PAKISTAN: Pakistan yesterday said its main nuclear weapons facility at Kahuta, only 74kms from the epicentre of the weekend earthquake that devastated northern Kashmir, was undamaged.
"There is no danger to our nuclear installations and weapons from earthquakes," Pakistan's military spokesman, Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, said.
However, Maj Gen Sultan was unable to confirm if the Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta, adjoining the capital, Islamabad, could withstand the strongest earthquakes.
Khan Research Laboratories is Pakistan's main nuclear weapons facility and an emerging development centre for strategic long-range missiles.
Pakistan's primary nuclear fission production facility is also in Kahuta, employing gas centrifuge enrichment technology to produce highly enriched uranium. Kahuta is not operated under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards but successive Pakistani governments have promised that the classified and well-guarded facility is secure.
However, nuclear expert Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, said an earthquake could pose a threat to Pakistan's nuclear facilities.
Prof Hoodbhoy, an ardent anti-nuclear weapons activist, said that Chasma, the Chinese-built nuclear facility around 400kms southwest of Islamabad, could prove "dangerous" in the event of a severe earthquake.
"Chashma is in a seismic zone and if an earthquake is centred close to it there could be loss of radioactive material leading to a Chernobyl-like situation," Prof Hoodbhoy warned.
According to the US Geological Survey the exact location of the epicentre of the earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale was between longitude 34.40 degrees north and latitude 73.56 degrees east.
Kahuta's co-ordinates are 33.35 degrees north and 75.22 degrees east, raising the distinct possibility of it being in the earthquake's "first impact zone," experts said.
"Kahuta's safety is a matter of concern," a senior Indian military official and nuclear analyst who declined to be identified said.
Further clarifications are needed to ensure it has escaped damage, he added.
Indian government officials, meanwhile, declined to comment on the status of their own nuclear arsenal, but official sources said no strategic weapons had been deployed anywhere near the border with Pakistan.
India's Nuclear Power Corporation said it had "not received any reports of any damage" to any of its facilities.
Some of India's power plants withstood a giant earthquake in western Gujarat state, including some atomic facilities, in the affected province in January 2001, the corporation said.
Pakistan conducted six underground nuclear weapons tests in May 1998, a fortnight after neighbouring rival India had conducted five.
A year later both countries were engaged in bitter border clashes in the hotly disputed Kashmir region, which is claimed by both sides, that lasted 11 weeks.
A "nuclear shadow" hung over the skirmish in which 1,200 soldiers died.
In 2002 the two countries once again came close to the brink of war, during which both sides rattled the "nuclear sabre," leading most foreigners, including diplomats and businessmen, to leave Delhi and Islamabad.