2005-01-21 20:27 *INDIA * RUSSIA * NUKE * REACTOR * TRANSFER *
RUSSIA TRANSFERS TO INDIA FIRST NUCLEAR REACTOR FOR KUDANKULAM POWER PROJECT
NEW DELHI, January 21 (RIA Novosti's Natalia Shishlo) - Russia has passed to India a nuclear reactor for the first unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu. The reactor was manufactured by the OAO Izhora Factories in St.Petersburg, Russian Consul General Mikhail Mgeladze told RIA Novosti on Friday.
At the official ceremony of passing the reactor, Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Commission and secretary of the Nuclear Energy Department at the Indian government, noted that work on the Kudankulam project is to the schedule. He thanked the Russian side for the timely production and delivery of the 320-tonne nuclear reactor for the plant's first unit. Mr. Anil Kakodkar recalled that 27,000 tonnes of equipment for the project had earlier been supplied from Russia.
The Kudankulam is working to build, with Russian assistance, two power units with VVER-1000 (water-moderated) reactors of 1,000 megawatts each. The first will be commissioned in 2007, second in 2008.
Mr.Anil Kakodkar noted the reliability and safety of Russian equipment, the reactors' degree of protection from calamities, tsunami, hurricanes and air catastrophes.
He said that during the December 26 tsunami the ship carrying the Russian reactor was in open sea off the Indian shores. No damage has been done to the equipment.
In turn, Mikhail Mgeladze voiced the hope that electricity supply to four south Indian states will greatly improve with the start-up of the power unit in 2007-2008.
The nuclear power reactor reached India on January 15, the Russian diplomat said.
India designs nuclear reactor to generate energy from Thorium
India designs nuclear reactor to generate energy from Thorium:
[India News]: Bangalore, Jan 20 : India has designed an advanced heavy water reactor aimed at generating energy from thorium, Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar said today.
"That (the reactor) is a technology demonstrator essentially aimed at getting energy from thorium, and we have finished the design, and it's being done at BARC (Babha Atomic Research Centre)," he said here.
"Design is over and the peer reviews are over. Safety reviews are currently going on..Then we will take decision about construction," Kakodkar told reporters here after a function at Avasarala Automation Ltd.
He said a vast energy potential of India's thorium reserves needs to be tapped not only as source for electricity production but also as a primary energy source. But the Secretary in the Department of Atomic Energy stressed that it should be done in a sequence.
"We are going through the three-stage nuclear power programme. In the first stage we are in the commercial domain which is the construction of pressurised heavy water reactors, he said.
Kakodkar said the next stage is fast breed reactors which would enhance the power potential with available uranium. "We have already launched construction of a 500 mw unit." "When we build up sufficient number of fast breeder reactors, that would be the appropriate time to switch on thorium systems on a large scale..Because the quantity of thorium that we have in this country is very large." "What we are doing now is technology development. Advanced Heavy Water reactor is one step in that technology development," he added. PTI
‘Bombay Dreams’ coming to India!20th Jan 2005 17.45 IST By Aparajita Ghosh Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical ‘Bombay Dreams’ could soon come to the city that inspired it.Ironic as it may sound, but the play that captures the essence of Hindi films, their stereotypes and their gaudy glamour, is now likely to come to India after a rather disappointing run at New York’s Broadway where it wasn’t able to breakeven its investment of $14 million.
‘Bombay Dreams’ had a dream run at London’s West End where it played for about two years (from June 2002 to 2004). For the American version of the musical, certain changes were made in the cast and the script as well. But now that plans are afoot to bring the show to India, the question is – Will it appeal to the audience that have already been so much exposed to this genre?Kerry Comerford, general manager of Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Company in the Asia Pacific, has the answer: “It will require some re-visiting, as audiences here are exposed to this type of fare, so we have to see if they'll want to see it live.”According to Comerford, there has been a lot of interest from India, Singapore, Malaysia, China and South Korea.“So we are here to identify possible venues and sponsors,” he said in a news conference.It would cost $7 million to take the play to India and a new cast will be found for the Indian production. The music will have the best of both Broadway and West End.‘Bombay Dreams’ tells the story of a slum dweller who dreams of becoming a Bollywood movie star and falls in love with the daughter of a film director. The story was written by British writer Meera Syal.The play has music by A R Rahman and choreography by Farah Khan .
India to put three satellites in space this year:
Tirupati, Jan 21 : India would put into space three satellites-- one for mapping applications and the other two with multiple uses-- this year, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said here today.
Inaugurating a three-day colloquim on international network of tropical atmosphere radars (INTRA), Nair told reporters that ISRO will launch the CAROSAT-I in March end or April first week from Sriharikota.
The INSAT-4A and INSAT-4B would be launched from Kourou in French Guyana in June and December this year respectively.
No country in the world has space based system capacity to detect or predict natural calamities such as earthquake or its after-effects like Tusnami, he said, admitting that the ISRO had not been aware of the recent killer Tsunami.
'The Tsunami is an unexpected event that comes once in a century. Even the developed countries' satellites cannot pick up the images of the waves of the Tsunami as the height of the waves is very minimum,' he said.
ISRO is looking at developing data collection platform that can warn about Tsunami, a little bit in advance. Now, there were 200 weather centres in the country and 200 more such centres would soon be set up even in the ocean to know about the cyclones and typhoons in advance, he said.
The 3.5 lakh km long unmanned lunar mission by India will be conducted from Bangalore in 2007 end at a cost of Rs 380 crore. PTI
SWASTIKA - Whose symbol is it anyway?
