Thread: `Fast breeder reactor programme on right track'

Alain Bugat (left) , Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, France, with Baldev Raj, Director, IGCAR, in Kalpakkam on Wednesday .

CHENNAI, NOV. 11. A team of European scientific representatives is coming to India this weekend to discuss India's participation in the prestigious International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which will generate energy through nuclear fusion.

A futuristic project, the ITER, will try to replicate the way the sun generates energy.

Alain Bugat, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of France, in a recent interview to The Hindu here, said: "India has been asked, I believe, to be a partner or associate partner, whatever may be the formula" in the ITER project.

"Europe is very positive about the candidature [partnership] of India" in the project. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, had written to him last year on this issue, he added.

France is represented through the European Union in the ITER.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in his joint press conference with the European Union leaders at The Hague on November 8, referred to the Galileo, the global positioning system, and the ITER project and said that India would be willing to invest money "appropriate to our participation" in them.

Mr. Bugat asserted that "India is in the right way" in pursuing the fast breeder reactor (FBR) programme. He said that "France has not abandoned" its FBR programme.

Its Phenix breeder reactor was still in operation. The decommissioning of the SuperPhenix breeder reactor had begun. Phenix would continue to operate till "there is no fuel to go further."

He is leading a delegation of six members to India. Today, the French team visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay, and held discussions with Mr. Kakodkar, the BARC Director, S. Banerjee, and the Director, Strategic Planning Group, DAE, R.B. Grover. On November 9, it visited the nuclear facilities at Kalpakkam, 60 km from Chennai.

The members went round the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), which has fathered India's FBR programme, the Madras Atomic Power Station, and the Nuclear Desalination Demonstration Plant there.

They held discussions with the IGCAR Director, Baldev Raj, the Station Director of MAPS, T.S. Rajendran, and the Project Director, Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, Prabhat Kumar, and their senior colleagues.

Renewal of links

Mr. Bugat said that one of the purposes of his current visit to India "is to renew our links for cooperation in the field of fast neutron reactors" and to forge cooperation at the R & D level in scientific topics such as fundamental physics, life sciences, reactor safety in thermal reactors and FBRs.

Answering a question on whether France was prepared to sell light water reactors (LWRs) to India without insisting that it should sign the NPT or fullscope safeguards agreement as demanded by a cartel called the Nuclear
Suppliers' Group, Mr. Bugat said that it was not a topic on which he could speak. "We are not diplomats. We are technicians, physicists and managers. So what I want to say is that cooperation between India and France is perfectly respectful of all international agreements that India and France have signed."

When Mr. Bugat was told that Bertrand Goldschmidt, the late pioneer of the French nuclear programme, had remarked in 1992 at Kovalam, near Chennai, that "France and India were prepared to flirt with each other but not really go to bed" in nuclear matters, and was asked whether the time was now ripe for the two countries to "go to bed" in nuclear matters, especially the LWRs, Mr. Bugat heartily laughed and said: "I cannot say. We can go to bed if diplomats and politicians come to a new round of agreement. There are certain ways in which science R&D is closer to political affairs than industrial ones. But we will not decide in the place of politicians."

`Mature behaviour'

His "personal point of view" was that India's behaviour "is very mature in technical and strategic choices."

Mr. Bugat described India's nuclear energy programme as "comprehensive and coherent." There was correlation between India's nuclear electricity reactors, research reactors and nuclear application in other fields. India had not involved itself in any nuclear controversy.

"This is something we appreciate. That is why it is interesting to maintain and develop cooperation between India and France," he said.

-The Hindu