INCONVERSATION. Science Reporter, JANUARY

Transcription

1 Gauhar Raza: Dr. Sinha, you are si ing on a chair where the most brilliant minds once sat. How did you feel when you sat on the chair for the first time? Did it inspire you to do more? Did it humble you? Did you feel more responsible? Ratan Kumar Sinha: I am fully aware (of the honour). Even on that day, I was aware of the kind of responsibility attached to this chair, and thanks to the foundations laid by my predecessors, I felt quite comfortable and confident that the proud legacy, which I inherit, will continue to be carried forward. So, I would say, I was quite comfortable, but of course overwhelmed and humbled by the unique importance of that occasion. Gauhar Raza: You must have heard many stories about great people like Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha. Which one which one inspired you the most? Ratan Kumar Sinha: I joined the department six years after Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha s demise, but the most inspiring part of his life history, was when in the year 1944, he proposed to set up an institution called The Institute of Fundamental Research. India was fighting hunger at that time. The Great Bengal Famine was just behind us. There were many things to worry about like hunger, poverty, and where the next day s meal would come from. Nuclear sciences were at a very nascent stage. Science Reporter, JANUARY The discovery of fission happened only in 1939, but then things moved very fast. The first nuclear reactor at Chicago was demonstrated in 1942, followed by the discovery of plutonium, and then by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These things all happened within a span of 10 years. Dr. Bhabha was not just a scientist capable of realising his full potential, he was a great visionary too. Gauhar Raza: It s a great organisation now. Thousands of people are working with it today. It has always a racted the best of the minds from the areas of Physics, Mechanical engineering, Chemical engineering and many other

2 Dr. RATAN KUMAR SINHA is the Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Mumbai. Earlier he was Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). Dr. Sinha has been guiding the programmes for new advanced reactors under design and development at BARC to utilize thorium including the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), which produces most of its power from thorium. Dr. Sinha carried out the design, development and installation of coolant channels and other core-internal structure components of the 100 MW Dhruva Research Reactor at BARC. Dr. Sinha has received a number of awards including the first Homi Bhabha Science & Technology Award, VASVIK Award, Indian Nuclear Science Award and the DAE Special Contribution Award. He was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Science (DSc) degree by the University of Mysore. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Sinha has also represented India in many important forums of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) including the Steering Committee of the IAEA s International Project on Innovative Nuclear Research Reactor and Fuel Cycles. In an interview with GAUHAR RAZA (telecast earlier on Rajya Sabha TV), Dr. Ratan Kumar Sinha talks about India s successful nuclear programme, despite the several hardships and hurdles it faced. fields, including medical doctors. Some of the brightest of the doctors have joined you. This is an achievement we don t see in many other areas of science. What was the key to this achievement? Ratan Kumar Sinha: You have rightly spelt it out. Human resource is the most precious asset any organisation can claim to have, and that is why Dr. Bhabha s first priority was to establish the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Training School. Of course, it was not called BARC at that time. He was very clear about what kind of talented people should be admitted for such training, and we maintain that tradition till today. There are no set minimum numbers of vacancies and posts to be filled in a particular year. There is no dilution of our standard. Every year, we go through the selection process, and the tradition set in 1957, when the 1st batch joined, has more or less been maintained till today. Because of this reason, when challenges do occur, we have the people, who are our assets, who can take care of the challenges and effectively address them. This is because there are three fundamental guidelines for all our activities excellence, selfreliance and relevance. We have to achieve excellence and have world class technology, world class science, and world class research. In case we are not able to get the best from the world, we do the things ourselves. Our Department is now 60 years old. We started our journey on 3rd August 1954, and we are currently in the Diamond Jubilee year. During these 60 years, we have gone through much historical turmoil after the May 1974 Pokhran experiment. We suffered the technology denial regime. Gauhar Raza: Initially people were not ready to give us the know-how and as Dr. Homi Sethna once mentioned that most of the scientists who were inducted by Bhabha including himself, did not know anything about the material, the designs, and also how to operationalise the knowledge that they had of physics. Yet they did it. What inspired them to take such challenges in the face of denial of information and technology? Ratan Kumar Sinha: I would say, intelligence is like a torch. If you find darkness somewhere, you have to shine the torch and then you can find your way out of a bad