The non power programme centers around radiation and isotope technology programme to meet the growing demand in industries, health care services, agriculture and research.

• Industrial processes, testing and services.
• agriculture, high yielding mutant varieties of various crops have been developed,
• Nuclear technology has been established in reducing post-harvest losses by preventing damage from insect and microbial contamination and extension of shelf life.
• The Government of India have approved irradiation of a number of food items.
• Radioisotopes have also been used to improve fertilizer use efficiency, monitoring the fate and persistence of pesticides in soil, and ground water.

Radio-isotopes

Artificial radioactive isotopes, known also as radioisotopes, were produced for the first time in 1933 by the French physicists Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Radioisotopes are prepared by the bombardment of naturally occurring atoms with nuclear particles, such as neutrons, electrons, protons, and alpha particles using particle accelerators.

The separation of isotopes of the same element from each other is difficult. Centrifuge and Distillation, Thermal Diffusion, Electrolysis, Gaseous Diffusion, Electromagnetism are few methods by which the radioisotopes can be separated.

Production in India

• BARC has been producing radioisotopes for over four decades, and today the Centre is a leading manufacturer of radioisotopes.
• In India, more than 50,000 consignments of radioisotope products were supplied for use in industry, research, agriculture and health care. Radioisotope products and were exported to countries such as United Kingdom, Germany, Sri Lanka, Syria, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Tanzania.

Applications

• Radiation Sterilization(irradiation): The ISOMED Plant, the facility operated by BRIT at Trombay, has been providing sterilization service to the medical industries for over 25 years. Various medical products were radiation sterilized.
• Food Technology: Preservation of food by gamma radiation as well as by the conventional and emerging methods. E.g. increasing the shelf life of potatoes and onions
• increasing the shelf life of potatoes and onions (POTON Irradiator at Lasalgaon near Nashik)
• Food Package Irradiator: Storage studies on fish and ready-to-eat meat kababs established the effectiveness of radiation processing in enhancing their shelf-life. A nondestructive method for sorting of mangoes infested with stone weevil and spongy tissue; increase in the utilization efficiency of wheat straw for mushroom cultivation, and isolation of a new antioxidant from Jawala fish, were other developments. (Radiation processing of potato, onion and mango was carried out by BARC for a firm in Mumbai)
• The patent applied by Centre for the process of isolation of a polysaccharide — a good immuno-modulator—from the Indian medicinal plant, Tinospora cordifolia, was accepted.
• A low dose (less than 1 KGy) is meant for sprout inhibition in bulbs and tubes, disinfestations of grains and grain products delay in ripening of fruits.
• A medium dose (upto 10 KGy) is for preservation of fish, microbial decontamination of spices.
• A high dose (more than 10 KGy) is for sterilization of meat products and medical products.

Industrial Applications

• Gamma scanning of columns especially for chemical and petrochemical industry.
• Sediment transport in the Hooghly estuary, Calcutta Port result in effect substantial financial savings.
• Radiation processing of natural polymers, the electron-beam-irradiation of polyethylene films blended with rice husk and bagasse was carried out by BARC. These radiation processed films were found to possess good mechanical strength and pronounced biodegradability.

Health care

• Radiopharmaceuticals, cold kits and Radioimmunoassay kits to various nuclear medicine centres for diagnostic and therapeutic uses.
• Hydro gel preparations, developed for healing burn injuries
• Preparation of Iodine-125 source for use in the treatment of ocular tumours and prostate cancer.
• The Regional Centres at Bangalore and Delhi processed radiopharmaceuticals, and the Dibrugarh and Bangalore centres offered radioimmunoassay service to local hospitals.
• BRIT supplied over 45,000 consignments
• The Radiation Medicine Centre (RMC) of BARC continued to serve as a regional referral centre of the World Health Organised (WHO) for the South East Asia.

Radio carbon dating

Radio carbon dating is a technique of determining the age of very old objects. Carbon exists in three isotopic forms 12C, 13C and 14C, of which only 14C is radioactive. Small quantities of radioactive isotope 14C are formed in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen in the air is bombarded with cosmic rays.

14C is distributed throughout the earth's atmosphere as CO2 and is taken up by plants and passed on to the animal kingdom in food. Plants also take up 12C as CO2. So the ratio of 12C to 14C in the atmosphere and in living beings remains constant.

However, when the organism dies the supply of 14C is not renewed and the quantity of 14C starts diminishing gradually due to radioactive decay whereas the amount of 12C remains the same. 14C has a half life of 5760 years.

That is, the radioactivity becomes exactly half by the end of 5760 years. Thus the ratio of 12C to 14C also reduces to half by the end of 5760 years. In a given situation it could be any fraction depending upon the age of the dead organism.

Thus one can determine the age of an object such as a piece of wood or bone by measuring the ratio of 12C to 14C in the object in relation to the ratio of these two isotopes in the atmosphere.

Other Associated Research Programmes

Lasers

• A Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) facility was set up at Indore.
• A number of lasers/instruments were developed and supplied to users. BY Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, IIT-Madras, IGCAR and Nagpur University; surgical carbon dioxide laser systems supplied to a hospital at Guwahati and AIIMS, New Delhi etc.
• At IGCAR, a new laser heating method was found to be useful in causing localized de-sensitisation of austenitic stainless steels.

Cryogenics

• R&D work in cryogenics is mainly conducted at CAT and VECC.

Supercomputer

• BARC’s ANUPAM Super computer commissioned at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Delhi, resulted in considerable savings by the NCMRW. Another supercomputer consisting of eight Pentium-III nodes, developed at BARC, reached a sustained speed of 2 giga flops (floating points per second).

Robotics

• Design, construction and development of a Remotely Operated Power Manipulator (ROPMAN) with six degrees of freedom, along with a gripper, was completed for hot cell applications at IGCAR. The servomotor controlled motion of the ROPMAN facilitates its upgradation to a full-fledged robotic arm.

Seismology

• The seismic monitoring and data processing facilities of BARC located at Mumbai, Gauribidanur and Delhi continued to function satisfactorily. With the commissioning of five digitally communicating stations at the Seismic Array, Gauribidanur, the Data Acquisition and Processing Facilities got upgraded.
• The seismograms generated at various distances by the Indian explosions at Pokhran in 1998, were analysed which gave the yield in the range 52-63 kT. This agreed well with the announced yield and the post-shot radiochemical yield.

Desalination of Water

• BARC has developed various processes for desalination plants. Based on these processes, the Centre has developed desalination plants for rural areas, ship-borne plants, and for other uses. BARC has been setting up a 6300 cubic metre/day capacity Desalination Plant at Kalpakkam and at IIT madras.