Nuclear security

Estimating India’s nuclear weapons-producing capacity

Using a different set of theoretical assumptions, and what we consider to be very credible mathematical formulas, we found that contrary to previous estimates, India has the capacity to produce many more nuclear weapons than generally assumed. We estimate that India could produce 1,044 nuclear weapons (914 plutonium-based and 130 uranium-based nuclear weapons), if one includes reactor grade materials from non-military programs in India, as well as that from the country’s weapon-grade nuclear material production program.

A new paradigm. To support these findings, we carefully examined every aspect of Indian unsafeguarded nuclear reactors and included important factors such as each reactor’s history, size, and amount of material produced over its working lifetime. We have considered the Reactor-Grade Plutonium (RGp), Weapon-Grade Plutonium (WGp), and Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) produced by these unsafeguarded facilities.