washington us nuclear pundits feel the indian establishment political scientific or both in concert may be lining up to conduct more nuclear tests to validate and improve the countrys arsenal before the obama administration shuts the door on nuclear explosionsyou bet he wants to test again said henry sokolski executive director of the washington dcbased nonproliferation policy education center when asked about the remarks from a key indian nuclear scientist suggesting indias thermonuclear test was not up to mark imagine you are a nuclear weapons designer who has corrected the mistakes and ironed out the wrinkles you would be crazy not to want to test againyou have to look at the dna of a weapons designer they always want to make the weapons smaller lighter more powerful sokolski added if you blindfold them tie their hands and leave them in the middle of a forest they will still make their way to a test sitewhile sokolski addressed the indian motivations largely from the technology validation standpoint washington has long believed that geopolitical objectives rather than scientific or technical metrics drives new delhis nuclear weapons quest the argument has gotten another boost following the remarks by a key indian scientist ksanthanam questioning the potency of indias thermonuclear bombwhile we told you so was pretty much the reaction in the us scientific and strategic community on the renewed controversy over the yield of the thermonuclear device in shakti series of nuclear test arising from remarks by santhanam there is lingering suspicion here that the disclosure in politically driven its rare for indian scientists to break ranks on a sensitive national security issuewhy would santhanam go public with such deliberation on something that was commonly discussed and widely acknowledged in scientific circles a decade after the questions first surfacedthe answer according to some nuclear pundits mulling on the issue on blogs to ward off growing american pressure on india to sign various nuclear containment treaties and perhaps enable india to conduct one last series of tests to validate and improve its nuclear arsenalin scores of research papers and studies in the immediate weeks and months of the 1998 nuclear tests in pokhran us scientists repeatedly questioned the reported yield of the thermonuclear device saying it was well below indias claim of 4345 kilotons in fact some scientists notably terry wallace then with the university of arizona and now attached to the los alamos national laboratory put the combined yield of the three may 11 tests at as low as 10 to 15 kilotonstwo other tests on may 13 involved subkiloton devices for tactical weapons which us scientists doubted even took place even the six nuclear tests claimed by pakistan were treated with derision with us scientists saying only two of them involved nuclear devicesthis is quite clearly a case where governments tested for a political reason rather than scientific reasons so we have to be suspicious of what they say wallace the countrys top nuclear seismology expert had said about the