PLUTONIUM from nuclear bombs exploded underground by India has polluted
Pakistan鈥檚 nuclear test site 800 kilometres away, according to sources in US
intelligence. If true, India has breached its commitment to the 1963 Partial
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which outlaws explosions that contaminate foreign
countries.
India and Pakistan both carried out nuclear tests in May 1998. A report in
the industry newsletter, Nuclear Fuel, says that plutonium was later
found in samples collected by US intelligence agents from near the Pakistani
site in the Chagai hills. They initially thought that Pakistan had detonated a
plutonium weapon.
Now, however, analysis of the ratio of plutonium isotopes in the samples by
the US Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shown that it leaked
from one of the Indian explosions in the Pokaran desert, and was blown over to
Pakistan. 鈥淚t sounds plausible,鈥� says Trevor Findlay from Vertic, a nuclear test
verification centre in London. 鈥淚t is more likely that the plutonium is from an
Indian test than a Pakistani one.鈥�
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