The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) formerly known as Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. Founded by Homi Jehangir Bhabha Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 1954 as a multidisciplinary research program essential for the india's nuclear program. It operates under the Department of Atomic Energy(DAE) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India. In 1966 after the death of Homi Jehangir Bhabha AEET renamed as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) BARC is a multi-disciplinary research centre with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, chemical engineering, material sciences & metallurgy, electronic instrumentation, biology and medicine, supercomputing, high-energy physics and Plasma physics and associated research for Indian nuclear programme and related areas.

BARC's core mandate is to sustain peaceful applications of nuclear energy. It manages all facets of nuclear power generation, from the theoretical design of reactors to, computer modeling and simulation, risk analysis, development and testing of new reactor fuel, materials, etc. It also researches spent fuel processing and safe disposal of nuclear waste. Its other research focus areas are applications for isotopes in industries, Radiation Technologies and their application to health, food and medicine, agriculture and environment, accelerator and Laser Technology, electronics, instrumentation and reactor control and Material Science, environment and radiation monitoring etc. BARC operates a number of research reactors across the country.[3]

Its primary facilities are in Trombay, new facilities are coming up in Challakere located in Chitradurga district in Karnataka along with Special Mineral Enrichment Facility which focuses on enrichment of uranium fuel and in Atchutapuram near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh for supporting India's nuclear submarine program and produce high specific activity radioisotopes for extensive research.

The Government of India created the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) with Homi J. Bhabha as the founding director on 3 January 1954. It was established to consolidate all the research and development activities for nuclear reactors and technology under the Atomic Energy Commission. All scientists and engineers engaged in the fields of reactor designing and development, instrumentation, metallurgy, and material science, etc., were transferred with their respective programs from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) to AEET, with TIFR retaining its original focus for fundamental research in the sciences. After Homi Jehangir Bhabha's death in 1966, who is also known as the "Father of Indian Nuclear Programme", the centre was renamed as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on 22 January 1967.

The first reactors at BARC and its affiliated power generation centres were imported from the west. India's first power reactors, installed at the Tarapur Atomic Power Station were from the United States.

The primary importance of BARC is as a research centre. The BARC and the Indian government has consistently maintained that the reactors are used for this purpose only: Apsara (1956; named by the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru when he likened the blue Cerenkov radiation to the beauty of the Apsaras), CIRUS (1960; the "Canada-India Reactor" with assistance from the US), the now-defunct ZERLINA (1961; Zero Energy Reactor for Lattice Investigations and Neutron Assay), Purnima I (1972), Purnima II (1984), Dhruva (1985), Purnima III (1990), and KAMINI. Apsara was India's first nuclear reactor built at BARC in 1956 to conduct basic research in nuclear physics. It is 1 MWTh light water cooled and moderated swimming pool type thermal reactor that went critical on August 4, 1956 and is suitable for production of isotopes, basic nuclear research, shielding experiments, neutron activation analysis, neutron radiography and testing of neutron detectors. It was shutdown permanently in 2010 and replaced with Apsara-U. Purnima-I is a Plutonium oxide fuelled 1 MWTh pulsed-fast reactor that was built starting in 1970 and went critical on May 18, 1972 to primarily support the validation of design parameters for development of Plutonium-239 powered nuclear weapons. On the twentieth anniversary of the 1974 Pokhran nuclear test, Purnima's designer, P. K. Iyengar, reflected on the reactor's critical role: " Purnima was a novel device, built with about 20 kg of plutonium, a variable geometry of reflectors, and a unique control system. This gave considerable experience and helped to benchmark calculations regarding the behaviour of a chain-reacting system made out of plutonium. The kinetic behaviour of the system just above critical could be well studied. Very clever physicists could then calculate the time behaviour of the core of a bomb on isotropic compression. What the critical parameters would be, how to achieve optimum explosive power, and its dependence on the first self sustaining neutron trigger, were all investigated". It was decommisioned in 1973.

Along with DRDO and other agencies and laboratories BARC also played an essential and important role in nuclear weapons technology and research. The plutonium used in India's 1974 Smiling Buddha nuclear test came from CIRUS. In 1974 the head of this entire nuclear bomb project was the director of the BARC, Raja Ramanna. The neutron initiator was of the polonium–beryllium type and code-named Flower was developed by BARC. The entire nuclear bomb was engineered and finally assembled by Indian engineers at Trombay before transportation to the test site. The 1974 test (and the 1998 tests that followed) gave Indian scientists the technological know-how and confidence not only to develop nuclear fuel for future reactors to be used in power generation and research but also the capacity to refine the same fuel into weapons-grade fuel to be used in the development of nuclear weapons.

