Tag Archives: secret nuclear city

Challakere in Karnataka: No Secret City But Hub of Nuclear Power, Says Report

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Challakere in Karnataka is not only a hub for buses travelling to and fro Bangalaore and Bellary but also a hub for the Defence ministry, purported to be the nuclear city of future to generate the country’s nuclear power for submarines and weapons.

Last year, the US magazine Foreign Policy, quoting a former PMO official, said it may trigger competition from neighbouring nuclear powers China and Pakistan. Not China but Pakistan has recently complained that the hub is a “secret nuclear city.”

India has denied the allegations and stood to its ground it is a safer bet to hold on to its nuclear weapons unlike Pakistan, which was involved in smuggling nuclear secrets to North Korea and other threshold countries, violating all the norms of being a nuclear power.

The not-so-secret nuclear underground factory was set up in 2012 when the Congress government was in power at the Centre and the BJP was in power in the state of Karnataka, 203-km northeast of Bangalore on 4,290 acres of land in Challakere for scientific and nuclear use, said reports.

In its 14-page report. Foreign Policy claimed that the Challakere project will be the “subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, weapons and aircraft-testing facilities” when it is scheduled to be completed this year. It was expected to produce fuel for nuclear reactors and the navy’s fleet of new submarines, said the article.

“But another, more controversial ambition, according to retired Indian government officials and independent experts in London and Washington, is to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in new hydrogen bombs,” the report said.

As of 2015, India had 110 nuclear war heads compared to 120 in Pakistan and 260 in China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It quoted former White House official Gary Samore who said, “I believe that India intends to build thermonuclear weapons as part of its strategic deterrent against China.”

Other reports said the test center in the cordoned area may have a 3-mile long runway for a new generation of drones and long distance unmanned vehicles. The report also said Mysore district nearby is known for plutonium resources. The Center for Public Integrity has undertaken a field report on environmental fall out of the so-called secret city recently.

‘Secret Nuclear city’ is Pakistan’s Imagination: India

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India has refuted Pakistan’s allegations about a secret nuclear city with weapons calling it an imagination of Islamabad, which is a “diversionary tactic” to cover its own failure to stop state-sponsored terrorism that has come under global radar now.

Reacting to Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria’s reamrks on Thursday saying, “India is building a secret nuclear city,” and it has potential to threaten the strategic balance of power in the region.

On Friday, Indian external affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, “These are completely baseless allegations. The so-called secret city appears to be a figment of the Pakistan imagination. India has always been in compliance with all its international obligations.”

He said it was a very strange statement coming from a country that does not have a separation plan for nucelar weapons and has a strong record of nuclear “proliferation which is well known to the world.”

On the contrary, India has very different credentials. He said these remarks are clearly “a diversionary tactic by Pakistan which aims to deflect attention from the real issue at hand – the continued state-sponsored terrorism by Pakistan and its harbouring of internationally designated terrorists.”

Earlier, zakaria in a press conference alleged saying, “It (India) has been building Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and an Anti-Ballistic Missile System. It has a stockpile of fissile material for producing nuclear weapons outside the IAEA safeguards… It is also building a secret nuclear city in south India which, according to Foreign Policy investigative report, is to produce thermonuclear weapons.”

However, he did not name the city nor give any details. To another question, Zakaria said the Donald Trump administration’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, would not be extended to Pakistan and that the White House had assured Islamabad about it. He responded positvely on questions about Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz’s visit to Washington soon.