The Department of Atomic Energy was established on August 3, 1954. The last 50 years have been very productive and the Department has been able to establish a network of institutions engaged in R&D as well as industrial activities and acquire expertise in all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. The first stage of the nuclear power programme is in commercial domain and the second stage has been launched with the initiation of work on 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). Work on the reactors to be launched in the third stage is being pursued in right earnest. A wide range of technologies have been developed to come to the present stage of exploitation of nuclear energy and efforts are continuing to develop technologies for the future. Technologies to be developed for future applications include those necessary for building accelerator driven sub-critical reactor system (ADS) and fusion technologies. Several applications of radiation and isotope technologies for improving the quality of life have been developed and deployed and efforts on this front are also to be continued.

Both the research centres and the grant-in-aid institutions of DAE carry out research and development. While the research centres focus more sharply on technology and product development, the grant-in-aid institutions concentrate relatively more on basic research. In the process, the research centres and the grant-in-aid institutions have provided high caliber technologists as well as scientists to the Department, but for which India’s spectacular strides in the field of nuclear sciences and their applications would not have been possible. To further accelerate this process, the DAE has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Human Resource Development to set up an Institute to be called ‘Homi Bhabha National Institute, (HBNI)’ having the status of a deemed university1 .

The occasion of the golden jubilee year was considered as the appropriate occasion for examining what the Department has achieved in the past and to plan for the future. For this exercise, several satellite meetings were organized and they culminated in a plenary vision meeting during May 17-19, 2004 held at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). Wide-ranging discussions were held on various topics, which were divided in the following categories.
Energy vision,
Societal vision,
Technological vision,
Directions for basic research and possible feedback into DAE programmes, and
Human resource development.

The Organisation

This report summarizes the deliberations. The mandate of the Department is to develop and deploy technologies for the production of nuclear power and to harness applications of radiation and isotope technologies for societal benefit. To fulfill this mandate, several technologies need to be developed and it is necessary to carry out basic research to provide a strong foundation to ongoing developments and to spur new developments. To meet all these objectives, human resource development is the most important. Thus all the topics listed earlier are interrelated. Cross-references are provided to highlight certain specific interrelations.