Floods in India: Did the nuclear equipment of spying lost on the glacier decades ago cause flooding in the village of Reni?

 

GETTY IMAGES

Nanda Devi, India's second highest peak, is near the northeastern border with China

Residents of a village in the Himalayas in India believe that nuclear spy equipment is buried under snow in the mountains around their village.

So when the village of Renee was flooded in early February, the people there became frightened and rumors spread that "nuclear devices have exploded" and that they caused the flood. However, scientists believe that the flood in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand was caused by a broken piece of a large glacier.

More than 50 people were killed in the floods earlier this month.

But if you try to tell this to the people of Renee village, many people will not believe you at all. The people of Reni village are involved in farming and this small hill village is home to 250 families.

"We believe that nuclear equipment could play a role in this flood," Sangram Singh Rawat, Sarpanch of Raini village, told me. How can glaciers break in winter? We think the government should investigate these devices and find them. "

But behind the fears in the hearts of the villagers is a story of spying on one of the highest places in the world. These include high-altitude mountaineering and radioactive substances to operate electronic espionage systems and the fear of being seen.

The story tells how the United States, along with India, installed nuclear-powered monitoring devices over the Himalayas in the 1960s to monitor China's nuclear tests and missile firing system. China launched its first nuclear device in 1964.

"Cold War fears are at an all-time high," said Pete Tekida, assistant editor of Rock and Ice magazine in the United States. No plan was unthinkable, no investment was huge and no tactic was unwarranted.

In October 1965, a group of Indian and American climbers, with surveillance equipment, lifted seven plutonium capsules, which weighed about 57 kilograms (125 pounds), and placed them 7,816 meters (25) above a hill called Nanda Devi. , 643 feet). It is the second highest peak in India, located near the northeastern border with China.

A blizzard forced climbers to retreat a short distance from the summit and abandon the equipment due to poor conditions. They left behind a six-foot-long antenna, two radio sets for communication, a power pack and plutonium capsules.

According to a magazine, the devices were left in a "shelter" on the side of a mountain that was built to protect the wind.

Leading mountaineer Manmohan Singh Kohli, who worked for a border patrol organization and was leading the Indian team, said, "We had to come down. Otherwise, many climbers would have died.

When the climbers returned to the top of the mountain the following spring to look for the devices, they found that they had disappeared.

GETTY IMAGES

Renowned climber Manmohan Singh Kohli, who led the Indian team

More than half a century has passed and despite numerous campaigns to Nanda Devi, no one knows what happened to the capsules.

"It is possible that the missing plutonium is buried in the glacier, perhaps fading to dust and heading for the Ganges," Tekida wrote.

Scientists say this could be an exaggeration. Plutonium is a key component of the atomic bomb. But plutonium batteries use a different isotope (a form of a chemical element) called plutonium-238, which takes half the time of 88 years (the time it takes for half of a radioactive isotope to decompose).

Of course, the stories of this interesting campaign are still commonplace.

Hugh Thompson, the British author of his book Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary, writes about how American climbers were told to use Indian lotion to darken their skin color so that they would be suspected by locals. Don't be skeptical.

And how climbers have been told to pretend they are on this 'high altitude program' to research the effects of oxygen on their bodies.

Porters carrying nuclear equipment were told it was "some kind of treasure, possibly gold."

According to an American magazine, the climbers were previously taken to Harvey Point, a CIA base in North Carolina, for a crash course in nuclear espionage. "After a while, we spent most of our time playing volleyball and drinking heavily," one climber told the magazine.

GETTY IMAGES

Finally, a set of tools was placed on top of Nanda Kot

The operation was kept top secret, but the Washington Post reported in 1978 that the CIA had used spying equipment on two peaks in the Himalayas to spy on China, including American climbers. Recently hired climbers to summit Mount Everest.

The newspaper confirmed that the first operation in the series ended in 1965 with the disappearance of equipment and the second mission was sent two years later, which a former CIA official called a "partial success".

In 1967, a third attempt was made to have modern equipment. This time on a peak called Nanda Kot at an altitude of 6861 meters (22,510 feet) adjacent to Nanda Devi. The third campaign to install new equipment was successful.

Over a three-year period, 14 American climbers were paid 1,000 US Doller a month to install spy equipment in the Himalayas.

In April 1978, the then Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai disclosed in Parliament that India and the United States had cooperated at a "high level" to install these nuclear-powered devices on Nanda Devi. But according to a report, Desai did not say how successful the mission was.

According to US State Department cables earlier this month, about 60 people were protesting outside the embassy in Delhi against "alleged CIA activities in India." Protesters chanted slogans such as "Leave CIA India" and "CIA is poisoning our waters".

NASA

Apollo 13 Commander Jim Loll carries plutonium batteries and scientific equipment during training

As for the missing nuclear devices in the Himalayas, no one knows what happened to them.

"Yes, the device fell into an avalanche and got stuck in a glacier, and only God knows what the effects will be," Jim McCarthy, one of the American climbers, told Tikida.

Climbers say a small station in Renee regularly analyzes water and sand from the river to check for radioactivity, but it is unclear if they have found any evidence of contamination. no.

"Unless plutonium (the source of radio activity in the power pack) is destroyed, which could take centuries, the device will remain exposed to radiation that could fall into the Himalayan ice," the Outsight magazine reported. And it could interfere with India's river system through the Ganges.

Captain Kohli is now 89 years old. I asked him if he regretted being part of this campaign that forced him to give up nuclear equipment in the Himalayas.

He replied, "There is nothing sad or happy about it." I was just following orders. "