Ras Koh
Encyclopedia
The Ras Koh Hills is a range of granite
hills forming part of the Sulaiman Mountain Range
in the Chagai District
in Pakistan
's Balochistan province
. The word "Ras" means "gateway" and the word "Koh" means "mountain" in Urdu
. Ras Koh, therefore, means "Gateway to the Mountains." Pakistan's first nuclear tests
were carried out in the Ras Koh Hills on 28 May 1998.
and between the higher Sulaiman Mountains
to the northeast and the lower Kirthar Mountains
to the southwest.
The Ras Koh Hills are carved by innumerable channels which contain water only after rains, though little water reaches the low-lying basins. Numerous alluvial fans are found in the area. A structural depression separates the Chagai Hills and the Ras Koh Hills, consisting of flood plains and areas covered with thin layers of salt.
Unlike the Toba Kakar Range
to the northeast, which has scattered juniper
, tamarisk and pistachio
trees, the Ras Koh Hills are largely barren and devoid of vegetation. Most of people in the area, therefore, lead a nomadic life, raising camels, sheep and goats.
belt. The Ras Koh Hills receive scanty and irregular rainfall (an average of 4 inches annually). The temperature is extreme: very hot in summer and very cold in winter. The average minimum temperature is 2.4°C (36.3°F) in January and the average maximum temperature is 42.5°C (108.5°F) in July.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
, began scientific research into a nuclear deterrent against the Indian nuclear programme. In 1976, PAEC began a survey to find the sites suitable for carrying out the nuclear tests. Scientists from PAEC selected unknown but multiple sites and the survey took one year to conduct and it was decided that the mountain
should have the overburden of a 700m high mountain over it, making sufficient to withstand 20-40 Kilotons of nuclear force
. The survey was submitted to Prime Minister Secretariat in 1977.
After Prime minister
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
reviewed the survey report, the prime minister summoned the Chief of Army Staff General Zia-ul-Haq
to take care of the matter. Brigadier-General Muhammad Sarfraz, who, in the interim, had been posted to GHQ Rawalpindi, was summoned by then-Chief of Army Staff, and was told that the PAEC
wanted to lease him from the Army
to carry out work related to the nuclear development. After the removal of Bhutto in 1977, Major-General Zähid Ali Abkar
founded the Special Development Works, led under Major-General M.J. O'Brian
as its director-general and Brigaider-General Sarfraz as its deputy director. The primary task of the SDW was to built iron-steel underground tunnels (both horizontal and vertical) to withstand 20-40 kt of nuclear force
, weapon-testing laboratories (WTL) inside the mountains.
Ras Koh Hills are the series of complicated high-altitude granite mountain range. The construction of the site was begun in 1979 and completed in 1980 under the supervision of Munir Ahmad Khan
and then Member (Technical), PAEC
, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad
, and Martial Law Administrator of Balochistan Province General Rahimuddin Khan. A 3,325 feet long tunnel was bored in the Ras Koh Hills which was 8–9 feet in diameter and was shaped like a fishhook for it to be self-sealing.
The nuclear test sites are covered with underground accommodations for troops and command, control and monitoring facilities. Several cold test
s were performed in the Ras Koh Hills under the supervision of Mr. Hafeez Qureshi
and Dr. Samar Mubarakmand
during 1980s. However, in May 1998, Pakistan performed its sixth successful nuclear tests under the supervision of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand as the head of the testing team.
The technical aspects of weapons are not fully known to the public nor the details of weapons have made publicized by the Pakistan Government
. At the control-command center, two keys were inserted in the supercomputer to activate the weapons. A large plasma computer screen was attached and Mathematical series, sequence, as part of set, were shown in either graphed dashed-line or as solid line.
As soon as the button was pressed on count of three, the control system was taken by computers. The electronic signal was passed through the air-link initiating six steps in the firing sequence while at the same time bypassing, one after the other, each of the security systems put in place to prevent accidental detonation. Each step was confirmed by the computer, switching on power supplies for each stage. On the last leg of the sequence, the high voltage power supply responsible for detonating the nuclear devices was activated.
As the firing sequence passed through each level and shut down the safety switches and activating the power supply, each and every step was being recorded by the computer via the telemetry which is an apparatus for recording readings of an instrument and transmitting them via radio. A radiation-hardened television camera with special lenses recorded the outer surface of the mountain. The high voltage electrical power wave simultaneously reached, with microsecond synchronization, the triggers in all the explosive HMX
lenses
symmetrically encircling the 6Be
in first two devices and 238U
reflector shield and the ball of 235U
around the initiator core in other three devices.
