In December 1959, in light of concerns about a possible Chinese nuclear weapons programme, Bhabha claimed to the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Atomic Energy that India's nuclear energy research had progressed to the point where it could build nuclear weapons without external aid. In 1960, in a meeting with Nehru and Kenneth Nichols, who was visiting India as a consultant to Westinghouse, Bhabha estimated that it would take India "about a year" to build a nuclear bomb.