59th Republic Day of India
26th January (Sat.), 2008 - 0900 hrs
Address by
Dr. Srikumar Banerjee
Director, BARC |
Dear colleagues,
It is indeed a matter of great pleasure for me to extend a warm welcome to you all to celebrate today the
59th Republic day of our country. As a mark of our collective salutation to our national flag, every year we assemble on this auspicious morning to celebrate the Republic day. Let me also take this opportunity to extend my greetings and best wishes for the New Year to each one of you and your family.
While it is a historic day in our life, Republic Day is also the day for some introspection on the part of all Indians in general and particularly for us belonging to the DAE family.
BARC is one of the world’s largest R&D centres, where we pursue excellence in nuclear science and technology, covering a very wide spectrum of activities under a common umbrella.
The last year has been yet another successful year in our developmental efforts in nuclear science and technology and its applications in power generation, agriculture, food preservation, health care, industry and national security. Among the various systems and technologies developed during the last year, I would make a mention of only a few as illustrative examples.
Research Reactors
The three Research reactors, Apsara, Cirus and Dhruva continued their operation satisfactorily with high availability factors.
The feasibility studies on upgrading the Apsara reactor to a 2 MW reactor are presently in progress. As a part of retro-fitting measures for Apsara reactor building against seismic events, the shake table tests of the APSARA reactor building model with elasto-plastic dampers have been successfully carried out and significant reduction in its response was observed.
Cirus reactor was generally operated at 20 MW (th) with the availability factor of 90.2 %. However, reactor power was raised to higher levels as and when required.
Research reactor Dhruva continued to be the major facility for radioisotope production and served as a national facility for neutron beam research. The reactor was operated at 60 MW(th) with the availability factor of 82.7 % during which about 650 samples were irradiated. As in the previous years, a large number of research scholars from various academic institutions in the country continued their research activities using the reactor under the aegis of the UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research.
Various systems of the new Critical Facility for reactor physics experiments of AHWR and future PHWRs were commissioned successfully. The flux mapping system based on the 25 fission chambers has been installed in the Facility. Attempts are in full swing for making the facility operational very soon.
AHWR Programme
The review of AHWR design by the Pre-licensing Design Safety Committee of AERB has been almost completed and it was concluded that there was no potential issue that could preclude the licensing of AHWR.
Meanwhile, various initial core loadings were analysed in detail to arrive at a configuration consistent with core reactivity and shutdown requirement.
Experiments were performed in 3 MW Boiling Water Loop to assess the critical power of AHWR which confirmed that the thermal margin considered in the design is conservative.
A test facility to check the performance of passive containment isolation system has also been installed.
An MoU has been signed with NPCIL for setting up integral test facilities for conducting the thermal hydraulic tests and fuelling machine related studies at the R&D Centre, Tarapur.
HTR programme
An alternative shutdown system is proposed for the Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) based on the axial movement of beryllium oxide reflector blocks for secondary shutdown and tungsten rods for the primary shutdown.
For the coupled neutronic and thermal hydraulic analysis of CHTR, a 3-D Triangular-Z geometry code based on time dependent diffusion theory has been developed and its validation is in progress.
The setting up of a loop to study the natural circulation phenomenon of liquid metal (Lead-Bismuth Eutectic) as coolant in the proposed CHTR is in advanced stage of completion.
PHWR programme
An MoU has been signed with NPCIL for supply of faster and more accurate Ultrasonic Measurement of Axial Creep (UMAC) for the fuel channels of PHWRs.
A hydraulic, remotely operable three leg micrometer has been developed and deployed at RAPS-2 for in-situ measurement of internal diameter of the pressure tube.
Under an MoU with NTPC, an online, non-intrusive vibration monitoring system, similar to that installed in TAPS-3, has been installed on a Gas turbine unit of Auriya plant in UP. This is the only system of its kind in the country to monitor the health of the turbine blades and the shaft.
Use of Nano-fluids (nano-particles dispersed in fluid such as water) to suppress natural circulation instability and to enhance circulation rate has been successfully demonstrated in BARC.
A very high pressure and temperature test loop has been installed and hydro tested to study natural circulation stability behaviour and thermo-hydraulic relationships of supercritical water and carbon-di-oxide.
PFBR
Support was provided to IGCAR/BHAVINI for getting design and safety clearance from AERB for Inclined Fuel Transfer Machine (IFTM) for PFBR.
Fuel for FBTR
BARC continued to supply mixed carbide and MOX fuels for operation of FBTR with record supply made during the year 2007. Pins for 6 Fuel Sub-assemblies of mixed carbide fuel including that made by Pu recovered from mixed carbide reprocessing have been supplied, thus marking the closing of the fuel cycle for FBTR. New FBTR fuel fabrication line is now ready for Pu commissioning and will further augment production capacity considerably.
