Post-graduate science students get to experiment at IUAC centre

There seems to be some ray of hope for students pursuing MTech in Nuclear Science and Technology and MSc Physics in Delhi University who have been unable to conduct experiments since the Cobalt 60 leakage incident earlier this year.

There seems to be some ray of hope for students pursuing MTech in Nuclear Science and Technology and MSc Physics in Delhi University who have been unable to conduct experiments since the Cobalt 60 leakage incident earlier this year.

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The two departments have approached the University Grants Commission (UGC) recognised Inter University Accelerator Centre (IUAC) located at Vasant Vihar to let the students conduct their experiments there.

The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) on September 15 had withdrawn permission given to Delhi University (DU) to use any radioactive source in its labs as it failed two deadlines to submit its final report on the radiation exposure incident at Mayapuri scrap yard within the stipulated period.

Around 350 students from both the departments have been affected due to the ban. With just about one and a half months to go for the first semester examinations, which are scheduled in November, the students have not been able to conduct a single experiment.

The second-year students of MSc Physics with specialisation in nuclear science have already started conducting experiments there.

“Students have already done few experiments at the centre and will be given marks based on those,” said professor SK Mandal, associate professor, department of Physics and Astrophysics.

But the problem for the first-year MSc Physics students whose number is 300, persists.

“We are still to figure out how to allocate the marks meant for experiments,” added Mandal.

The Department of MTech Nuclear Science and Technology have also confirmed that their students will go to conduct the experiments at Inter University Accelerator Centre.

Meanwhile, the Delhi University vice-chancellor had recently convened an emergency meeting of the members of the Executive Council where the enquiry report on the Cobalt 60 leakage incident that was to be submitted to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board was tabled.

In the same meeting, a three-member sub-committee was also formed to fix the responsibility of the persons who have been named in the report.