Indian president at Barc Training School graduation
Mukherjee praises the role played by respective authorities in harnessing nuclear energy
Mumbai: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday hailed the indigenisation of India’s nuclear programme whilst attending the graduation ceremony of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) Training School, at Anushakti Nagar, Trombay, in Mumbai.
He praised the role played by Barc, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Homi Bhabha National Institute to train manpower for harnessing nuclear energy. The graduation function of the Barc Training School is an annual event for celebrating the successful completion of the training programme by the graduating officers and conferring the Homi Bhabha Prizes to toppers of various disciplines.
In order to build indigenous capabilities in the nuclear field, which required availability of highly motivated, knowledgeable and skilled manpower, the Training School was conceptualised by Dr Homi Jahangir Bhabha and established way back in 1957. More than 8,300 trainee officers have successfully completed the Training School Course over the last 56 years. The alumni of Barc Training School form the backbone of the human resource wing of the Indian nuclear programme.
All the academic activities of Barc Training School are carried out at its campus situated in Anushakti Nagar, Trombay, where a judicious mix of academics, practical training and soft skills training is imparted at the School and its state-of-art laboratories.
The president said that even though there were efforts to increase nuclear energy for the increasing requirements of the nation, thermal energy constituted 68 per cent of the country’s energy consumption as against nuclear energy of 2 per cent. “We should explore all possibilities of harnessing all kinds of clean energy. Nuclear power has the potential but we must apply all the safeguards.” He added nuclear medicine and nuclear agriculture were important offshoots of this programme.
The president also inaugurated (by remote control switch) five advanced facilities that have been recently set up by Barc. There was a video link with the respective facilities and senior officers present at those remote sites — these included the integrated facility for Providing Advanced Reactor Thermal Hydraulics built jointly by Barc and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited at Tarapur; and the hot commissioning of Waste Immobilisation Plant, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu.