Fuel for PFBR
Experimental MOX fuel of PFBR fuel design fabricated by BARC is undergoing irradiation in the centre of FBTR core and has reached burn up of 80,000 MWD/T which is 80% of the design target burn up of PFBR fuel. Manufacture of PFBR fuel and axial blanket has been demonstrated successfully with fuel pins for the first two sub-assemblies which are ready for dispatch.
Health, Environment and Safety Studies
Experimental studies for severe accident phenomenon comprising of pressure tube ballooning with and without moderator cooling were carried out in Channel Heat-up Facility. The benefits of sagging and ballooning assumed in the accident analyses were in fact realized first time through these studies.
Based on a database created by numerous thermal-hydraulic analyses, a neural network analysis has been carried out for 32 break scenarios leading to LOCA with and without Emergency Core Cooling System. These results have been incorporated in the Symptom Based Diagnostic System for operator assistance.
More than 27000 hrs of damage data has been acquired in Dadri Plant where BARC structural evaluation system BOSSES has been in use for the online monitoring of creep and fatigue damage. The extent of damage predicted by BOSSES was satisfactorily verified by microstructural examination of replicas from different points of the superheater outlet header.
The studies on assessing efficacy of bentonite lining in the uranium tailings pond in retarding the migration of uranium and its daughter products has revealed that the peak concentration below the tailings pond is lower by a factor of about 1.5 than that without the bentonite liner.
An air worthy Aerial Gamma Spectrometry System for permanent deployment in Advanced Light Helicopters has been developed and is now in the process of deployment. This will be used by defence establishments for emergency preparedness and for training.
A Mobile Radiological Impact Assessment Laboratory has been established at Trombay for impact assessment during a radiological emergency in the public domain. This laboratory is equipped with GPS and meteorological system to provide essential inputs needed for such assessment.
Geographic Information System (GIS) with various layers populated with data on availability of shelters, hospitals, evacuation routes etc around two NPP sites, viz., Narora and Kaiga has been established. The Narora GIS data base has been integrated with the Indian Real-time Online Decision Support System (IRODOS) commissioned at the site.
26 IERMON systems were installed as ring monitors in two rings around NAPS for providing radiation data to the IRODOS processing system.
52 IERMON stations were installed across the country using solar powered environmental radiation monitors with GSM based data communication. These systems of latest technology are developed and manufactured at BARC.
Fuel Reprocessing and Waste Management Activities
Plutonium Plant at Trombay has been operating efficiently to process spent fuel from research reactors. The depleted uranium (DU) required for refueling NAPS-1 and Kaiga was supplied by Plutonium Plant on priority.
PREFRE, Tarapur was operated with excellent safely record and achieved a record production and Advanced Vitrification Facility at Tarapur has completed 102 vitrification operations resulting in vitrification of 222 m3 of high level waste.
At WIP, Trombay, a milestone has been achieved by production of 200th canister of vitrified waste product on September 28, 2007.
With the one section of storage vault of SSSF at Tarapur commissioned, a total of 47 overpacks from AVS, Tarapur and 9 overpacks from WIP, Trombay have been placed safely.
A state-of-the-art spent fuel chopper has been developed based on a multiple blade assembly concept for gang chopping of a PHWR fuel bundle in one stroke. This innovative, fully automatic remote operated machine has been manufactured by M/s HMT Ltd is ready for delivery to Tarapur plant.
BARC has developed a 15 kilo curie capacity container for transporting Cobalt-60 source for Bhabhatron and other teletherapy machines.
Materials Research
Foundation stone for the first uranium mine and mill was laid in November, 2007 at Tumallapalle in Andha Pradesh. Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr.Y.S.Rajashekara Raddy was the Chief Guest at the foundation laying ceremony, An entirely new process involving alkaline leaching developed by the scientists of this centre with support from AMD, UCIL and NPCIL will be deployed in the proposed plant.
BARC provided analytical support with manpower training to the Heavy Water Board for production of nuclear grade Ammonium Di-Uranate in the proposed pilot facility for recovery of uranium from phosphoric acid.
Large number of heat shrinkable sleeves (2500 nos.) of shape memory material have been supplied by BARC for the LCA programme and seven aircrafts are currently flying with the sleeves supplied by BARC. During this year, BARC has entered into an MoU with ADA and HAL to set up a production facility at HAL which will be one of the few in the world to produce materials of this type.
Studies on the effect of partial boiling, to be adopted in the proposed 750 Mw PHWRs, on corrosion and hydrogen uptake behaviour of zirconium alloys revealed that while zircaloys remain insensitive to the dissolved oxygen content the oxidation rates of Zr-Nb alloy gets adversely affected.
