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A month after his government granted the final clearance to the ambitious LIGO project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Thursday remotely lay the foundation stone for the construction of the facility in Hingoli district in Maharashtra. Also, to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 nuclear tests, the Prime Minister would launch several projects of the atomic energy department.
LIGO, short for Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory that is meant to detect gravitational waves, is set to become the largest scientific facility in India. Two existing LIGO observatories in the United States detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, a feat that was acknowledged with the Nobel Prize two years later. Since then, two more similar detectors have come onboard, one in Italy and the other in Japan. LIGO India would be the fifth node of this network, and possibly the last.
The LIGO facility, which involves the construction of two 4-km long vacuum chambers in L-shape along with other structures, would come up at nearly 600 acres of land in Hingoli district, about 450 km east of Mumbai. The facility is set to become operational by 2030.
Along with LIGO, the Prime Minister would unveil several other nuclear energy related projects to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1998 tests. The anniversary is commemorated as National Technology Day every year.
A new Molybdenum-99 production facility in Mumbai and a Rare Earth Permanent magnet Plant in Visakhapatnam would be inaugurated by the Prime Minister.
The new magnet plant, which has been built inside an existing facility of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Visakhapatnam, would produce rare earth magnets like Samarium-Cobalt and Neodymium-Iron-Boron. These magnets are critical components for a variety of high technology products in telecommunications, electric vehicles, microelectronics, wind turbines, airplanes and also in weapons. As of now, the supply chains of these magnets are highly dependent on China. India plans to use locally sourced rare earth elements to produce these magnets.
The Molybdenum-99 production facility, located inside the main BARC complex in Mumbai, and the other projects to be launched by the Prime Minister are meant to use nuclear energy for health benefits. Molybdenum-99 is used in imaging procedures for early detection of cancer and heart diseases.
A National Hadron Beam Therapy Facility at Tata Memorial Centre, a radiological research unit, and a Women and Children Cancer Hospital, all in Navi Mumbai, and a Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Visakhapatnam are the other healthcare facilities to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister.
In addition, the Prime Minister would also lay the foundation stones for a cancer hospital in Jatni in Odisha and a new block at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai.
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