Srikumar Banerjee

New Delhi, Nov. 26: Calcutta-born Srikumar Banerjee, director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, and an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, will take over as the new chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission on December 1.

He will succeed Anil Kakodkar who retires on November 30. Banerjee’s appointment comes at a time India appears poised for an unprecedented expansion of nuclear power through the import of nuclear reactors.

Banerjee, 63, who has contributed significantly towards the development of special materials for use in India’s nuclear reactors, has some quintessential Bengali tastes — a love of Rabindra Sangeet which he carries on his iPod, and fish every day if possible — sources close to Banerjee said. He has been at Barc since 1967 and has been its director for the past five years.

He recalled today that his first assignment at Barc, which he joined soon after completing his BTech in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur, was to study transformations in alloys of zirconium at high temperatures. These alloys are used as structural materials for nuclear reactors. His work on another set of alloys has also found applications in India’s light combat aircraft project.

“We hope to see rapid growth of our installed nuclear capacity in the coming years through indigenous reactors augmented with imported reactors,” Banerjee said in a telephone interview today.

“We’re examining the concept of nuclear energy parks — sites where multiple nuclear reactors could contribute to large installed capacity,” said Banerjee who also obtained a doctorate from IIT Kharagpur in 1974. A typical nuclear energy park may have six reactors contributing up to 9600MW.

The park idea draws on a model India’s department of atomic energy has pursued for years. Some existing or planned nuclear sites such as Tarapur or Rawatbhata (Rajasthan) or Kudankulam have or will have multiple reactors.

India currently has an installed capacity of 4120MW, but hopes to bolster this to 20,000 MW by 2020 under an accelerated pace of nuclear energy growth. This has been made possible by the Indo-US nuclear deal that has allowed India to import uranium fuel and sign deals for the import of large foreign reactors.