BARC has initiated development and fabrication of Cable-in-Conduit-Conductor (CICC) of various configuration for superconducting magnets required for fusion reactor at IPR, Ahmedabad. 10KA CICC (20 mm x 20 mm cross section x 6 m L) containing 48 Nos. of multi-filamentary Nb-Ti SC wires and 288 OFHC copper wires has been fabricated and supplied to IPR. Void fraction in the conduit is ~ 30% which is required for liquid helium flow.
As a part of studies on hydrogen storage technology development, uptake of hydrogen in Mg/Pd thin films was noted to be near to stoichiometric ratios of
MgH2. The studies on dehydrogenation and hydrogenation cycles on the same set of films are in progress.
The uptake of gold nano-particles by cancerous cells has been found to be significantly higher than that in normal cells. It is now planned to devise special treatment methods to coat the nano-particles with suitable bio-molecules so that only cancer cells take up gold nano-particles. This should pave ways in newer developments in nano-medicine.
Meso and nanoporous films of alumina on ceramic honey-comb structures (provided by ARCI) have been used to develop a kit for the removal of dissolved fluoride in drinking water. Removal capacity of upto 15 mg of fluoride per kg of alumina has been achieved.
Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA)
A 50kV, 30 ma Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) based microwave ion source using three electrode configuration for application in the Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA) has been commissioned. A maximum proton current of 17 ma has been extracted from the ECR hydrogen plasma produced using 800W, 2.45 GHz microwave power at an extraction voltage of 35kV.
Another milestone has been reached in terms of fabrication of a full length prototype of 400 keV Radio Frequency Quadropole with necessary vane modulations. The final RFQ,s for 400 kV and 3 MV accelerating potentials using OFHC copper are under fabrication at KELTEC, Trivandrum.
For the Low Energy Beam Transport lines, four solenoids designed at BARC were fabricated at RRCAT. Mechanical and thermal design of drift tube linac (DTL) with geometry of supports and details of drift tubes have been completed.
Civil work in the basement area of the LEHIPA facility is complete with shielding walls for linac and beam dump room.
Chemistry
Through quantum chemical calculations, it has been demonstrated that decorating fullerene molecules with alkali metal atoms remarkably enhances their hydrogen adsorption capacity. The proposed novel nanomaterial,
Na8C60, is shown to absorb 48 hydrogen molecules leading to an adsorption capacity as high as 9 wt %.
A femtosecond tera-watt laser system to be used for photocathode gun of the picosecond LINAC has been successfully commissioned. The laser system is based on a Ti: sapphire oscillator - regenerative amplifier delivering typically 35 mJ in 36 fs pulse at 800 nm.
Remarkable enhancement in fluorescence has been demonstrated by suitable supramolecular host-guest chemistry and such enhancement could profitably be employed in biosensor / protein sensor applications.
Metal removal capability of bacteria was enhanced by increasing metal ion transport into the cells by the cloning and over-expression of metal transporter genes from selected bacteria into E. coli. Removal of 60Co from simulated decontamination spent solution using this technique was noted to have been achieved in excess of 75% in one hour through two cycles.
An Electrochemical Filter (ECF) containing 33 pairs of alternating array of cathode and anode graphite felts, developed in-house, was successfully used for removal of the iron turbidity in the intermediate cooling circuit of Active Process Water System of Kaiga Unit 1.
An Atomic Emission Spectrometer for the simultaneous spectrochemical analysis of upto 51 elements was developed. The lowest detection limit achieved for B, Cd, Mg, Mn and Ni was 0.05 ppm.
Laser and Plasma Technology
A remotely operated narrow bandwidth single longitudinal mode tunable Pulsed Dye Laser prototype was demonstrated with a 375 MHz bandwidth at around 560 nm. The laser was shown to scan over 75 GHz without mode hop using a piezoactuator with 20 micron travel on the tuning mirror.
The EXAFS beamline developed earlier in BARC was integrated with the front end at the beam port no.8 of INDUS-2 Synchrotron source at RRCAT, Indore. A LABView based software developed in-house would enable the users to work with beamline remotely from Trombay.
Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization time of flight mass spectrometer (MALDI-TOFMS) has been developed to generate intact ions of biomolecules and their detection / estimation of molecular weights in the mass range 1 kDa (kilo Dalton) to 100 kDa, at 1pmole (pico-mole) level. The detailed performance evaluation of the spectrometer has been carried out using standard proteins.
A microwave Electron Cyclotron Resonance plasma enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition process for deposition of yttrium oxide thin films on stainless steel and silicon substrates has been developed using indigenously synthesized metal organic precursors.
Desalination technology
The technology of On-line Domestic Water Purifier has been transferred to total 17 parties in different parts of the country. As per estimates, about 100,000 units have been sold out in different parts of the country by our licensees. These water purifiers were made available to the families of the DAE employees at concessional price through Atomic Energy Workers’ & Staff Union.
