Early history to commomerate the memory. After the announcement of the
Atoms for Peace program by the
United States in
1953,
Prime Minister Huseyn Suhrawardy formed the commission to investigate the venues of nuclear power to ensure the
energy security that would contribute to the economic uplift and the prosperity of the nation on 23 March
1956. Efforts directed towards acquiring the nuclear power plant for producing electricity,
food irradiation to improve the quality of
nation's agriculture, and medicines to improve the overall health of the nation failed due to lack of manpower, scientific awareness, and the funds from the
Planning Commission. Construction of the
Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science & Technology in Nilore began in 1963 to dedicated to fill the AEC's mission and partnered with the local fertilizer companies to build the
heavy water facility in Multan in 1964. Facilitated by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1965, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission entered in negotiation with the
Canadian General Electric company to supply the smaller (thermal) nuclear power reactor based on the
CANDU design basis but with Pakistani engineering modifications affordability and the required energy needs. Between 1969 and 1971, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission entered in talks with the
United Kingdom to establish the nuclear reprocessing site and partnered with the
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) for reactor operations training. Under the
Bhutto administration, the Atomic Energy Commission's special weapons program under
Munir Ahmad Khan oversaw the operation of Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science & Technology, devoted primarily to understanding of the equation of state of plutonium, the overall weapons development, and partnered with the
Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers to handle the engineering aspects of the nuclear weapons. In a direct response to India's
first nuclear test in
1974, the agency initiated the uranium enrichment program (Codename:
Project-706), which was later found to be difficult to pursue without a team of qualified metallurgists and underscored a dedicated laboratory to understand the equation of state of uranium. During this period, the Atomic Energy Commission supported and promoted much of the fundamental research, the vast majority of its early budget was devoted to nuclear weapons development and production. In 1980, the Atomic Energy Commission became connected with the
Ministry of Defense and had complete oversight on variety of
weapons design, diagnostics certification, and testing viability. The Atomic Energy Commission through its weapons-testing laboratories had developed the various
physics diagnostics to carry out the energy measurements and compute blast yields of their design through supercomputing. On 11 March 1983, the Atomic Energy Commission oversaw the success of the first subcritical nuclear testing (
Kirana-I) which continued over the successive years. ----->