Journal exposes BARC8217;s data error

The scientific paper exposing BARC8217;s mistakes was written by BARC scientists Srinivasan Ganesan, Umasankari Kannan, P D Krishnamani, V Jagannathan, R P Jain and R Karthikeyan in the Reactor Design section.

The issue pertains to protactinium with atomic mass 231 pa-231, an element that occurs in fission waste.

Using incorrect published data without verification, BARC scientists, according to the current science paper, came to the conclusion that pa-231 is a better fuel than uranium-235. BARC propagated the idea that a football sized pa-231 would go quot;criticalquot;, a conclusion with major implications for nuclear waste disposal.

But this conclusion is totally wrong as refined analysis using accurate data has shown that pa-231 cannot become critical even if it is as big as the moon, the paper says.

Significantly, the work by Ganesan and colleagues re-evaluating BARC8217;s earlier work on pa-231 was supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA and not BARC.

According to a senior BARC scientist such fatal errors were committed because of BARC8217;s reliance on freely available published data. 8220;The culture of doing original work towards fundamental generation, compilation, and evaluation of basic data is absent in BARC,quot; he said.

8220;This is going to land us in difficulties when we go for thorium fuel cycle on a large scale because no free nuclear data is available for Thorium or Uranium-233,quot; he said.

8220;Fortunately for us, the integral data for Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 and the basic data publicly available were good enough to design our nuclear reactors and explosives.quot;

The scientific paper, however, made it clear that 8220;use of wrong nuclear data8221; and not bad science was responsible for the mistakes in BARC8217;s earlier publications.

quot;It needs courage to criticize BARC8217;s work as authorities do not encourage its staff to involve in any activity that would show BARC in bad light,quot; a BARC scientist said in obvious reference to the victimization of a fellow scientist for speaking against India8217;s nuclear test.