BARC was also involved in the Pokhran-II series of five nuclear test conducted at Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was the second instance of nuclear testing conducted after Smiling Buddha by India. The tests achieved their main objective of giving India the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons(Hydrogen bomb/fusion bomb) with yields up to 200 Kilotons. The then Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission described each one of the explosions of Pokhran-II to be "equivalent to several tests carried out by other nuclear weapon states over decades".[4] Subsequently, India established computer simulation capability to predict the yields of nuclear explosives whose designs are related to the designs of explosives used in this test. The scientists and engineers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMDER), and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) were involved in the nuclear weapon assembly, layout, detonation and data collection.[5]

On 3 June 1998 BARC got hacked by hacktivist group milw0rm, consisting hackers from the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. They downloaded classified information, defaced the website and deleted data from servers.

BARC also designed a class of Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor IPHWR (Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor), the baseline 220 MWe design was developed from the canadian CANDU reactor. The design was later expanded into 540 MW and 700 MW designs. The IPHWR-220 (Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor-220) was the first in class series of Indian pressurized heavy-water reactor designed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. It is a Generation II reactor developed from earlier CANDU based RAPS-1 and RAPS-2 reactors built at Rawatbhata, Rajasthan. Currently there are 14 units operational at various locations in India. Upon completion of the design of IPHWR-220, a larger 540 MWe design was started around 1984 under the aegis of BARC in partnership with NPCIL.[6] Two reactors of this design were built in Tarapur, Maharashtra starting in the year 2000 and the first was commissioned on 12 September 2005. The IPHWR-540 design was later upgraded to a 700 MWe with the main objective to improve fuel efficiency and develop a standardized design to be installed at many locations across India as a fleet-mode effort. The design was also upgraded to incorporate Generation III+ features. Almost 100% of the parts of these indigenously designed reactors are manufactured by Indian industry.

Apart from its primary facility at Trombay, new facilities and campuses of BARC is coming up in atchutapuram near visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and in challakere in chitradurga district in Karnataka. The new facility in atchutapuram near visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh will come up in a land area of 4000 acres, which will be three times the size of the Trombay facility. BARC will be setting 30 MW special research reactor using an enriched uranium fuel at visakhapatnam to meet the demand for high specific activity radio isotopes and carry out extensive research and development in nuclear sector. The site will also support the nuclear submarine program.[7][8] While the facility in challakare will be built along with Special Mineral Enrichment Facility an uranium enrichment facility to increase India's enrichment capability and capacity. Special Mineral Enrichment Facility will complement Rattehalli Rare Materials Plant(RMP). Several research organizations such as IISc, DRDO and ISRO have also set up their establishments here.

BARC also designed and built India's first Pressurised water reactor at Kalpakkam, a 80MW land based prototype of INS Arihant's nuclear power unit, as well as the Arihant's main propulsion reactor. Three other submarine vessels of the class(Arihant class) including the upcoming INS arighat, S4 and S4* will also get the same class of reactors as there primary propulsion.

BARC also developed stabilization systems for Seekers, Antenna Units for India's multirole fighter HAL Tejas and contributed to Chandrayaan-I and Mangalyaan missions. BARC has contributed for collaboration with various mega science projects of National and International repute viz. CERN(LHC), India-based Neutrino Observatory(INO), ITER, Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA), Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research(FAIR), Major Atmospheric Cerenkov Experiment Telescope(MACE), etc.

Goals and objectives-

BARC is a premier nuclear and multi-disciplinary research organisation though founded primarily to serve India's nuclear program and its peaceful applications of nuclear energy does an extensive and advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, chemical engineering, Radiology and their application to health, food, medicine, agriculture and environment, accelerator and Laser Technology, electronics, High Performance Computing, instrumentation and reactor control, Materials Science & radiation monitoring, high-energy physics and plasma physics among others. When Homi Jehangir Bhabha was working at the Indian Institute of Science, there was no institute in India which had the necessary facilities for original work in nuclear physics, cosmic rays, high energy physics, and other frontiers of knowledge in physics. This prompted him to send a proposal in March 1944 to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust for establishing 'a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics'. In his proposal he wrote:

Bhabha (right) at the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland, 20 August 1955

There is at the moment in India no big school of research in the fundamental problems of physics, both theoretical and experimental. There are, however, scattered all over India competent workers who are not doing as good work as they would do if brought together in one place under proper direction. It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics, for such a school forms the spearhead of research not only in less advanced branches of physics but also in problems of immediate practical application in industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing or of very inferior quality it is entirely due to the absence of sufficient number of outstanding pure research workers who would set the standard of good research and act on the directing boards in an advisory capacity ... Moreover, when nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand. I do not think that anyone acquainted with scientific development in other countries would deny the need in India for such a school as I propose. The subjects on which research and advanced teaching would be done would be theoretical physics, especially on fundamental problems and with special reference to cosmic rays and nuclear physics, and experimental research on cosmic rays. It is neither possible nor desirable to separate nuclear physics from cosmic rays since the two are closely connected theoretically.

When Bhabha realised that technology development for the atomic energy programme could no longer be carried out within TIFR he proposed to the government to build a new laboratory entirely devoted to this purpose. For this purpose, 1200 acres of land was acquired at Trombay from the Bombay Government. Thus the Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay (AEET) started functioning in 1954. The same year the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was also established.

