Ras Koh Hills

This page is about the Ras Koh Hills as a geographical feature. For Pakistan's nuclear tests, see Chagai-I and Chagai-II.

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.

Location

The Ras Koh Hills are situated in the Chagai District of Pakistan's Balochistan province and lie to the south of the Chagai Hills and between the higher Sulaiman Mountains to the northeast and the lower Kirthar Mountains 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 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.

Climate

The Ras Koh Hills lie in an arid zone, which is outside the monsoon 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

Main article: Chagai-I

The Ras Koh Hills during Pakistan's nuclear test on 28 May 1998

The history of Ras Koh Hills goes back to early 1972 when Pakistan, under the stewardship of Prime minister 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 Bhutto's removal 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 build 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 fissiontests 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.