The Beginnings
BARC is acronym of BHABHA ATOMIC RESEARCH CENTRE. It is located in Bombay East on Sion-Trombay Road, to be precise. BARC is a Central Government Institution and falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Secretary to the Department is also the Chairman of the Commission. AEC was created in 1948 under an act of Parliament, the Atomic Energy Act. Presently there are several Units/Institutes under DAE, but it with only one to begin with. It was then called Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay (AEET). It was rechristened as BARC after the death of its founder Dr. Homi J. Bhabha in 1965, in a plane crash over the mountains Alps in Europe.
AEET was located in Bombay because Bhabha was from Bombay and he wanted to function from Bombay. He was also the Director of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) which is also located in Bombay. Bhabha was a man of great foresight and being himself aristocratic could resonate with and influence another aristocrat, the man who mattered, Prome Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. Meghnad Sah, another well known Physicist of that time, could not influence Nehru.In fact a slender book was written comparing the two, Bhabha and Sah. In the beginning AEET functioned from many ramshackled, nondescript buildings in different places in Bombay. Some of the places were: a closed textile mill premises on Cadell Road, since renamed Veer Savarkar Marg, an old dilapidated building on Peddar road, called Kenilworth ( it has been replaced by a newly constructed residential building), some space in Richardsons and Cruddas building in Byculla, some space in old TIFR building in Colaba and so on.
The then Bombay Government gave land to the Central Government for establishing the Atomic Research Centre. The land near Deonar was offered and Bhabha found it suitable and accepted. It is a huge sprawling complex on two sides of a hill. The land is sort of triangular. On one side of the huge piece of land is the sea and on the other two sides roads. One side of the hill, facing more of the South direction, is called South Site. The South side is approached via Mahul Road, through the refineries and the Tata Thermal Power Station. Indian Rare Earths factory already existed there. Some shed-like structures were built and staff recruited first slowly and then largely to begin work in right earnest. AEET also started a training school for scientists and engineers to train fresh graduates in such subjects as nuclear physics, interaction of ionizing radiation (for lay understanding X-rays and more energetic radiation) with matter, reactor physics and safety, Radiological detection and measurement, radiation biology, etc. Some topics were common to all discipline trainees but some were specific to the discipline as is to be expected. Also taught was Russian language. Russian teacher was an Old Russian lady, who could not control herself once when describing how the name of St. Petersburg was changed to Leningrad. The training school was housed in a rented building next to the Churchgate Station. The dorm or hostel was at lands end in Bandra.
Phase I
Phase I of the Atomic Energy programme was carried out from the South site. In the sheds laboratories were put up to start experiments and make some instruments. The first laboratories were for electronics, reactor instrumentation, radioisotope work, radiation and environmental measurements and so on. India’s first research reactor, obtained from UK, is placed here. It is a swimming pool type, easy to build, first type of reactors anywhere in the world. This was named Apsara by Nehru when he came for the inauguration of the AEET way back in the early 1960’s. It is still functioning. Several years later the training school was also shifted to a new building on a hillock at South site.
Construction work was also started on the other side of the hill which came to be called North Site. Ultimately North site became the main hub of activity and it was approached from Sion-Trombay Road. North side has the first reactor built by the Canadians, and was named CIR for Canada-India Reactor. It went ‘critical’ in 1967. Its nomenclature was later changed to CIRUS. It is a 60 MW thermal reactor working on natural uranium and Heavy Water. It produces no power and is used only for research work. Incidentally, ordinary water is H2O (2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom) and heavy water is D2O ( 1 neutron is added to proton to make ordinary hydrogen heavy and water constituted by this hydrogen heavy). It is present in natural water and by an expensive process is extracted so much so that extracted heavy water is 100% pure.
Phase II
CIRUS Reactor was being commissioned and other building activity was also in full swing at the North Site. The first well planned and concrete building to come up was built by Larsen and Tubro of a modular design for quick finishing. This was described as the longest building in Asia. This came to be known as Modular laboratory. Most of the pure sciences and electronics laboratories were shifted from South site to this building. Engineering is an integral part of Atomic Energy work. So for the engineering discipline separate buildings, six of them, were constructed opposite the Modular laboratory. These are known as Engineering Hall 1, -2… -6. Later two more were added to make a total of eight. A huge workshop, very well equipped, was constructed to take up specialized jobs. There is an area known as the Central Complex. This is a conglomeration of many facilities such as the main Administrative Building, a beautiful extremely well designed Multipurpose Modern Auditorium; an extremely well planned Central Library and a Canteen. A small Van de Graf type of accelerator was also built for experiments. Later big laboratories were added to carry out radiochemistry and Radioisotope work. These were known as Hot Laboratories as the purpose was to handle hot (high radioactivity) material. All the facilities are centrally air conditioned. For the purpose a central Air Conditioning Plant was built.
In relatively recent times another reactor, initially named R5 reactor has been added to the existing facilities. The R5 reactor was later named DHRUVA. This is a 100 MW thermal reactor for experimental work and no electricity is produced. This is a completely indigenously designed and constructed reactor and has been working for many years now. In addition to these another indispensable facility is that of Waste Disposable. This facility is also built in the North Site. In Phase II of the programme one more facility was added but at the South Site. This is a plant for the Radiation sterilization of medical products like disposable materials syringes, cotton, gauze, etc. It caters to the need of the private manufacturers. The above description of the facilities at BARC is by no means complete.
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