It was some months after India’s five nuclear tests in May 1998 at Pokhran, Rajasthan. It was the time when countries such as the U.S., the U.K. and France had clamped down sanctions and technology denials on India in the aftermath of its five nuclear tests. Dr. R. Chidambaram, then Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), had asked me to meet him at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) at Rawatbhatta. He gave me the news that the Russian Federation, through its state atomic energy corporation Rosatom, was prepared to revive the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu, which had been a non-starter from the mid-1980s. Russia’s VVER-1000 nuclear power reactors were to be built at Kudankulam. Chidambaram appreciated the Russian Federation’s guts to revive the project when other countries were hell-bent on throttling India’s nuclear power programme.

During the difficult years when sanctions loomed large and technology access was restricted, Russia stepped in where others withdrew. Rosatom supplied nuclear fuel for India’s reactors at Tarapur and Rajasthan, helping maintain continuity in power generation when global supplies were thin.

Later in the day, when I was travelling with Chidambaram in a car, he saw a biscuit packet in the vehicle. He picked it up and showed me the words “invert syrup" printed on the packet’s wrapper as one of the ingredients in the biscuits. “This invert syrup was developed at our Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC, Trombay) of the DAE", he said. “There are manifold applications of nuclear technology in medicine, agriculture, irradiation of spices, potatoes and onions for longer shelf life, and in BARC developing mutant varieties of banana, rice, groundnut, moong dal, mustard and jute, which are disease-resistant and produce high yields", he said. Irradiation was used in sterilizing medical products such as syringes, sutures, gloves, bandages etc. “There is nothing BARC cannot do", he asserted.

Nuclear technology has applications in the civilian space field too. In a story titled “Nuclear energy keeps Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module going", Srinivas Laxman reported in........

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