Dr. Bhabha established the BARC Training School to cater to the manpower needs of the expanding atomic energy research and development program. In Bhabha’s own words:

"When Nuclear Energy has been successfully applied for power production in, say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand".

Dr Bhabha emphasized on self-reliance in all the fields of nuclear science and engineering.

Areas of research-

BARC conducts extensive and advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, chemical engineering, material sciences and metallurgy, electronics instrumentation, biology and medicine, advance computing, high-energy plasma physics and associated research for Indian nuclear program and related areas. The few are:

Thorium fuel cycle-

India has a unique position in the world, in terms of availability of nuclear fuel resource. It has a limited resource of uranium but a large resource of thorium. The beach sands of Kerala and Orissa have rich reserves of monazite, which contains about 8 – 10% thorium. Studies have been carried out on all aspects of thorium fuel cycle - mining and extraction, fuel fabrication, utilisation in different reactor systems, evaluation of its various properties and irradiation behaviour, reprocessing and recycling. Some of the important milestones achieved / technological progress made in these are as follows: The process of producing thoria from monazite is well established. IREL has produced several tonnes of nuclear grade thoria powder The fabrication of thoria based fuel by powder-pellet method is well established. Few tonnes of thoria fuel have been fabricated at BARC and NFC for various irradiations in research and power reactors. Studies have been carried out regarding use of thorium in different types of reactors with respect to fuel management, reactor control and fuel utilisation. A Critical Facility has been constructed and is being used for carrying out experiments with thoria based fuels. Thoria based fuel irradiations have been carried out in our research and power reactors. Thoria fuel rods in the reflector region of research reactor CIRUS. Thoria fuel assemblies as reactivity load in research reactor Dhruva. Thoria fuel bundles for flux flattening in the Initial Core of PHWRs. Thoria blanket assemblies in FBTR. (Th-Pu)MOX fuel pins of BWR, PHWR and AHWR design in research reactors CIRUS and Dhruva.

Post-irradiation examinations have been carried out on the irradiated PHWR thoria fuel bundles and (Th-Pu) MOX fuel pins. Thermo-physical and thermodynamic properties have been evaluated for the thoria based fuels. Thoria fuel rods irradiated in CIRUS have been reprocessed at Uranium Thorium Separation Facility (UTSF) BARC. The recovered 233U has been fabricated as fuel for KAMINI reactor. Thoria blanket assemblies irradiated in FBTR have been reprocessed at IGCAR. The recovered 233U has been used for experimental irradiation of PFBR type fuel assembly in FBTR. Thoria fuel bundles irradiated in PHWRs will be reprocessed in Power Reactor Thorium Reprocessing Facility (PRTRF). The recovered 233U will be used for reactor physics experiments in AHWR-Critical Facility.

Advanced reactors AHWR and AHWR300-LEU have been designed at BARC to provide impetus to the large-scale utilisation of thorium.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre OCES / DGFS selection process has two-steps: screening(either through BARC online exam or GATE exam) to short-list candidates followed by Selection Interviews of the short-listed candidates.

Usually, for chemistry stream GATE rank up to 50 (Based on 20120-21) is shortlisted for interview and those who have cleared the BARC online exam are also shortlisted(Qualifying mark around 50% i.e; 150-165 marks(based on previous years cut. off)).

After the shortlist for interview has been published, they will release the slot selection for interview. Usually, candidates prefer the middle portion of the slot to get an understanding of the interview pattern from those students whose interview are over.

For the interview, medical test and all they will provide accommodation and food at a cheap rate at the NBH(contact them and confirm). Before the interview, there will be the document verification, you must carry all original certificates.

The interview starts with providing you with an A4 sheet and asks you to write down your favourite 4 or 5 subjects. The general trend is Chemistry reaction as first one then either heat transfer, mass transfer or fluid flow operation as 2nd, 3rd and 4th, if a fifth subject is asked then it might be process dynamics and control or chemistry thermodynamics.

Firstly go through their website, try to know in which topics they are working currently.

Most of the times they usually ask your 5 favorite subjects.

Try to give PHYSICAL as your first option , THERMODYNAMICS/K.C/QUANTUM is the subject which is important for chemistry.

Try to be perfect in your at least first two subject.Most of the times they will go to the second subject when you are unable answer the first first subject questions.

They usually take interview more than one hour, try to answer fully& conceptually, most of the time s they will give the clues when you struct in the middle of the answer, try to catch the clues and give the best answer.

At the end they may ask questions from thermodynamic even though if you have not mention in your favorite subjects list.

If you re from M.Sc back ground they will touch your M.Sc project.

QUANTUM<CHEMICAL KINETICS<ELECTROCHEMISTRY<ORGANIC<THERMODYNAMICS is regular preferably order.

be patient, dont get nervous,try to answer all answers, if your are not sure just say you dont no, so they will go to some other question.

The Interview always in your answers only, whatever you are saying you should have full clarity,based on your answers only they will ask the questions.

Be confident.

All the best!!!