Pakistan’s most sensitive nuclear facility, the Kahuta uranium enrichment complex, was said to have escaped damage in the devastating earthquake that struck the region on October 8. The epicenter of the trembler was less than fifty miles from the installation. Loss of the plant could change the nuclear balance in South Asia, preventing Pakistan from keeping pace with the growth of India’s nuclear arsenal.

“There is no danger to our nuclear installations and weapons from earthquakes,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said on October 11, 2005. “They are fully safe.” [1] Pakistan has not issued further statements on the status of the facility.

At least one Indian media source, however, asserts that Pakistani nuclear facilities and storage sites have suffered fifteen to twenty per cent damage. The Indian source argues that Pakistan has been trying to prevent the revelation of the damage to its nuclear infrastructure by turning away the international relief teams and imposing curfews.[2]

The classified Kahuta facility, known as the Kahuta Research Laboratory, is the site where Pakistan produces highly enriched uranium for its nuclear weapons. The complex is less than 50 miles from Pakistan’s capital, where the earthquake destroyed apartment buildings and other structures, and it sits on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, a city of 1.4 million, where the collapse of the Government Girls High School on October 8 killed at least one student.[3]

The Kahuta enrichment facility is thought to house nearly 10,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, which rotate at supersonic speeds on high-tech magnetic bearings.[4] The “crash” of a single centrifuge can cause ricochets that can make hundreds of others inoperable, interrupting the “cascade” that transforms natural uranium into weapons-usable highly enriched uranium. Non-governmental specialists in Washington, DC, have questioned whether all of the delicate units have survived the October 8 trembler intact. [5] Publicly available satellite images of the Kahuta complex, however, do not disclose any external damage to the buildings at the site.[6]

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