When the electrical current ran through the wires to the lenses, an explosion was triggered in all five of the devices. Because of the symmetrical nature of the placement of the explosives, a spherically imploding shock wave was set off, instantly squeezing the 6Be
, 238U
, the 235U
, and the initiator. The 6Be
and 238U
shield was pushed inward by the explosion, compressing the grapefruit-sized ball of 235U
to the size of a plum in a microsecond. The 235U
from a subcritical to a supercritical density, and the initiator at the centre was similarly squeezed. The process of atoms fissioning - or splitting apart - began.
Neutrons released from the polonium-beryllium type initiator began striking and bombarding the 235U
at an extremely rapid rate. In each instance in which a neutron hit a Uranium atom, the atom split, creating two more neutrons, which in turn hit two more atoms, which split into four neutrons, which found four new atoms, thus splitting into eight neutrons, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and fifty-six and so on. This was the runaway chain reaction
. With the splitting of each atom, a terrific amount of energy was released along with a variety of lethal atomic particles.
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
hills forming part of the Sulaiman Mountain Range
Sulaiman Mountains
The Sulaiman Mountains are a major geological feature of southeastern Afghanistan and northern Balochistan province of Pakistan. In Pakistan, it forms the eastern edge of the Iranian plateau where the Indus River separates it from the Asian Subcontient...
in the Chagai District
Chagai District
Chaghi/Chagai is the largest district of Pakistan and is located on the north west corner of Balochistan, Pakistan. It forms a triangular border with Afghanistan and Iran.Pakistan conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1998 at Ras Koh Hills Chagai District....
in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
's Balochistan province
Balochistan (Pakistan)
Balochistan is one of the four provinces or federating units of Pakistan. With an area of 134,051 mi2 or , it is the largest province of Pakistan, constituting approximately 44% of the total land mass of Pakistan. According to the 1998 population census, Balochistan had a population of...
. The word "Ras" means "gateway" and the word "Koh" means "mountain" in Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
. Ras Koh, therefore, means "Gateway to the Mountains." Pakistan's first nuclear tests
Chagai-I
The Chagai-I was a codename referring to the five underground nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan at 15:15hrs in 28th May of 1998. It was named Chagai-I, as the tests were conducted in the Chagai District...
were carried out in the Ras Koh Hills on 28 May 1998.
Location
The Ras Koh Hills are situated in the Chagai District of Pakistan's Balochistan province and lie to the south of the Chagai HillsChagai Hills
The Chagai Hills is a range of granite hills in the Chagai District in Pakistan's Balochistan province.-Location:The Chagai Hills lie in a desert area in the northernmost part of Chagai District north of Pakistan's Ras Koh Hills and south of Afghanistan's Helmand and Nimruz provinces.- Topography...
and between the higher Sulaiman Mountains
Sulaiman Mountains
The Sulaiman Mountains are a major geological feature of southeastern Afghanistan and northern Balochistan province of Pakistan. In Pakistan, it forms the eastern edge of the Iranian plateau where the Indus River separates it from the Asian Subcontient...
to the northeast and the lower Kirthar Mountains
Kirthar Mountains
Kirthar Mountains are a Mountain Range located in Balochistan and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. The Range extends southward for about 190 miles from the Mula River in east-central Balochistan to Cape Monze west of Karachi on the Arabian Sea.Kirthar National Park is one of the largest wildlife...
to the southwest.
Topography
With an average elevation of 600 metres, the Ras Koh hills are spread out in various directions and attaining elevations of 2,000 to 3,000 metres, though plateaus and basins predominate the area. The Ras Koh Hills are made of granite and are carved by innumerable channels which contain water only after rains, though little water reaches the low-lying basins.The Ras Koh Hills are carved by innumerable channels which contain water only after rains, though little water reaches the low-lying basins. Numerous alluvial fans are found in the area. A structural depression separates the Chagai Hills and the Ras Koh Hills, consisting of flood plains and areas covered with thin layers of salt.
Unlike the Toba Kakar Range
Toba Kakar Range
The Toba Kakar Mountains are a Southern offshoot of the Himalayas in the Balochistan region of Pakistan. The historical route through the mountains is known as the Bolan Pass....
to the northeast, which has scattered juniper
Juniper
Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...
, tamarisk and pistachio
Pistachio
The pistachio, Pistacia vera in the Anacardiaceae family, is a small tree originally from Persia , which now can also be found in regions of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sicily and possibly Afghanistan , as well as in the United States,...
trees, the Ras Koh Hills are largely barren and devoid of vegetation. Most of people in the area, therefore, lead a nomadic life, raising camels, sheep and goats.
