A HEART transplant is being planned to keep India’s 5-year-old nuclear Apsara, fighting fit. This elective surgery on India’s oldest nuclear reactor has been precipitated because of the atomic tango, choreographed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush.

On August 4, the Department of Atomic Energy DAE celebrated the golden jubilee of the Apsara reactor and a simple birthday celebration was conducted at Trombay. Incidentally, it is also the oldest research reactor in Asia.

Even today this reliable workhorse of the nuclear establishment is actively contributing to the research being conducted on the design of the futuristic Thorium based reactor, as part of the last stage of the grand Indian nuclear vision.

On August 4, five decades ago India’s first nuclear reactor aptly named Apsara after the celestial water damsel’, started functioning with a sustained nuclear chain reaction. It was really the first day when India declared to the world that it was a nuclear power to reckon with, wrote nuclear scientists Raja Rammna in his biography Years of Pilgrimage. Peering over the swimming pool which houses this reactor, you can spot a characteristic mesmeric blue glow which scientists call the Cerenkov radiation. It was this captivating blue light that made Nehru name the reactor Apsara or ‘the water nymph’.

THIS reactor will now undergo a major surgery, a result of the Indo-US nuclear deal as part of which India has decided to extricate this highly enriched French uranium fuel, and place it outside the four walls of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center BARC, Mumbai.

Dr Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission AEC, Mumbai says that “a heart transplant is necessary for this reactor not because there are any coronary blockages, but since we need to keep our Apsara young’’.

THE current refurbishment slated to commence by 2008 will cost about Rs 5 crore and is expected to increase the life of the reactor for another 15-20 years, says Dr Srikumar Banerjee, director BARC. Apsara will be transformed into a healthy multi-purpose research reactor with 2 MW capacity and will use low enriched uranium as fuel.

Among the several benefits that the Apsara reactor has provided are generation of medical isotopes like Cobalt-60 used in the treatment of cancers. The high flux neutron beams of the reactor have also been used to conduct forensic analysis of materials helping nab several criminals.

Kakodkar emphasises that ‘Apsara symbolises the beginning of self-reliant development of indigenous technology in the strategic field of nuclear energy and it was the starting point of our national experience on all aspects of nuclear reactor technology’’.

Housed in a non-descript building in the BARC, even today, all fresh recruits for the Indian atomic energy establishment have to actively consort with this Apasra, which is no longer young but still very active.