'Apsara' will not be relocated, only core to be sent:Banerjee

Kalpakkam, June 12 (UNI) Refuting media reports on relocation of swimming pool type 'Apsara' Nuclear Research reactor, Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Director Dr Srikumar Banerjee today said only the core would be sent to a new facility as spent fuel.

Addressing a press conference after the inauguration of the year-long Golden Jubilee Celebrations of BARC here, he described as ''baseless'', reports in a section of the media that the reactor at Trombay would be relocated.

''We will shift only the core, containing imported fuel. It will be kept in a safeguarded spent fuel tank'', he added.

Apsara, the first test reactor set up in India, attained criticality on August four 1956 and was the brainchild of father of Indian Nuclear programme Dr Homi Bhaba.

While formally opening the Atomic Energy Establishment at Trombay on January 20, 1957, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru named the ' reactor ''Apsara'' -- a beautiful celestial damsel or a water nymph, as he then described.

'Apsara' was also the first nuclear reactor in Asia outside the then USSR. The birth of 'Apsara' had sent a clear message to the world that India, which missed the industrial revolution, could not afford to lose out in the atomic revolution.

Later, Indian engineers and scientists constructed and ' commissioned six research reactors (CIRUS, Zerlina, PURNIMA, DHRUVA, a Fast Breeder Test Reactor and KAMINI).

UNI GV SY GC1850