How India and the United States lost plutonium in the Himalayas while trying to spy on China (and the risks involved)

For generations, the inhabitants of a village in the Indian part of Himalayas they believed that there is nuclear devices buried under snow and rocks in the towering mountains around.

When a heavy flood hit the area in early February, villagers they panicked and rumors spread that it was an “explosion” of such artifacts the one that caused it.

In fact, scientists have pointed to the collapse of a glacier as responsible for the alluvium in the state of Uttarakhand, in the Himalayas, because of which more than 50 people died. But the inhabitants of Raini, mountain agricultural town, they didn’t believe this version.

“We believe that devices could have played an important role. How can a glacier collapse in winter? We believe that the government should investigate and find the devices», He told the BBC Sangram singh rawat, the head of the community.

At the heart of their fears is a story of intrigue and espionage, involving some of the best climbers in the world, and radioactive material to operate electronic spy systems.

It’s a story about how United States collaborated with India in the 1960s to install nuclear powered monitoring devices in the Himalayas to spy on atomic tests and Chinese missile launches, after Beijing carried out its first nuclear test in 1964.

“The paranoia of Cold War it was at its peak. No plan was too extravagant, no investment was too big and no money wasted, ”he said. Pete Takeda, editor of the American magazine Rock and ice and who has written extensively on the subject.

They were to be placed at the top of the Nanda devi, which with 7816 meters is India’s second highest peak, and is located near the northeast border with China.

A blizzard forced climbers to stop climbing long before reaching the top. As they ran down they left the devices – an antenna two meters long, two radio communication equipment, batteries and the plutonium capsules – on a “platform”.

A magazine reported that left them in a “crevasse” on the side of a mountain protected by the wind. “We had to go down. Otherwise, many climbers would have died, ”he said. Manmohan Singh Kohli, a famous mountaineer who worked for the main border patrol organization and led the Indian team.

When the climbers returned to the mountain the following spring to search for the device and bring it back to the top, had disappeared. More than half a century later and after several research expeditions to Nanda Devi, no one knows what happened to the capsules.

“Nowadays, the lost plutonium is probably in a glacier, maybe he’s on the way to dust or maybe flowing to the sources of the GangesTakeda wrote.

Plutonium is the main component of a atomic bomb. But batteries made of this metal use a different isotope (a variant of a chemical element) called plutonium-238, which has a half-life (the time it takes for a radioactive half-isotope to decompose) of 88 years.

What remains of those days is the story of a fascinating expedition. In his book Nanda Devi: a journey to the last shrine, the British travel writer Hugh thompson tells how American mountaineers were asked to use Indian tanning lotion to darken your skin and do not arouse suspicion among the locals.

They were also instructed to claim that they were following a “high altitude training program” to study the effects of oxygen deprivation on their bodies.

Porters carrying nuclear baggage were told it was a “treasure of some kind, maybe gold“. According to the American magazine Outside, before that, climbers were taken to Harvey Point, a basis of CIA in North Carolina, for a crash course on “nuclear espionage”.

There, a climber told the magazine that “after a while we spent most of our time playing volleyball and drinking.”

The failed expedition was kept secret in India until 1978, when the newspaper The Washington Post picked up the story reported by Outside and wrote that the CIA had hired American mountaineers, including members of an expedition at Mount Everest, place nuclear devices on two Himalayan peaks to spy on the Chinese.

The newspaper confirmed that the first expedition ended with the loss of instruments in 1965, and that “the second raid took place two years later and ended in what a former CIA official called a “Partial success”.

In 1967 a third attempt to implement a new set of devices, this time on an adjacent 6,861-meter mountain called Nanda kot, was a success.

To a total of 14 American climbers they had been paid a thousand dollars a month for their work to place spy devices in the Himalayas for three years.

In April 1978, the then Prime Minister of India, Morarji desai, dropped a ‘bomb’ in Parliament when he revealed that India and the United States had collaborated at the “higher level” to install these nuclear devices on the Nanda Devi.

But Desai did not say how successful the mission was, according to a report. Declassified cables from US Department of State of the same month, they speak of about 60 people who demonstrated in front of the embassy in Delhi against “alleged CIA activities in India”.

The protesters carried signs reading “CIA is leaving India” and “CIA is poisoning our waters”. As for nuclear artifacts lost in the Himalayas, no one really knows what happened to them.

Climbers say a small station in Raini regularly analyzed the water and river sand to detect radioactivity, but it is not known whether they have obtained evidence of contamination.

“Up to plutonium [la fuente de la radioactividad] deteriorate, which can take centuries, the device will remain a radioactive threat which could seep into the Himalayan snow and seep into the Indian river system through the sources of the Ganges, ”he said. Outside.

When they asked him to Captain Kohli, now 89, if he regretted being part of an expedition that ended up leaving nuclear devices in the Himalayas. “There is no regret or happiness. I was just following orders“, He said.

BBC Mundo