What I wrote in a newspaper article published in August 2000 was that if one goes by the numbers for the total nuclear yield put out by the Department of Atomic Energy, which I see no reason to dispute, the yield of the thermonuclear device detonated on May 11, 1998, was around 40 kilotons. This is a rather low yield."