Ratan Kumar Sinha took over as Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay, on Wednesday from Srikumar Banerjee, also Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Mr. Sinha was Director of the Reactor Design and Development Group and the Manufacturing and Automation Group at BARC. He has been guiding programmes of new advanced reactors, under design and development, to use thorium. These include the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, which will produce most of its power from thorium and has several innovative passive features.
Mr. Sinha spearheaded the development of several remote inspection technologies for replacing the coolant channels in the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). This has enabled the safe operation and extension of life of seven PHWRs.
Earlier, he designed, developed and installed coolant channels and other internal components of the Dhruva (100 Megawatt thermal) research reactor at BARC.
