Ras Koh Range

The Ras Koh Hills, also referred to as Ras Koh, is a small rocky mountain terrain located in Chagai District, Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Pakistan's first five nuclear tests— under the codename Chagai-I— were performed by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, under dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, under the 185 metre granite mountain in May 28th of 1998.

Topography

The Ras Koh Hills plateau lies between in the east of Sulaiman and Kirthar Mountains Ranges, with average elevation of 600m. The mountains are spread in various directions and attaining elevations of 2,000-3,000m, though plateaus and basins predominate the scene. The Toba Kakar Range and Chagai Hills in the north form the border of Pakistan. The mountains and hills are carved by innumerable channels which contain water only after rains, though little water reaches the low-lying basins.

At the Ras Koh Hills region, the numerous alluvial fans are found in the area. A structural depression separates the Chagai Hills and the Ras Koh Hills to the south, consisting of flood plains and areas covered with thin layers of salt. The temperature at the Ras Koh Hills are reported by be very extreme with in summer, it is reportedly to be extremely hot, and in winter, it is reported to be severely cold. The mountains are scattered with juniper, tamarisk and pistachio trees.

Historical background

Main article: Chagai Hills

The history of Ras Koh Hills drives back to early of 1972 when Pakistan, under the stewardship of Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, embarked the scientific research on nuclear weapon to developed the the nuclear detterence 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 tasked of the SDW was to built a iron-steel underground tunnels (both horizontal and vertical) for the withstand of 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 site was began 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 tests 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.

Technical aspects

File:Chagai-I Atomic Tests on May 28, 1998,.jpg

As tests were performed, the chain reaction builds up as the mountain (and dust) is seen raised above.

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.