Attempts were made from 1965 to 1968 by the CIA to place a plutonium-powered listening device high on Nanda Devi, to monitor possible Chinese nuclear activity in Tibet, but the device was lost in an avalanche. (Recent reports indicate that radiation traces from this device have been discovered in sediment below the mountain.) The actual data is not conclusive, however, but the absence of Pu-238 (the isotope that powered the device) in the sample proves that any Pu present could not have come from the device.