Nuclear boom for students

India’s nuclear expansion story has caused people unrest in Jaitapur (Maharashtra) and Kudankulam (Tamil Nadu), but for Delhi University’s Aakanksha Saxena and her friends it has provided them with a new career horizon.

Updated on: Sep 23, 2011, 16:56:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi:

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India’s nuclear expansion story has caused people unrest in Jaitapur (Maharashtra) and Kudankulam (Tamil Nadu), but for Delhi University’s Aakanksha Saxena and her friends it has provided them with a new career horizon.

Saxena was among the first batch of the university’s masters in nuclear science and technology, country’s only programme of its type, and had a plenty of jobs on offer even before they finished their course in this August.

"(nuclear) science is an emerging area and I thought to try my luck," Saxena said, days after she opted for a top job in French Atomic Energy Commission, Cadarache. Not just her, all her batch-mates have earned lucrative jobs in nuclear establishments in India, Germany and France, the three major nuclear energy players in the world.

The university’s Physics Department started a dual degree course with University of Paris in 2008, in which the students learn nuclear science for the first two years in the home university and then with the foreign partner. In the end, students get two master degrees --- one from Delhi University and other from University of Paris.

"The course is such that the students get practical experience of working in a nuclear reactor," said Professor S K Puri of Delhi University, the brain behind the course. The university invested Rs 10 crore to set up a laboratory to train students in nuclear science that needs 54,000 new scientists for upcoming reactors around the world.

India alone needs about 9,000 scientists to run the proposed 15 nuclear power stations. Availability of scientists is very low. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which have courses on nuclear science, would meet just 40% of the demand.

It was the right time to opt for a career in nuclear science, as Pradeep Ghosh, who has got a job in a nuclear laboratory in Germany, found out. "We had several options in the time of economic recession," Ghosh said. In fact, each student had 2.5 job offers from the best nuclear establishments in India and abroad. Five of the 11 students of the batch have been selected by BARC at senior scientist level.

Puri said nuclear science is catching imagination of Indian education system but the high cost of education is the biggest stumbling block. "A good nuclear laboratory could cost 10-15 crore and even some good government universities cannot afford that sort of money," he said. To meet the growing demand, universities need government funding to start good quality nuclear courses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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