situation, because you are able to see where the path would lead to. In the same way, the strength of our knowledge and the zeal to go ahead and move faster than what we did yesterday has carried us forward. You gave a good example of Dr. Homi Sethna. In fact, we celebrated the 50 years of the Plutonium Plant in He was the director of that important project, which has led to our mastery of the technology for the reprocessing of the spent fuel to get plutonium, which is so vital for our fast breeder reactor 21 programme. So, those were the days when such projects would be completed very quickly; even now I wonder how quickly they could build the APSARA reactor and set up the Plutonium Plant. Today of course, we need to go through several steps and processes, but still I feel, in those days too, they took care of all the safety, and that is why no accident has happened so far. But the speed really amazes me even today, and it is an example for us to follow forever. Gauhar Raza: Dr. Sinha, we are discussing how the switch-over from traditional reactors to fast breeder reactors has happened. Why was the fast breeder reactor so important? Ratan Kumar Sinha: You see, the energy demand in our country, consistent with its population, is very large. In spite of our good efforts in setting up electricity generating plants of different kinds in the country, we are still less than around onefifth of the world average in per capita electricity utilisation, and we have a long distance to cover. To make our way into the elite club of developed countries, we need to have a per capita electricity generation of the order of 4000 to 5000 kwh per person per year. There is no way we can march into that exclusive club, unless we maintain our imports of fuel resources. We don t have enough uranium also at this stage. Our uranium resources are of low grade and those Science Reporter, JANUARY 2016

3 which are known to be available cannot provide us enough fuel for all our energy needs. Gauhar Raza: About 200,000 tonnes, which is very small. Ratan Kumar Sinha: 200,000 tonnes is in situ underground. When we try to convert it to mines, we have to look at the concentration and the grade. Whether these are located in various parts, or concentrated in one area? Are there any environmental concerns, for example, tiger reserves, etc. There are various factors. The actual availability is lower than what has been found in situ. So you can t really go far with that. What is most important for our country is that we cannot be depending forever upon external sources for such strategic resources. It will make us vulnerable. We are not a small country that can buy and keep a stock for a long time. Gauhar Raza: We have seen in the past, how vulnerable we can become once there are sanctions. Ratan Kumar Sinha: Therefore, it is very important for us to make the best use of the resources we have. What do we have? Plenty of sunshine, wind power here and there, and plenty of thorium. That s all what I can count on, that s what Dr. Bhabha counted on, that s what all my predecessors had counted on, and that s what all my Department is banking upon, a philosophy to reach out from where we stand today to using thorium. To be able to reach there, it is important that we go through the fast breeder route. With limited uranium, we can make use of the uranium in the existing uranium fuelled reactors, which are now in operation, and not throw it out after the spent fuel comes out, but make use of the 99 percent of uranium 238, which is otherwise not fissionable, by reprocessing. We also remove the part that has been converted to plutonium. Plutonium is a man-made fissile material. Thus, our re-processing plant, where the spent fuel goes, becomes like another mine. It s a man made mine to extract a man-made fissile material, which is a substitute for uranium. If you look at it from this angle, we need to increase the through-put of these mines as much as possible. That s where the fast breeder reactors come in. You need to design reactors in such a manner that they produce more plutonium than they consume. In fast breeder reactors, this is exactly what we do. Gauhar Raza: We learned from the French in the initial stages and then there were sanctions and then we improved upon the technology. Would you like to tell something about that because that is where we excel, as compared to any other country in the world? Ratan Kumar Sinha: There is also a very interesting story around that. Of course, the French have been a great friend of ours. After May 1974, naturally there were certain concerns in different parts of the world. The fast breeder test reactor technology came from France. It was expected that the nuclear fuel for that reactor would also be coming as a part of the contract. However, following the technology denial regime there was a restraint on getting that kind of fuel from the French. This reactor was to run on highly enriched uranium. We did not have enrichment technologies in the late 70s, when this project was made, though we were working on that, and now we ve got that technology. But at that time, we did not have this technology. All we had was a re-processing plant in Trombay, and plutonium was available to us from this plant. So, therefore, we thought whether we could make a nuclear fuel, which would work on this man-made fissile material, as a substitute for the natural uranium and enriched uranium? We have created a sort of world record by using this mixed carbide type nuclear fuel to very high levels of burn-up. Burnup means energy per tonne of uranium or per tonne of heavy metal i.e. how much energy has been drawn from the