CIRUS (Canada India Reactor Utility Services) was a research reactor at the

Bhabha Atomic Research Center The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It was founded by Homi Jehangir Bhabha as the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 19 ...

(BARC) in

Trombay Trombay is an eastern suburb in Bombay (Mumbai), India. History Trombay was called Neat's Tongue because of its shape. Once, it was an island nearly 5 km East of Mumbai and was about 8 km in length and 8 km in width. The island ...

near

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. CIRUS was supplied by

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

in 1954, but used heavy water (

deuterium Deuterium (or hydrogen-2, symbol or deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen (the other being protium, or hydrogen-1). The nucleus of a deuterium atom, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one ...

oxide) supplied by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It was the second nuclear reactor to be built in India. It was modeled on the Canadian Chalk River National Research X-perimental (NRX) reactor. The 40 MW reactor used natural uranium fuel, while using heavy water as a moderator. It is a tank reactor type with a core size of 3.14 m (H) × 2.67 m (D). It first went

critical Critical or Critically may refer to: *Critical, or critical but stable, medical states **Critical, or intensive care medicine *Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences. *Critical Software, a company specializing in ...

July 10, 1960. The reactor was not under

IAEA The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 195 ...

safeguards (which did not exist when the reactor was sold), although Canada stipulated, and the U.S. supply contract for the heavy water explicitly specified, that it only be used for peaceful purposes. Nonetheless, CIRUS produced some of India's initial

weapons-grade Weapons-grade nuclear material is any fissionable nuclear material that is pure enough to make a nuclear weapon or has properties that make it particularly suitable for nuclear weapons use. Plutonium and uranium in grades normally used in nucle ...

plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...

stockpile,Exporting Disaster ~ The Cost of Selling CANDU Reactors (3)
Ccnr.org. Retrieved on 2013-12-06. as well as the plutonium for India's 1974

Pokhran-I Operation Smiling BuddhaThis test has many code names. Civilian scientists called it "Operation Smiling Buddha" and the Indian Army referred to it as ''Operation Happy Krishna''. According to Military Intelligence Corps (United States Army), U ...

(Codename Smiling Buddha) nuclear test, the country's first nuclear test. At a capacity factor of 50–80%, CIRUS can produce 6.6–10.5 kg of plutonium a year. CIRUS was shut down in September 1997 for refurbishment and was scheduled to resume operation in 2003. The reactor was brought back into operation two years late in 2005. During refurbishing, a low-temperature vacuum evaporation-based desalination unit was also coupled to the reactor to serve as demonstration of using

waste heat Waste heat is heat that is produced by a machine, or other process that uses energy, as a byproduct of doing work. All such processes give off some waste heat as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. Waste heat has lower utility ...

from a research reactor for sea desalination. Even if the reactor has a life of twenty more years, India had declared that this reactor would be shut down by 2010 in accordance with the Indo-US nuclear accord reached between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

. The reactor was shut down on 31 December 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cirus reactor Canada–India relations Nuclear technology in India Military nuclear reactors 1954 establishments in Bombay State