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INDIA’S ATOMIC ENERGY PROGRAMME

 The atomic energy programme in India was launched around the time of independence under the leadership of Homi J. Bhabha (1909-1966). An early historic achievement was the design and construction of the first nuclear reactor in India (named Apsara) which went critical on August 4, 1956. It used enriched uranium as fuel and water as moderator. Following this was another notable landmark: the construction of CIRUS (Canada India Research U.S.) reactor in 1960. This 40 MW reactor used natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator. Apsara and CIRUS spurred research in a wide range of areas of basic and applied nuclear science. An important milestone in the first two decades of the programme was the indigenous design and construction of the plutonium plant at Trombay, which ushered in the technology of fuel reprocessing (separating useful fissile and fertile nuclear materials from the spent fuel of a reactor) in India. Research reactors that have been subsequently commissioned in...
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Accelerators in india

 India has been an early entrant in the area of accelerator-based research. The vision of Dr. Meghnath Saha created a 37" Cyclotron in the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata in 1953. This was soon followed by a series of Cockroft-Walton type of accelerators established in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, Bose Institute, Kolkata and Andhra University, Waltair.

The sixties saw the commissioning of a number of Van de Graaff accelerators: a 5.5 MV terminal machine in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai (1963); a 2 MV terminal machine in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur; a 400 kV terminal machine in Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi; and Punjabi University, Patiala. One 66 cm Cyclotron donated by the Rochester University of USA was commissioned in Panjab University, Chandigarh. A small electron accelerator was also established in University of Pune, Pune.

In a major initiative taken in the seventies and eighties, a Variable Energy Cyclotron was built indigenously in Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkata; 2 MV Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator was developed and built in BARC and a 14 MV Tandem Pelletron accelerator was installed in TIFR.

This was soon followed by a 15 MV Tandem Pelletron established by University Grants Commission (UGC), as an inter-university facility in Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), New Delhi; a 3 MV Tandem Pelletron in Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar; and two 1.7 MV Tandetrons in Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research, Hyderabad and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. Both TIFR and IUAC are augmenting their facilities with the addition of superconducting LINAC modules to accelerate the ions to higher energies.

Besides these ion accelerators, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has developed many electron accelerators. A 2 GeV Synchrotron Radiation Source is being built in Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technologies, Indore.

The Department of Atomic Energy is considering Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) for power production and fissile material breeding as future options. 

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