This post is from September 2005. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

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Rattehalli Rare Materials Plant (RMP)

The Institute for Science and International Security has published the first ever satellite photograph of India’s Rattehalli Rare Materials Plant (RMP)—a gas centrifuge facility with several hundred subcritical centrifuge rotor assemblies operating at less 3 SWU/year per machine—located near Mysore in Karnataka state.

The facility has reportedly been upgraded at least once since that estimate. Albright and Hinderstein will release an analysis of India’s program in the coming weeks.

The best reports about Rattehalli are available from the nuclear trade press:

  • Mark Hibbs, “India to Equip Centrifuge Plant with Improved Rotor Assemblies,” Nuclear Fuel 22:24 (1 December 1997) 7
  • Mark Hibbs, “India and Pakistan Fail To Include New SWU Plants on Exchanged Lists,” Nuclear Fuel 17:7 (30 March 1992) 6.
  • Mark Hibbs, “Second Indian Enrichment Facility Using Centrifuges is Operational,” Nucleonics Week 33:13 (26 March 1992) 9.

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Jeffrey Lewis

Writing on ACW 2004–2026

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His also a non-resident affiliate at Stanford's Center for Security and International Cooperation and a Contributing Editor to Survival.

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