Climate
The Ras Koh Hills lie in an arid zone, which is outside the monsoonMonsoon
Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...
belt. The Ras Koh Hills receive scanty and irregular rainfall (an average of 4 inches annually). The temperature is extreme: very hot in summer and very cold in winter. The average minimum temperature is 2.4°C (36.3°F) in January and the average maximum temperature is 42.5°C (108.5°F) in July.
Nuclear tests
The history of Ras Koh Hills goes back to early 1972 when Pakistan, under the stewardship of Prime ministerPrime Minister of Pakistan
The Prime Minister of Pakistan , is the Head of Government of Pakistan who is designated to exercise as the country's Chief Executive. By the Constitution of Pakistan, Pakistan has the parliamentary democratic system of government...
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that, 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party — the largest and most influential political party in Pakistan— and served as its chairman until his...
, began scientific research into a nuclear deterrent against the Indian nuclear programme. In 1976, PAEC began a survey to find the sites suitable for carrying out the nuclear tests. Scientists from PAEC selected unknown but multiple sites and the survey took one year to conduct and it was decided that the mountain
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...
should have the overburden of a 700m high mountain over it, making sufficient to withstand 20-40 Kilotons of nuclear force
Nuclear force
The nuclear force is the force between two or more nucleons. It is responsible for binding of protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei. The energy released causes the masses of nuclei to be less than the total mass of the protons and neutrons which form them...
. The survey was submitted to Prime Minister Secretariat in 1977.
After Prime minister
Prime Minister of Pakistan
The Prime Minister of Pakistan , is the Head of Government of Pakistan who is designated to exercise as the country's Chief Executive. By the Constitution of Pakistan, Pakistan has the parliamentary democratic system of government...
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that, 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party — the largest and most influential political party in Pakistan— and served as its chairman until his...
reviewed the survey report, the prime minister summoned the Chief of Army Staff General Zia-ul-Haq
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq , was the 4th Chief Martial Law Administrator and the sixth President of Pakistan from July 1977 to his death in August 1988...
to take care of the matter. Brigadier-General Muhammad Sarfraz, who, in the interim, had been posted to GHQ Rawalpindi, was summoned by then-Chief of Army Staff, and was told that the PAEC
Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission
The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, , is an administrative governmental and autonomous science and technology governmental department of Pakistan, responsible for development of nuclear energy and development of nuclear power sector in Pakistan...
wanted to lease him from the Army
Pakistan Army
The Pakistan Army is the branch of the Pakistani Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. The Pakistan Army came into existence after the Partition of India and the resulting independence of Pakistan in 1947. It is currently headed by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The Pakistan...
to carry out work related to the nuclear development. After the removal of Bhutto in 1977, Major-General Zähid Ali Abkar
Zahid Ali Akbar
Lieutenant-General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan , TKdt, was an engineering officer of Pakistan Army who oversaw the construction of the Generals Combatant Army Headquarter and is well-known as the director of the Kahuta Project as part of the Pakistan's acquisition of integrated atomic bomb project...
founded the Special Development Works, led under Major-General M.J. O'Brian
Michael John O'Brian
Air Vice-Marshal Michael John O'Brian, , was a retired air force officer and two-star general in the Pakistan Air Force who served as the Commandant of National Defence University, Islamabad. O'Brian was the first Pakistan Air Force general to serve as the Commandant of the university...
as its director-general and Brigaider-General Sarfraz as its deputy director. The primary task of the SDW was to built iron-steel underground tunnels (both horizontal and vertical) to withstand 20-40 kt of nuclear force
Nuclear force
The nuclear force is the force between two or more nucleons. It is responsible for binding of protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei. The energy released causes the masses of nuclei to be less than the total mass of the protons and neutrons which form them...
, weapon-testing laboratories (WTL) inside the mountains.
Ras Koh Hills are the series of complicated high-altitude granite mountain range. The construction of the site was begun in 1979 and completed in 1980 under the supervision of Munir Ahmad Khan
Munir Ahmad Khan
Munir Ahmad Khan , HI, was a Pakistani nuclear engineer and a scientist who served as the Chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission from 1972 to 1991...
and then Member (Technical), PAEC
Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission
The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, , is an administrative governmental and autonomous science and technology governmental department of Pakistan, responsible for development of nuclear energy and development of nuclear power sector in Pakistan...
, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad
Ishfaq Ahmad
Ishfaq Ahmad , D.Sc., Minister of State, SI, HI, NI, FPAS, is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, and well-known educationist and academic from Pakistan...
, and Martial Law Administrator of Balochistan Province General Rahimuddin Khan. A 3,325 feet long tunnel was bored in the Ras Koh Hills which was 8–9 feet in diameter and was shaped like a fishhook for it to be self-sealing.
