India’s unsafeguarded nuclear programme

According to a very recent report on hacking of India’s nuclear information, ‘the Economist’ wrote: “In the first half of this year, no country endured more cyber-attacks on its Internet of Things-the web of internet-connected devices and infrastructure-than India did. So asserts Subex, an Indian telecommunications firm, which produces regular reports on cyber-security. Between April and June alone, it said, recorded cyber-attacks jumped by 22%, with 2,550 unique samples of malware discovered. Some of that malicious code is turning up in hair-raising places”. After the news in international media that Indian nuclear power plant suffered a cyber attack, the questions are being raised whether Indian nukes are in safe hands? The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has now confirmed that there was a cyber attack on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu, India, in September.
There is a largely ignored history of Indian illegal nuclear procurement, poor nuclear export controls and mismanagement of nuclear facilities. For instance, India had diverted Canadian-supplied fuel for research and generating power to make nuclear weapons, and the first test was conducted in 1974, and of course 5 tests in 1998 to which Pakistan had responded with six nuclear tests. As regards the safety of Indian nuclear program, there are numerous hazardous nuclear installations in India that could lead to major disaster adversely impacting the lives of large populations around these facilities. According to an Australian newspaper (The Age), there is no national policy in India on nuclear and radiation safety. Despite all this, India has never made an effort to adopt world standards and best practices for nuclear safety. Radioactive waste disposal in Indian rivers is an undocumented environmental tragedy in India.
Nuclear facilities in India are on coastlines exposed to natural disasters like the monstrous tsunami of 2004. Beside the damage to the environment, there are numerous cases where workers were exposed to high radiation doses. There were 350 documented cases of radiation exposure that were reported at Tarapur up to 2016, which is India’s first nuclear station. There have been reported cases of the abduction of nuclear scientists in India, which is a very disturbing situation with respect to the safety and security of nuclear weapons. In 2016, an independent US report had declared the Indian nuclear program not only unsafe but also called for a satisfactory international oversight. The report by the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School identified problems arising from the gaps in the commitments that India made after the nuclear deal with the US, and focused on India’s separation plan, its Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol.
In June 2016, senior U.S. and Indian officials said that India’s most sensitive nuclear weapons research facility was breached by computer hackers who tapped into servers to steal and erase atomic data. The sophisticated attack on India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay had raised new alarms about the proliferation of nuclear weapons data and the security of nuclear weapons programs. The sprawling Bhabha research center houses several facilities, including a unit to extract the plutonium used in India’s first nuclear test in 1974, and later five tests conducted in May 1998 at the Pokharan test site. Anyhow, there have been scores of incidents of tons of heavy water leakages at Kalpakan (Tamil Nadu) and at Madras Atomic Power Station, and fires, and structural damages at Indian nuclear power plants. There is more to that. Over the years quite a few employees working at nuclear programs died under mysterious circumstances.