fuel, before you decide to take it away. It has reached a maximum of Mega- Watt days per tonne. It is more than four times the traditional numbers that we see from existing reactor types (Light Water Reactor type) operational in the world. Science Reporter, JANUARY In our entire history of operation, we have attained more than four hundred thirty reactor years of operation in the country, not a single incident has taken place, leading to the release of radiation outside the plant, beyond acceptable limits. So, we are quite perfect as far as the technology is concerned. Gauhar Raza: Now, we are at the threshold of starting the second stage of the nuclear energy programme. What is the second stage? Although this second stage was conceived long back, why did it get delayed? Ratan Kumar Sinha: There were slowdown processes because of the technology denial regime, as I mentioned earlier. Our pace of growth in the first stage itself slowed down. The Rajasthan atomic power station Unit 1 was constructed, commissioned and started to operate, but the 1974 test occurred and there was imposition of technology denial regime. We took at least six years longer to complete Unit-2. When we were building the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), there were only two such reactors under construction. One was in India and the other one was in the Russian Federation. Russian Federation reactor is just about completed. The technology is complex. It has to be made sure that it would work. We have done a lot of work in our Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) to develop this technology. Most of the components we needed were being manufactured for the very first time. What IGCAR did was to first make a prototype, more or less simulating the scales. They got these made first by the industry, made sure they worked in the experimental facilities, and made sure that our industries were able to work to the required quality standards. Then, as a part of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor components, these equipment were ordered by BHAVINI (a Public Sector Unit under Department of Atomic Energy), for manufacture in our country. So, there was a learning phase. See, you can t make a reactor and start learning on the way. It has to be done upfront. That s why there were delays in the launch of this project. Since for Indian industries it was the first-of-the-kind, in some cases the final manufacture did take a little longer time. For the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (by its very name, prototype is first-of-a-kind), we needed to tolerate these delays. The next two reactors, which are Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) 1 and 2, will come up after some

4 time. They will be on a fully commercial scale, completed within the time frame. There will be no time and cost over runs in their case. That would be the place to ask me questions why it got delayed or otherwise. The PFBR was a learning-cumtechnology demonstration phase. I think we have done reasonably well. Gauhar Raza: Dr. Sinha, was the denial a good thing? Ratan Kumar Sinha: Yes, I would say that. If the escape door is closed, and you see the adversary coming from the only door, you will go there and fight with him. So, that s what we did. And you can see the entire self-reliance was facilitated by two things, attention to human resource development and complete support of our Government, right from day one. Gauhar Raza: Don t you think that it was a very difficult decision for the political leadership at that time to invest in science and that too in an area that may not give results for a long time? Ratan Kumar Sinha: It is the country s need in the future that one has to keep in mind when one sits in the high chair. I can see no other way to meet these needs. In fact, the top twelve GDP countries in the world all bank upon nuclear energy in one form or the other, and therefore it was important for us then, and it is important for us now too, to consider nuclear energy as an important option. Right from 1985, there has not been any increase in the number of countries which have at any Particularly after the Fukushima accident, I have noticed that because of the large coverage in the media, and the dramatic way the events were broadcast by certain sections of the media, naturally the public has been concerned. I agree with them, we should be concerned; but as far the technology is concerned, it is still robust. point of time started constructing a nuclear reactor. The numbers stayed put, I think at 33 with China. Afterwards, no new countries joined till very recently. In Gulf, construction has started recently. While in International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as Chairman of one of the very important committees, I am aware that IAEA collected data about how many new countries were interested in setting up nuclear power. It turned out that, at that time, more than 40 countries were willing to do that, but were not able to do it, because of lack of access to the technology, mainly because of proliferation concerns, etc. We happened to reach there faster, and therefore we acquired a leadership role. We could do it ourselves, and the required technology came our way through our R&D strength. I think it was a very brilliant and important decision to promote atomic energy, which was taken at that point of time. Gauhar Raza: You stood First as a student in Patna University and then you chose this career. You could have been a mechanical engineer in any other industry and you would have done brilliantly. What was the Eureka moment in your life during this