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Saturday, Nov 06, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Homi Bhabha's vision

By M.R. Srinivasan

It is certain that the Indian atomic energy programme would not have grown as it has done without the vision and leadership of Homi Jehangir Bhabha.

THE DEPARTMENT of Atomic Energy commemorated the Golden Jubilee of its founding on October 23, 2004, when the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Kalpakkam. On that day, he also launched the commercial phase of India's fast breeder reactor programme. It is an opportune moment to look back at the vision, foresight and practical wisdom of Homi Jehangir Bhabha, founder of the programme.

Bhabha had gone as a young man to Cambridge University, U.K. for a tripos in the 1930s and soon thereafter pursued cosmic ray research at the Cavendish Laboratory. After he returned to India, his plans to go back to Cambridge were aborted as the Second World War intervened. Bhabha then became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In a letter to the Dorabji Tata Trust in 1944, he sought support for a new institute for the study of Physics. He foresaw the day when nuclear energy would be used to produce electricity and asserted that when that time came, India would have its own scientists and engineers to make it possible. This was more than a year before nuclear weapons were dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In addition to being a brilliant scientist, Bhabha proved to be an astute administrator and programme manager. At 44, Bhabha was probably the youngest Secretary in the Government of India. He proposed to Jawaharlal Nehru that the Department of Atomic Energy be located at Bombay, and not Delhi, because of the benefits through linkages with good colleges and industry. In 1955, Bhabha presided over the first United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva. In his presidential address, he discussed the energy problems of India.

He took note of the energy endowment of India and the demands that would arise if the large population had to have a reasonable standard of life (these days described as the quality of life). Bhabha noted the large-scale use of cow dung as fuel, thus depriving the soil of biological nutrients. The country was using a large amount of firewood as domestic fuel, thus depleting the forest cover. Coal was available mostly in eastern India and central India. Moreover, with its high ash content, for every tonne of coal transported by the Railways, some 400 kg would be ash. Hydropower while being important was monsoon dependent except in the Himalayan foothills. Hydrocarbons were limited in India and had to be set apart for the road transport sector. Thus Bhabha concluded that India should use nuclear energy for electricity production in increasing measure. All these arguments remain valid 50 years after Bhabha made them. That India has made only a slow progress in the use of nuclear electricity is another matter.At the second United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy held in Geneva in 1958, in a seminal paper, Bhabha and Prasad outlined the three-stage nuclear power programme that India would adopt.

According to the geological information then available, India had a limited amount of natural uranium while it possessed a very large resource of thorium. Natural uranium could be used as fuel in reactors that employed graphite or heavy water as moderators (substances that slow down neutrons), in the first stage. The spent fuel contained plutonium, which could be used to fuel fast reactors in the second stage. If thorium is placed as a blanket material in fast reactors, then uranium-233 is produced, which is a nuclear fuel. Uranium-233 can then be used to fuel thorium burning reactors in the third stage.

It is remarkable that Bhabha's thesis, when nuclear technology was in its infancy, has stood the test of time. India recently launched work on its first 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam, which will supply commercial electric power from a second stage reactor. Design work has progressed at BARC on the Advanced Thermal Reactor, which is a third-stage reactor, and may be taken up for construction in a year or two.

India's first nuclear research reactor, Apsara, started functioning in August 1956. In less than 10 years, Bhabha died in an aircrash in January 1966. Within the short period of less than a decade, Bhabha drew up plans for a wide range of activities to give the country comprehensive nuclear capabilities. Even as work was in progress on Apsara, which used enriched uranium as fuel, work was taken up on the construction of a heavy water research reactor using natural uranium as fuel, in cooperation with Canada. This was followed up by another heavy water research reactor of low power, Zerlina, for studies in the physics of heavy water reactors (built on our own).

Bhabha was very keen on demonstrating early the economic viability of nuclear power in the Indian power systems. Thus work was started on the Tarapur Atomic Power Station, in cooperation with the U.S. But to realise the three-stage nuclear programme, it was essential that India build natural uranium nuclear power units. Thus along with the start of work on Tarapur, work was commenced on the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station with Canadian cooperation.

But Bhabha had realised the necessity of India acquiring the capability to design and built nuclear power units on its own. So as early as 1965, some months before his untimely death, he resolved that the third atomic power station, to be built at Kalpakkam, would be a total Indian venture.

For our very first atomic power station at Tarapur, the control and instrumentation panels were made at BARC, using imported components. For the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, the Indian contribution to instrumentation and control was substantial. Bhabha had by then decided to set up the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. at Hyderabad. Similarly, the Nuclear Fuel Complex, located at Hyderabad adjacent to ECIL, was foreseen as an integrated nuclear fuel facility to produce fuel for different reactors starting from the raw material stage. The technologies required for ECIL and NFC had in the meantime, been developed at BARC and transferred along with the key personnel.

A material essential to start the first stage nuclear programme was heavy water. Realising this, Bhabha persuaded the Fertilizer Corporation of India to incorporate a heavy water production unit in the Nangal fertilizer plant, using an electrolytic process for hydrogen production. Thus by early 1960s, India started producing heavy water.

A crucial initiative Bhabha took was the construction of a plant at Trombay for separating plutonium from irradiated fuel. This plant was completed in 1965. It is plutonium extracted in this plant that was used in the Pokhran tests of 1974 and 1998.

Not discussed above are the planning initiatives to set up a whole family of laboratories at Trombay. These included the laboratories in the disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology as relevant to the nuclear programme and the applied areas such as metallurgy, chemical engineering, reactor engineering, electronics, and so forth. The diverse peaceful applications of nuclear radiations for diagnostic and therapuetic purposes, use of irradiation to produce beneficial mutants of plant species and use of radio isotopes in industry received Bhabha's attention. All these activities were launched during Bhabha's stewardship of the programme.

A forward-looking decision Bhabha took was to start the Atomic Energy Training School in 1957 where young graduates in science and engineering are imparted a one-year multidisciplinary training before being assigned to work in a particular part of the programme. This school has over the years supplied several thousand scientists and engineers who have carried forward the programme in all its diversity. In 1954, there would have been less then 40 persons in the programme; now that number exceeds 40,000.

In addition to all these activities in the atomic energy field, Bhabha directed the work of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He launched the work on the large parabolic radio-telescope at Ooty, nurtured the programmes in mathematics and molecular biology, apart from building up world class research teams in theoretical physics, cosmic ray physics, computers and so forth. Bhabha also chaired with distinction the Electronics Committee which prepared a road map for electronics development in India from its relatively primitive state in the 1960s. .

Indira Gandhi offered Bhabha a Cabinet Ministership. But Bhabha convinced her that he could be of greater help if he remained Chairman, AEC, though fate willed otherwise. It is doubtful if the atomic energy programme would have progressed in the manner it did if Bhabha did not get the support that Nehru extended. It is however certain that the Indian atomic energy programme would not have grown as it has done without the vision and leadership of Homi Jehangir Bhabha.

(The writer is a former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.)

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