BARC veteran CG Karhadkar takes over as IGCAR chief

CHENNAI: Veteran scientist Chandrashekhar Gaurinath Karhadkar took over as the director of Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, on Friday.

Karhadkar, designated as Distinguished Scientist and presently the director of Reactor Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, took charge from B Venkaraman who is superannuated on May 31.

Karhadkar has had more than 36-year-long stint in the highly complex area that requires special expertise. After completing his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1987 and graduating from the 31st batch of BARC Training School, Mumbai, he joined the Reactor Operations Division of Reactor Group of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay, Mumbai, the next year.

As the director of the Reactor Group, he was responsible for the overall research reactor programme of BARC, including safe and efficient operation, utilisation, decommissioning and planning for new research reactors.

He has worked extensively for improving fuel performance of Dhruva reactor, including changing the material specifications, studying and improving the manufacturing process, and ultimately was largely responsible for full power operation of Dhruva on sustained basis.

He has also guided and implemented several safety enhancements and upgradation of research reactors to meet the present-day safety standards and also to combat obsolescence, without compromising the availability and capacity factors for the reactor.

In 2018, long shut down for Dhruva had to be planned for making certain necessary repairs. These repairs were carried out in an innovative way without core unloading, to save a year-long reactor outage.

Further, due to his meticulous planning and leadership the job was finished 10 days ahead of the announced 75 days schedule to resume the isotope supply at the earliest.

Cirus reactor was shut down in December 2010 as part of the 123 Agreement. After the shutdown, he worked extensively and made lot of engineering changes in Dhruva for enhancing the isotopes supply to meet the requirement of the medical fraternity. He has initiated programmes for enhancing utilisation of the research reactor for industrial applications like neutron radiography, neutron activation analysis, accelerated life testing of detectors, material irradiation studies, etc.

Under his leadership, decommissioning plan for a large reactor like Cirus has been prepared for the first time in the country, keeping balance of the radiation risk and the financial outlay. He is also instrumental in instituting a process for data mining from Cirus for creating a database for irradiation properties of materials. This will be very useful for designing new reactors and life enhancement of other operating reactors.

The old Apsara reactor was shut down in 2009 as part of the international commitment. Commissioning and First Approach to Criticality of Apsara-U, the 2 MW reactor, was also successfully undertaken under his guidance and leadership. The old Apsara reactor is likely to be converted into a museum.

During COVID-19, he ensured that the Dhruva reactor was operated with the help of the officers in round-the-clock shift to replace the operators who could not commute to the office due to travel restrictions, which helped in maintaining the isotope supply to needy patients.