Next generation seawater desalination technologies producing ultra-pure (> 10 mega ohm-cm) water based on Multi-Effect Distillation Vapor Compression and Low Temperature Evaporation integrated with Cooling Tower have been developed and commissioned at Trombay.
Dr. El-Baradei, Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency visited BARC on 9th October 2007 and witnessed the BARC developed operating desalination plants and exhibits on water purification systems.
Nuclear Agriculture
Significant progress has been made in the field of agriculture. 8 new Trombay crop varieties – 2 in mung and 1 each in groundnut, soybean, mustard, sunflower, cowpea and pigeonpea were released and gazette notified in 2007 by the Ministry of Agriculture for commercial cultivation in various agro-climatic zones of the country. With this, the Trombay crop varieties released and notified for commercial cultivation so far has reached 35. More than 600 quintals of breeder seed of Trombay groundnut varieties was produced and supplied to different seed agencies and farmers.
Biological sciences
A DNA damage and repair related novel signaling phenomenon was discovered in bacteria for the first time. Genetically engineered E.coli bacteria expressing the alkaline phosphatase (pho-N) gene could efficiently precipitate cadmium i.e., 20 times its dry weight as cadmium phosphate.
A novel N-alkylated prodigiosin analogue isolated earlier in Food Technology Division was shown to be cytotoxic to cancer cells and it induced cell death by apoptosis or necrosis depending on the cell type.
Biotechnology
8 Nisargruna Biogas Plants for processing of biodegradable waste have become functional since January 2007 bringing the tally to 19 operating plants.
Radiation Medicine
Radiation Medicine Centre continues to serve a large number patients. Over 8000 diagnostic investigations were carried out during the calendar year 2007. For the first time, it was shown that radioiodine can be a therapeutic option in non-thyroidal tumours. This was demonstrated in a radioiodine concentrating lung tumour, which showed reduction in size following radioiodine therapy. Molecular imaging with 18 FDG Positron Emission Tomography (PET) showed that a sustained thyroiditis like picture is necessary for a maintained euthyroid state following radioiodine therapy.
A new concept was introduced for accurate measurement of global metabolic activity of red marrow by combining segmented volumetric data from structural imaging techniques such as MRI and quantitative metabolic information provided by functional modalities such as positron emission. The potential of PET was also explored in benign pathologies like infection, inflammation, fibromatosis and other disorder.
Hospital Information System
A state-of-the-art Hospital Information System (HIS) for Medical Division was inaugurated by Chairman, AEC at a function held at Anushakti Nagar on January 16, 2008, in which the Vice Chancellor of Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetham and his colleagues from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Coimbatore were also present. HIS is a comprehensive software solution that allows a holistic approach within and across clinical segments, delivering solutions with an innovation and synergy necessary to help move forward in today’s changing health care environment. HIS will provide the medical history of the patient including pathology, x-ray and cardiovascular reports, any history of surgical treatment received by the patient etc., all by clicking of a mouse, which will definitely make our medical doctor’s life much more easy for taking a decision.
Technology Transfer
The technology developed by BARC for back washable spiral wound module for delivering sterile water with six orders of magnitude reduction of bacteria and four orders of magnitude reduction of virus has been released for know-how transfer.
The technology of Particle Aerodynamic Size Separator was also transferred.
XI Plan programme
As you all may be aware, almost all the projects proposed by BARC under the XI Plan program have been in principle approved by the planning commission and the financial sanctions have already been issued for some of the projects. It would be my earnest appeal to all of you to utilize our PARINAY program for periodically reporting the project related activities and progress. It would be our endeavor to ensure that activity of each and every one of our scientific and technical colleagues is visible through the PARINAY platform.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that we have plenty of challenges for the future. With the synergistic effort of all of us in BARC - the scientists, engineers, technicians and administrators, I am sure, we will be able to rise to the occasion to meet the future challenges in a manner consistent with the tradition of BARC.
On this occasion, let us salute our armed forces personnel who are guarding the borders of our motherland. I appreciate the exemplary work rendered by BARC security and the CISF personnel for effectively maintaining the security measures and for their commendable task in providing the physical protection and in maintaining the peaceful environment in our establishment. I would also like to appreciate the BARC Fire Service personnel for maintaining a constant vigil on the various establishments of our organization and our drivers for helping us to maintain office timings. The contribution made by the personnel in our Landscape & Cosmetic Maintenance Section is aptly demonstrated by the beautiful ambience of this venue.
Friends, finally on this auspicious day, let us firmly resolve and rededicate ourselves to continue our pursuit of excellence in the frontier areas of nuclear science and technology for the betterment of life of our people.
- Jai Hind -