career? Ratan Kumar Sinha: There have been a number of moments of this kind. I started my career right in the field, when the Dhruva research reactor was under construction completely indigenous design and all manufacturing done within the country. I was made responsible for development of some of the components which go inside the reactor, first-of-thekind things. Everywhere we encountered first-of-the-kind challenges. An incident occurred in Madras Atomic Power Station Units 1 and 2 in The moderator inlet manifold, which brings in huge quantity of heavy water into the reactor, failed. This was a big challenge because inside the reactor, things had failed. The 23 passage which is provided for bringing the moderator inside was no longer available. How to handle the situation? There were two problems there, one we have to provide an alternate passage, but before that, we had to remove some broken pieces. It was that part of the job, removal of the pieces, which I think was extremely challenging. Gauhar Raza: And it is a highly contaminated area? Ratan Kumar Sinha: Very high level of radiation, of the order of one million Roentgens per hour, which is extremely high. Considering the challenges, and the urgency, a foreign contractor was engaged by the plant authorities to remove the broken pieces out of the active area of the reactor. We had in parallel, in BARC, developed our own devices to handle the situation, and it turned out that we were ready at the site, when the equipment needed by the foreigners was about to be received at Chennai. Since we were a little ahead of them in reaching the site, we were offered one of the reactors to start working, and immediately we worked on that. We put our gadgets, the manipulator was put at one end and the camera at the other end, so we could see what was going on inside. We lifted the broken pieces, and as planned shifted it to one part of the reactor and dropped it there. That part of reactor was not participating in the normal flow process, so it was allowed. There were two pieces, and we handled both of them. Then the time came to go to the second reactor. By then, the foreigners had also arrived on the site and a conscious decision was taken by the then management of Nuclear Power Corporation, and I think a very wise decision, that having invited them, they should be given the opportunity. So, they started the work with the heaviest broken piece to be handled, but they couldn t budge it, so they went to the 2nd & 3rd pieces. While they could handle these two successfully, when it came to the toughest first piece, they struggled for another half a day, and then they gave up. Then they told me, Mr. Sinha you have your manipulator, can you try? I told, I Science Reporter, JANUARY 2016

5 The fi rst nuclear reactor at Chicago was demonstrated in 1942, followed by the discovery of plutonium, and then by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These things all happened within a span of 10 years. could, if they just helped me a bit. They had already put their camera on the other end. I had my camera, but it would have taken up time unnecessarily to remove their camera and put our own. I asked them to remove their manipulator, and allow me to look inside through their camera. With the help of their camera and our manipulator, we successfully completed the task, and it was a moment of great joy for us. I have a special attachment to these two reactors, since both were practically given up for gone. The plant continues to produce 400 MW, at full power. Gauhar Raza: One of the problems associated with atomic energy has been high pressure on scientists because they cannot commit a mistake. The other is the pressure from the public, there is a mistrust about the efficacy and usability of atomic energy. How do you cope up with the two? Ratan Kumar Sinha: In our entire history of operation, we have attained more than four hundred thirty reactor years of operation in the country, not a single incident has taken place, leading to the release of radiation outside the plant, beyond acceptable limits. So, we are quite perfect as far as the technology is concerned. Public opinion is a different matter. Particularly after the Fukushima accident, I have noticed that because of the large coverage in the media, and the dramatic way the events were broadcast by certain sections of the media, naturally the public has been concerned. I agree with them, we should be concerned; but as far the technology is concerned, it is still robust. There (in Japan) it manifested into an accident, but I don t see any way our reactors can suffer that accident. We have taken into account the extreme natural events that can take place at any one of our sites. We have revisited the scenarios after the Fukushima accident once again, and quite comfortably, we can see that our reactors are much more than equipped to handle any severe external event that can take place. Gauhar Raza: Scientists require encouragement. Which one of your awards do you remember and cherish the most? Ratan Kumar Sinha: The first one was the Homi Bhabha Science and Technology Award. It was the award for the year 1992, which I received in I will consider it as one of the most significant recognitions I received because that was the year when these awards were instituted. (The interview is based on an interview telecast on Rajya Sabha TV as part of a series called Eureka. The interview is available at res.in/videos/295/dr.-r-k-sinha,-chairman,-atomicenergy-commission-of-india.) Mr Gauhar Raza is Chief Scientist, CSIR- National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources Science Reporter, JANUARY