Suggesting that India has a sizeable nuclear weapons effort, a US think tank estimated India’s nuclear arsenal at around 75-125 weapons, made from weapon-grade plutonium and perhaps some thermonuclear weapons, reports NDTV.
An estimate of India’s nuclear arsenal can be derived by considering its weapon-grade plutonium stock. The resulting estimate has a median of 138 nuclear weapons equivalent with a range of 110 to 175 weapons. However, the actual number of nuclear weapons India built from its stocks of weapon-grade plutonium must be less. When accounting for the amount of plutonium in the weapons production pipelines and in reserves, it is reasonable to assume that only about 70 per cent of the estimated stock of weapon-grade uranium is in nuclear weapons. Thus, the predicted number of weapons made from its weapon-grade plutonium at the end of 2014 is about 97 with a range of 77-123. These values are rounded to 100 nuclear weapons with a range of 75-125 nuclear weapons.
Report released by Institute for Science and International Security
The report co-authored by David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini. Albright had led anti-India campaigns both at the Congress and among the think-tanks against the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
The report ‘India’s Stocks of Civil and Military Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium, End 2014’ concludes that India has “one of the largest nuclear power programmes among developing nations”.
The report estimated that India has made 100-200 kilogrammes of weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons.
Read the full report here.