KAKODKAR RETIRES, BARC'S BANERJEE NEW HEAD OF INDIA'S

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MUMBAI 000450 SENSITIVE SIPDIS USDOE FOR SHANE JOHNSON, TOM CUTLER, AND COURTNEY GILLESPIE STATE FOR EEB/ESC/IEC DAVID HENRY NSC FOR ANISH GOEL UNVIE FOR GEOFF PYATT E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: IN ENRG TRGY BEXP EINV ECON PREL SUBJECT: KAKODKAR RETIRES, BARC'S BANERJEE NEW HEAD OF INDIA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM REF: A. 09 Mumbai 341 ¶B. 08 Mumbai 559 MUMBAI 00000450 001.2 OF 002 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: On November 30, Anil Kakodkar, the guardian of India's nuclear energy program and one of the chief negotiators of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, retired after over 45 years with India's civil and military nuclear energy programs. His successor, Srikumar Banerjee, will oversee India's ambitious plan to generate 63 GW of nuclear energy by 2032 as the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Banerjee, a metallurgist, has managed the Bhabha Atomic Energy Research Center (BARC) for the past five years, India's research hub for civil and military nuclear applications. He will now be instrumental in implementing civil nuclear cooperation. However, Kakokdar may yet retain a key role in determining India's nuclear energy future. The government reportedly is considering a plan to establish a nuclear energy committee chaired by Kakodkar with authority over India's entire nuclear energy landscape. If this materializes, Kakodkar's role in shaping the course of India's nuclear future is not likely to diminish anytime soon and could overshadow his replacement. End Summary. ¶2. (U) Dr. Anil Kakodkar, the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy and one of the primary negotiators of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, retired on November 30 after exhausting his extension to stay past mandatory retirement. Srikumar Banerjee, the Director of BARC -- India's main nuclear research and development center where the country's nuclear weapons capability was forged -- assumed charge December 1 as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). He will be responsible for overseeing India's efforts to achieve 63 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2032 and to grow the share of nuclear energy in the total energy mix from the current level of three percent to 20 percent by 2050. ¶3. (U) Banerjee, now 63 years old, has been in charge of BARC since April 2004. Internationally renowned for his work in physical metallurgy and materials science, Banerjee is the recipient of several prestigious awards (bio paragraph 6). As the director of BARC, Banerjee has been responsible for complying with the requirement of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement to separate the civil and military sides of BARC. Banerjee announced on November 11 that India would shut down and decommission BARC's 40-MW CIRUS nuclear research reactor by December 2010. (Note: The CIRUS reactor, which utilizes a Canadian design with heavy water, supplied the fissile material used in India's 1974 nuclear test. End Note). ¶4. (SBU) Congenoffs have interacted with Banerjee when he was the head of BARC. He has been a warm and hospitable host to several delegations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Banerjee has promoted BARC's work in the field of nuclear sciences, especially relating to medical radiation and crop irradiation. He comes across as an open and honest person who appears to be favorably inclined to the United States. However, he can also be impatient and pedantic in his outlook. For example, Banerjee persistently interrupted his fellow scientists, either correcting them, urging them to speed up the process or altogether taking over the presentation made before a visiting delegation from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Inside sources believe that R.K. Sinha, the Director of the Reactor Design & Development group at BARC, will be assigned to oversee the BARC facility. ¶5. (SBU) During a meeting with Congenoffs in early November, Ramesh Deshpande, who recently retired from the DAE and now works for Westinghouse, expressed skepticism about Banerjee's ability to effectively succeed Kakodkar as the head of the country's nuclear energy program. According to Deshpande, Banerjee is more of a metallurgist than a nuclear scientist. He said Kakodkar was a workaholic and a micro-manager with a penchant for details who scrutinized every document that passed through his hands. Deshpande claimed that the Indian government MUMBAI 00000450 002.2 OF 002 was not able to find a suitable successor to Kakodkar due to a lack of candidates of Kakodkar's caliber and experience. The government is therefore considering setting up a Nuclear Energy Committee chaired by Kakodkar to oversee India's ambitious nuclear energy plans, he said. If this materializes, Kakodkar, although officially retired from government service, would maintain overall control of the Indian nuclear energy landscape and continue to be a key player in shaping the country's nuclear future. Biography -------------- ¶6. (U) Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, the recently appointed Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, joined the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1967 and became its director in April 2004. He is internationally well known for his work in the field of physical metallurgy and materials science. He has contributed extensively to basic research on the metallurgy of zirconium and titanium-based alloys and their applications in the development of thermo-mechanical treatments for processing several nuclear reactor components. His work provides a basis for analyzing the radiation stability of structural materials in nuclear reactors. His work on the development of shape memory alloys and their applications in heat shrinkable couplings is finding applications in the light combat aircraft project. His work also provided a basis for developing a novel fabrication schedule for pressure tubes used in the indigenously-developed pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs). Dr. Banerjee has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Engineering Sciences (1989),G.D. Birla Gold Medal of the Indian Institute of Metals (1997),INSA Prize for Materials Science (2001) and Indian Nuclear Society Award (2003),as well as the Acta Metallurgica Outstanding Paper Award (1984) and the Humboldt Research Award (2004). Dr. Banerjee is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; the Max-Planck Institut fuer Metalforschung Institut fuer Physik, Stuttgart; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow and Awardee at the Forschungszeutrum, Juelich, Germany; and the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University. FOLMSBEE