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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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12°33′44″N 80°09′52″E / 12.5623504°N 80.1645415°E The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) is a 40 MWt loop type, sodium cooled fast breeder reactor located at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India, using a mixture of Plutonium Carbide and Uranium Carbide as fuel dedicated to fast reactor research.[1] Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) jointly designed, constructed, and operate the reactor.
The reactor was commissioned in four stages, low power operation without steam generators until 1985, operation with sodium cooling without water valve-in 1986-1990, operation with water valve-in 1993-1996, and operation with turbo generator since 1997. It offered operating, designing and manufacturing experience in breeder reactor technology.
In 1969, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) entered a collaboration agreement with the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), to obtain design of RAPSODIE test reactor and steam generator-based design of PHÉNIX reactor, which was under-construction at the time. As part of the agreement a team of thirty Indian engineers and scientists were trained at Cadarache, France. Upon return, the team formed Research Reactor Center (RCC) that was set up in Kalpakkam to lead India's breeder reactor efforts by executive order of Vikram Sarabhai in 1971, which was renamed to Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in 1985.[2]
The reactor designs were significantly modified by Indian engineers for the construction of FBTR, designed to produce 40 MWt of thermal power and 13.2 MW of electrical power, initially designed to be using weapons grade plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, which could not be realized following France withdrawing their offer of selling enriched uranium for the project after India's Smiling Buddha nuclear test in 1974. Non-availability of enriched uranium for the project prompted development of an alternative, mixed carbide fuel for the breeder reactor by BARC and IGCAR, providing better breeding and thermal properties although its little international experience with the fuel source posed a unique challenge for the project.[2]
Construction started in 1972 and reached first criticality in October 1985,[3] making India the seventh nation to have the technology to build and operate a breeder reactor after United States, UK, France, Japan, Germany, and Russia. Almost all of the reactor was indegnously manufactured in India.[4]
The FBTR has rarely operated at its designed capacity and had to be shut down between 1987 and 1989 due to technical problems. From 1989 to 1992, the reactor operated at 1 MW. In 1993, the reactor's power level was raised to 10.5 MW. In September 2002, fuel burn-up in the FBTR for the first time reached the 100,000 megawatt-days per metric ton uranium (MWd/MTU) mark.[citation needed] This is considered an important milestone in breeder reactor technology. On 7 March 2022 it attained the design power level of 40 MWt.[3]
Using the experience gained from the operation of the FBTR and KAMINI a 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is in advanced stage of construction at Kalpakkam.[5] However, cabide fuel was dropped due its pyrophoric property, and mixed oxide fuel was considered instead for PFBR using 30% plutonium dioxide and 70% natural or depleted uranium dioxide.[2]
The reactor uses a plutonium-uranium mixed carbide fuel and liquid sodium as a coolant. The fuel is an indigenous mix of 70 percent plutonium carbide and 30 percent uranium carbide. Plutonium for the fuel is extracted from irradiated fuel in the Madras power reactors and reprocessed in Tarapur.
Some of the uranium is created from the transmutation of thorium bundles that are also placed in the core.[6]
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 | This article about nuclear power and nuclear reactors for power generation is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) is a 40 MWt loop type, sodium cooled fast breeder reactor located at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India, using a mixture of Plutonium Carbide and Uranium Carbide as fuel dedicated to fast reactor research. Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) jointly designed, constructed, and operate the reactor. The reactor was commissioned in four stages, low power operation without steam generators until 1985, operation with sodium cooling without water valve-in 1986-1990, operation with water valve-in 1993-1996, and operation with turbo generator since 1997. It offered operating, designing and manufacturing experience in breeder reactor technology.
The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is a 500 MWe pool type sodium-cooled, fast breeder reactor commissioned at the same site as the Madras Atomic Power Station in Kokkilamedu, near Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India. The indigenously developed reactor achieves a crucial second stage outlined in India's three stage nuclear power program building on the decades of experience gained from operating the lower power Kalpakkam Mini reactor (KAMINI) and Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR). The PFBR is designed to generate electricity and breed plutonium-239 in a uranium-238 blanket. The project is commissioned by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), a public sector undertaking under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) is responsible for the reactor's design. The Advanced Fuel Fabrication Facility at BARC's Tarapur campus is responsible for MOX fuel fabrication. Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is providing technology and equipment for construction of the reactor. Construction work on the reactor beginning in 2004, was supposed to be completed in September 2010 but upon facing several delays was completed on 4 March 2024. In April 2026, BusinessLine reported that the project's cost had risen to ₹8,181 crore. The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor successfully achieved first criticality on 6 April 2026 at 08:25 PM IST.
Dounreay (; Scottish Gaelic: Dùnrath) is a small settlement and the site of two large nuclear establishments on the north coast of Caithness in the Highland area of Scotland. It is on the A836 road nine miles (fourteen kilometres) west of Thurso. The nuclear establishments were created in the 1950s. They were the Nuclear Power Development Establishment (NPDE), now known as NRS Dounreay, for the development of civil fast breeder reactors, and the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment (NRTE), a military submarine reactor testing facility. Both have ended operations and are being decommissioned. The two establishments have been a major element in the economy of Thurso and Caithness, but this will decrease with the progress of decommissioning. NRS Dounreay will enter an interim care and surveillance state by 2036, and become a brownfield site by 2336. An announcement in July 2020 that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will be taking over direct management of the site from the site licence company Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) in 2021 has alleviated fears of 560 job losses. The NRTE is to be decommissioned under a ten-year contract starting in 2023, ending in the creation of a brownfield site, which would be transferred to the NDA.
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be fueled with more commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium, such as uranium-238 and thorium-232, as opposed to the rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors. These materials are called fertile materials since they can be bred into fuel by these breeder reactors. Breeder reactors achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use. These extra neutrons are absorbed by the fertile material that is loaded into the reactor along with fissile fuel. This irradiated fertile material in turn transmutes into fissile material which can undergo fission reactions. Breeders were at first found attractive because they made more complete use of uranium fuel than light-water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs. Breeder reactors have been developed and operated in Russia, India, Japan, the United States, France, and China, but only Russia is currently operating a commercial fast breeder reactor as of April 2026.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker
