India expanding nuclear weapon facility’

A US-based thinktank has claimed that India is expanding its ability to produce highly enriched uranium for military purposes, including more powerful nuclear weapons, citing satellite imagery of an under construction gas centrifuge facility near Mysore.

In their latest report, David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said that India appeared to be finishing construction of what appears to be a second gas centrifuge facility at the Rare Materials Plant (RMP) near Mysore in Karnataka. The report said that India is also in the early stages of building a larger unsafe guarded centrifuge complex, the Special Material Enrichment Facility (SMEF), according to The Times of India. Noting that India’s enrichment plants are not under international safeguards or committed to peaceful uses, the report said the governments and suppliers of nuclear and nuclear related dual use goods throughout the world should be vigilant to prevent efforts by Indian trading and manufacturing companies to acquire such goods for the new centrifuge complex in Karnataka as well as for the RMP. ISIS had earlier lobbied against the India-US civic nuclear deal.