· Secret military programme nears completion
· Vessels may undergo sea trials next year

India has kept its efforts to build a nuclear submarine under wraps for more than 30 years, but a top Indian scientist has confirmed that the ongoing project at the Kalpakkam nuclear facility near Chennai to develop a nuclear reactor fuelled by enriched uranium was in fact intended to power the country’s first indigenously built submarine.

After several setbacks, the top secret military programme appears to be nearing completion, and the nuclear submarine, codenamed the Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), is expected to undergo sea trials next year before its induction into the Indian navy in 2009.

“Indian scientists and technologists are capable of making light water reactors and we are already constructing an LWR at Kalpakkam in south India for the submarine,” the former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, PK Iyengar, said at a public debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal in Mumbai on Saturday.

Light water reactors, which use ordinary water to produce steam for running the turbines that produce the power, are considered safer and therefore more suitable for submarines.

Indian scientists appear to have successfully developed a larger version of such a reactor at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam. It is not clear whether they have succeeded in miniaturising the reactor for use in a submarine.

The nuclear submarine is being built at the naval shipyard at Visakhapatnam port on the Bay of Bengal, and is a joint project involving several government and private organisations, including the Navy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation once headed by former president Abdul Kalam, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, which is the main facility for producing India’s nuclear bombs.

If the Indian scientists fail to develop a miniature light water reactor for the submarine, New Delhi is expected to purchase such a reactor from Russia.

Russia is building an Akula-class nuclear submarine at its Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipyard for lease to the Indian navy which is expected to be ready for trials in 2009.

New Delhi is also reported to be negotiating for the lease of a second nuclear submarine from Russia.

India’s keenness to go in for nuclear submarines increased after it tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and began to stockpile a nuclear arsenal. The country’s military strategists said they needed to develop a “second strike capability” – to be in a position to retaliate to a nuclear attack.

“You need submarine-based arsenals to retain a second strike capability, since all land-based arsenals can be detected through satellite surveillance in about eight years,” said retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon, a nuclear strategist. “If they’ve been detected, you have to assume that they can be targeted.”