Abstract:
According to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), estimating the size of India and Pakistan's inventory of separated weapon-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) has become more difficult following the May 1998 tests.

Pakistan presumably resumed full-scale production of HEU prior to its nuclear tests in May 1998. In addition, Pakistan announced that its plutonium producing facility at Khushab had started operations in April, 1998.

According to Albright, India is most likely trying to increase its stocks of weapon-grade plutonium and perhaps even HEU. In addition, India may build a new plutonium production reactor. Another factor to consider is whether India used reactor-grade plutonium in one of its May 1998 tests, and whether India's unsafeguarded civil power reactors and stocks of plutonium are considered a part of its weapons program.

ISIS, used Crystal Ball? software and distributed samples using the, "Monte Carlo" approach to estimate the size of both India and Pakistan's weapons-grade fissile material stockpiles and arsenals until the end of 1998. According to this analysis, the range of India's plutonium stockpile is between 160kg and 460kg, with a more likely range of 225kg to 370kg. The estimated size of India's nuclear arsenal would be somewhere between 40 to 90 weapons. Pakistan, it is estimated, had somewhere between 425kg and 680kg of HEU, with an estimated arsenal of 22 to 43 weapons.