Friday, October 21 2005 10:23 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: India's first indigenous experimental Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) will be ready in a decade and may be intended for thorium fuel utilization schemes.

Scientists at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) said it would take about 10 years to construct the country's first indigenous experimental ADS and would be intended for thorium fuel utilization schemes.

The core group of scientists in BARC, Variable Energy Cyclotron Center (VECC), Kolkata, and Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) are working on stage-wise development of critical new technologies for all three systems of ADS in 10th plan projects aggregating about Rs 50 crore, BARC director S Banerjee said.

The three subsystems of ADS will be accelerator, neutron generating target and sub-critical reactor. While BARC is working on low-energy segment of accelerator, Center for Advanced Research (CAT) Indore and VECC will work on high-energy part.

BARC, CAT and VECC are working on various types of particle accelerators. There is also a coordinated plan of actions among them on developing specific technologies including proton accelerator for ADS applications, Banerjee added.

ADS is a sub critical reactor operated for fission power by a source of external neutron. These neutrons are produced by reaction of high-energy proton beams on a heavy metal target.

The technology development of target using molten lead-bismuth alloy and sub-critical reactor is taking shape in BARC, K Nema, senior scientist, Nuclear Physics Division (NPD) said.

Human resource development in many a new area is also planned to initiate more elaborate development projects in the next five-year plan, Banerjee said.

Asked whether India has any international collaboration on these technologies, Nema said the scientists have some form of informal exchange of information on discrete subsystems like accelerators as the free access of information was restricted under technology control regime.

The scientific community of BARC says that now Indian scientists may be allowed free access to information on ADS.

With the recent recognition of India by the US as a responsible nuclear power country, it may waive the technology control regime in these areas of research to ease the free exchange of information, which will be beneficial to both the countries, scientists said.

The technology of high power proton accelerators and ADS are covered under technology control regime of nuclear suppliers group.

As such, India finds few collaborators/partners in this area, Nema said adding except that some types of particle accelerators are tools of research in basic sciences, India participates in projects like CERN's LHC and negotiating similarly with GSI, Germany in FAIR and Fermi Lab, USA NLC.

These collaborations do not make much contribution to ADS technologies, he said.

Asked whether India has any plans to collaborate with other countries, BARC Director said ,"Yes, it a good suggestion. The Indian working scientists have already suggested informally to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for initiating an international collaborative programme on ADS to get rid of radiotoxic waste lodged in almost 2,00,000 Metric Tonnes (MT) of spent fuel that increases every year by 10,000 MT."

"This has to be argued more forcefully in future and at formal meetings," Banerjee added.

Meanwhile, a few Indian universities are pursuing international collaboration on different aspects of ADS.