The nuclear test sites are covered with underground accommodations for troops and command, control and monitoring facilities. Several cold test
Cold fission
Cold fission or cold nuclear fission is defined as involving fission events for which fission fragments have such low excitation energy that no neutrons or gammas are emitted....
s were performed in the Ras Koh Hills under the supervision of Mr. Hafeez Qureshi
Muhammad Hafeez Qureshi
Muhammad Hafeez Qureshi , Neuclear Physics. SI, HI, , also known as Hafeez Qureshi, was a Pakistani Nuclear Scientist...
and Dr. Samar Mubarakmand
Samar Mubarakmand
Samar Mubarakmand , , is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, who served as the founding chairman of National Engineering and Scientific Commission from 2001 till 2007. Samar Mubarak-Mand launched the Missile Integration Programme in 1987 which was successfully completed in 2005...
during 1980s. However, in May 1998, Pakistan performed its sixth successful nuclear tests under the supervision of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand as the head of the testing team.
The technical aspects of weapons are not fully known to the public nor the details of weapons have made publicized by the Pakistan Government
Government of Pakistan
The Government of Pakistan is a federal parliamentary system, with an indirectly-elected President as the Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Pakistani Armed Forces, and an indirectly-elected Prime Minister as the Head of Government. The President’s appointment and term are...
. At the control-command center, two keys were inserted in the supercomputer to activate the weapons. A large plasma computer screen was attached and Mathematical series, sequence, as part of set, were shown in either graphed dashed-line or as solid line.
As soon as the button was pressed on count of three, the control system was taken by computers. The electronic signal was passed through the air-link initiating six steps in the firing sequence while at the same time bypassing, one after the other, each of the security systems put in place to prevent accidental detonation. Each step was confirmed by the computer, switching on power supplies for each stage. On the last leg of the sequence, the high voltage power supply responsible for detonating the nuclear devices was activated.
As the firing sequence passed through each level and shut down the safety switches and activating the power supply, each and every step was being recorded by the computer via the telemetry which is an apparatus for recording readings of an instrument and transmitting them via radio. A radiation-hardened television camera with special lenses recorded the outer surface of the mountain. The high voltage electrical power wave simultaneously reached, with microsecond synchronization, the triggers in all the explosive HMX
HMX
HMX, also called octogen, is a powerful and relatively insensitive nitroamine high explosive, chemically related to RDX. Like RDX, the name has been variously listed as High Melting eXplosive, Her Majesty's eXplosive, High-velocity Military eXplosive, or High-Molecular-weight rdX.The molecular...
lenses
Explosive lens
An explosive lens—as used, for example, in nuclear weapons—is a highly specialized explosive charge, a special type of a shaped charge. In general, it is a device composed of several explosive charges that are shaped in such a way as to change the shape of the detonation wave passing through it,...
symmetrically encircling the 6Be
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...
in first two devices and 238U
Uranium-238
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature. It is not fissile, but is a fertile material: it can capture a slow neutron and after two beta decays become fissile plutonium-239...
reflector shield and the ball of 235U
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
around the initiator core in other three devices.
When the electrical current ran through the wires to the lenses, an explosion was triggered in all five of the devices. Because of the symmetrical nature of the placement of the explosives, a spherically imploding shock wave was set off, instantly squeezing the 6Be
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...
, 238U
Uranium-238
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature. It is not fissile, but is a fertile material: it can capture a slow neutron and after two beta decays become fissile plutonium-239...
, the 235U
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
, and the initiator. The 6Be
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...
and 238U
Uranium-238
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature. It is not fissile, but is a fertile material: it can capture a slow neutron and after two beta decays become fissile plutonium-239...
shield was pushed inward by the explosion, compressing the grapefruit-sized ball of 235U
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
to the size of a plum in a microsecond. The 235U
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
from a subcritical to a supercritical density, and the initiator at the centre was similarly squeezed. The process of atoms fissioning - or splitting apart - began.
Neutrons released from the polonium-beryllium type initiator began striking and bombarding the 235U
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
at an extremely rapid rate. In each instance in which a neutron hit a Uranium atom, the atom split, creating two more neutrons, which in turn hit two more atoms, which split into four neutrons, which found four new atoms, thus splitting into eight neutrons, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and fifty-six and so on. This was the runaway chain reaction
Nuclear chain reaction
A nuclear chain reaction occurs when one nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more nuclear reactions, thus leading to a self-propagating number of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes or the fusion of light isotopes...
. With the splitting of each atom, a terrific amount of energy was released along with a variety of lethal atomic particles.