CHENNAI: India's efforts to build a nuclear-powered submarine crossed a major milestone when the project's land-based reactor became fully operational in December 2004 at Kalpakkam, near here. The reactor reached criticality by October last year.

The design of the submarine is ready, and the project, called Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV), has the involvement of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Navy.

The miniature reactor's capability is about 100 MWe and the fuel is highly enriched uranium, supplied by the Rare Materials Project (RMP) at Ratnahalli, near Mysore.

The delay in the reactor reaching criticality was because of the time taken to produce enough quantity of uranium by the RMP.

Many components of the reactor, such as the steam-generator and the control rod mechanism, were fabricated in the country. Efforts now will be on getting a submarine-based reactor ready.

"Now that the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has succeeded in operating the land-based reactor at Kalpakkam, the DRDO and naval designers have to integrate the reactor into the submarine," a source said.

Russian help

The ATV was in the news after Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in Moscow on November 16 that Russia had agreed to help India build the ATV and an air defence vessel.

Mr. Mukherjee, speaking at the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission for military-technical cooperation, said Russia had assured him that it would share the technology for building the ATV and an air defence vessel, besides going in for co-production in some areas of their construction ( The Hindu November 17, 2005).

The ATV is a top-secret project and the facilities are situated at BARC, Trombay, and Kalpakkam. When everything is ready, the submarine will be built at Visakhapatnam.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the ATV facility at Kalpakkam on October 23, 2004 during the inauguration of construction of the 500-MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

The ATV project has its origin in the 1970s. It is expected that the submarine will cruise the seas in five years.

India had leased from Russia Chakra, a nuclear-powered submarine, from 1988 to 1991.This gave the Navy a hands-on experience.

Only the United States, Russia, France and China have nuclear-powered submarines.

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