Lost Nuclear Legacy: The CIA's Missing Plutonium Device in the Himalayas - A 60-Year Environmental Concern

Dec 15, 2025 04:54 pm CST

In 1965, during the Cold War, the CIA and Indian climbers attempted to place a nuclear-powered surveillance device on Nanda Devi to monitor Chinese missile tests. When a blizzard forced the team to abandon the plutonium-containing SNAP-19C generator on the mountain, it created an environmental crisis that remains unresolved six decades later. The device, containing nearly a third of the plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb, disappeared in an avalanche and continues to pose potential contamination risks to the Ganges River watershed.