North of Nanda Devi you have Chinese occupied Tibet and further north you have Chinese occupied Xinjiang. Now in Xinjiang, present day China, there is a place called Lop Nur, which is where the Chinese in the 20th century tested their nuclear weapons. It is about 1500 Km far away from Nanda Devi. In 1964, China tested its first nuclear device in Lop Nur in the Chinese occupied Xinjiang and that was a matter of concern for the United States.
The Americans then convinced India to set up a signals intelligence station in northern India on the Nanda Devi peak or near the peak of the mountain from which we can look far into China. We can see that the Nanda Devi mountain is about 8 km sea level and from that vantage position you can look far into Chinese occupied territory. So that was the deal. The Americans proposed that they would furnish a device which would be a signals intelligence device and they will place it on the Nanda Devi peak or very close to the peak and from there this device would acquire signals intelligence essentially or data about Chinese activities.
This expedition took place in October 1965 which was actually a strange time to do such an expedition. As during October it's autumn and the weather isn't great during that period in the Himalayas. The best time to do something like this is during spring or summer time when there is less snow. It's warmer at that time. In autumn it's going to be cloudier and the weather will be rougher but they decided to do it in October, there must have been some reasons for that so the expedition happened in October 1965 and there was a team of Americans probably more than 10 Americans who came and they were accompanied by Indian mountaineers and officials of various kinds and they climbed the mountain and they had this RTG Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator which contained plutonium. It contained more than 50 kilograms of plutonium. It was called the SNAP-19C. So this was the equipment which was about more than 50 kg of plutonium 238 which is not the one that is used in bombs and the equipment also contained a 10-feet antenna.
So the RTG radio isotope thermo electric generator would provide the heat and the power needed to operate the system and the antenna would acquire signals from within Chinese occupied territory and monitor future Chinese nuclear tests. That was the deal. So the expedition went ahead in October 1965 and while climbing the mountain pretty high there was an extreme weather event a blizzard (which is a massive snowstorm) or an Avalanche (large amount of snow sliding down mountain) and it became so extreme that the expedition members had no choice but to leave the expedition behind somewhere on a ledge in the mountain and go back down otherwise they would have lost their lives. So they left the equipment behind on a ledge on the mountain somewhere near the peak and they tried their best to climb down the mountain and fortunately they all survived. Nobody lost their life and then the deal was that they knew where they had kept the equipment and when the weather would be better they would go back and finish the mission.
So the weather after October in the Himalayas gets worse, not better. So you have to wait out the entire winter. Then in spring during March, April around that time, that's when you can have sufficiently decent weather to climb the mountain again. So that's what they did. They went back the next spring, they climbed all the way up and they found nothing there! So the device is gone and what could have happened is the question. How did the device disappear all the way up there on the mountain?
So there are two logical possibilities. One possibility is that maybe there was an Avalanche again and that may have dislodged the device and it may have tumbled down the mountain slope and maybe it still lies somewhere there buried under the snow. The second possibility is also logical that the Indian government sent mountaineers during the winter and they retrieved the device for whatever reason. These are the two logical possibilities. Now which is true, we don't know. But the device disappeared. The device is lost.
Now in case the Indian government went and retrieved the device and did whatever tests, experiments, or maybe reverse engineered technology, whatever the reason is, in that case there is no danger. But if there was an avalanche and the device actually tumbled down the mountain and it may lie somewhere in the catchment plane of the Ganga, then it's a very big danger. Let me explain why.
The catchment region from where the great Ganga river gets its water is this mountain range. However, if the device was carried away by an avalanche and now lies somewhere in the catchment region of the Ganga river system, the consequences could be serious. When plutonium spills out you get plutonium oxide particles that are dispersed in the region and when snow melts and all that mixes with water, it becomes part of the sediment that is floating in the river and if that ends up in the Ganga that can poison hundreds of millions of people who live downstream. Because the Ganga goes all the way down from Uttar Pradesh into West Bengal and then eventually enters Bangladesh. Why is this dangerous?
If the plutonium spills out it forms plutonium oxide. Those particles eventually merge in the river. Plutonium is an extremely toxic substance. There are multiple isotopes of plutonium. Plutonium 238, 239, 240, 241. The plutonium isotope that is used in nuclear weapons is plutonium 239. It's a more common isotope. Plutonium is not a naturally occurring element. It's a man-made heavy metal and it is produced in nuclear reactors. So plutonium 239 which is used in nuclear weapons, has a half-life of about 24,000 years. This means that if you have 1 kilo of plutonium 239, then in 24,000 years about half of it will decay. But the plutonium that is used in this device that got lost was plutonium 238 and it has a half-life of 88 years. This means if you have 1 kilogram of plutonium 238, half of it will decay in 88 years. If you had 50 kilograms like we had in the device, then about 25 kg will decay and no longer be a problem in 88 years. Then the rest of the plutonium, other half of it will decay in another 88 years. That's how it goes. That's the concept of half-life of radioactive elements in nuclear physics. Now plutonium 238 is also extremely toxic.
Why was plutonium 238 used here? Because it generates heat and can also be used for keeping your equipment circuits warm in the extremely cold temperatures up there and also it can produce power. It gives off alpha radiation which is essentially helium nuclei.
Now how does plutonium affect human beings? It will cause radiation poisoning. The most dangerous form of plutonium poisoning is when you inhale plutonium particles or plutonium oxide particles that will be very easily absorbed by the body and it will get absorbed in your tissues and unfortunately results in cancer. It's almost a guarantee.
Now if you absorb plutonium oxide through water then it has a lower probability of getting absorbed in your digestive tract but it still obviously emits alpha particles and can still give you cancer. So, if it is plutonium oxide that's out in the atmosphere or in water but if it is sealed within a radio isotope generator RTG in that case it is not going to be that much of a problem. So that is the situation.
In 1978 the Indian atomic energy commission had conducted some kind of testing in the rivers in that region and they found no evidence of plutonium being present and I suspect that the government of India must be testing from time to time in case it has actually been lost otherwise it may be performative testing or whatever. So the best case scenario for us is that the government of India had retrieved the plutonium in 1965 or 66 winters before the Americans came back. That's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that the device was lost and after all these years if it ruptured it's going to be a big catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people.
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