JANUARY 19, 2005 11:40:23 AM
Whose swastika is it anyway? Harry the Heil-raiser's unfortunate choice of fancy dress at a party has raised a political controversy in Europe where the swastika symbol (also known as a 'fylfot', a 15th century medieval decorative motif) has been seared into consciousness as an odious emblem of the Nazi Holocaust.
However in India, and in several other parts of the world, the symbol has many shades of more salubrious meaning. Derived from the Sanskrit 'swast', denoting wellness or health, the swastika is an auspicious sign, found in books of accounts as well as on the threshold of homes and on the signboards of pharmacies, symbolising physical, social and economic well-being. Ancient Mesopotamian coins also bear the imprint of the swastika.
The right-hand, or clockwise, swastika represents the seeming passage of the sun across the sky in the northern hemisphere from east to west. In Jainism, it also stands for the seventh Tirthankar, as well as being a reminder of the four possibilities of rebirth: in the animal or plant domain, in hell, on Earth, or in the realm of the spirit. The left-hand swastika, is emblematic of night, occult forces and the goddess Kali.
The swastika, known as the 'crux gammata', occurs in early Christian iconography. The Mayan civilisation of central America had its own version of the swastika, as did north American peoples like the Navajo.
How did the Nazis appropriate this universal and benign symbol and turn it into a badge of murderous ideology? In 1910, a German nationalist proposed it as a logo for anti-Semitism, a suggestion taken up by the National Socialists when they formed their party a decade later. The symbol was incorporated in the flag of Nazi Germany in 1935.
Interestingly, the word 'heil' (as in 'Heil Hitler') means both 'hail' and 'heal'. Was Hitler seen as someone who would 'heal' Germany of the 'disease' of Jews and other 'undesirables' who had subverted the health of the body politic? When I visited it last summer, a German guide at Berlin's Bundestag suggested this possibility.
Blissful in his ignorance, Harry didn't realise what a bitter pill of cross-cultural polemics he was about to swallow when he blithely donned his armband to go partying
ASTROSAT will be open to international observers: "Mumbai, Jan 17 : India's first scientific satellite for astronomical observation 'ASTROSAT', which is scheduled to be launched in 2007, will be open to international observers, Rajya Sabha MP and former Chairman Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), K Kasturirangan said here today.
The ASTROSAT, weighing more than 1.6 tonnes, is planned to be placed in an orbit of 560 km at inclination less than 18 degrees, Kasturiangan said while inaugurating the COSPAR (Committee of Space Research) Colloquium on 'Spectra and Timing of Compact x-ray Binaries', being held in India for the first time.
'Needless to emphasise, in keeping with traditions of International cooperation, the observatory will be open to international observers,' he said, adding that Canada has already shown interest in using the country's first multi-wavelength satellite for asrtonomy.
Kasturirangan said COSPAR is being held at a time when India is poised to take such major steps as ASTROSAT and Chandrayan-I (moon missions).
Explaining to international scientists about India's own heritage in the field of High Energy Astronomy, he said, the first efforts in space science dates back to early 1940s.
The work on x-ray, gamma-ray and infra-red astronomy and solar system studies over the decades has culminated in ASRTOSAT and the niche areas that Astrosat would be addressing inlcude long duration temporal and spectra studies of variable sources, highest angular resolution ultra-violet survey, simultaneous broad band spectrum and simultaneous timings at multi-wavelengths of galactic and extragalactic objects, he said. PTI "
NASA/French Satellite Data Reveal New Details of Tsunami
January 17, 2005
For the first time, orbiting satellites have observed and measured a major tsunami event in open ocean, the Indian Ocean tsunami that resulted from the magnitude 9 earthquake southwest of Sumatra on December 26. The measurements are of tremendous value to researchers worldwide and will aid our understanding of these eavents.
U.S. and French teams working in parallel with altimetry data from the joint NaASA/French Space Agency Jason and Topex/Poseidon oceanography satellites have independently confirmed the satellites' measurements of the height of the tsunami waves as they radiated from the earthquake's epicenter. The satellites flew over the Bay of Bengal about 150 kilometers (93 miles) apart approximately two hours after the quake.
'These two satellites make only about 13 Earth revolutions daily, with each orbit passing over the Earth approximately 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) away from its last,' said Dr. Philip Callahan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Callahan has been searching for tsunami signals in satellite radar altimeter data since Topex/Poseidon's launch in 1992. 'There is a very low probability of capturing observations in any given location within two hours of an event like this. The fact that Jason captured the tsunami's signals is serendipitous, but is nevertheless a major boon for oceanographers,' he said.
'The observations made by Jason and Topex/Poseidon are unique and of tremendous value for testing and improving tsunami computer models and developing future tsunami early warning systems,' said JPL's Dr. Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason and Topex/Poseidon project scientist. 'The satellite altimeter data currently take a minimum of five hours to process"
THE WHY STORY Why CIA thinks India is shining : HindustanTimes.com: "THE WHY STORY Why CIA thinks India is shining
Aditya Sinha
New Delhi, January 15
The National Intelligence Council, which provides the CIA chief with long-term strategic thinking, has, in its report Mapping the Global Future, said the major global trend of 2020 will be the rise of India and China. And India may have an edge as there is �less uncertainty� because of its �well-entrenched� democratic institutions.
Financial muscle: Should China�s growth slip a bit, India will become the world�s fastest growing economy. The NIC estimates there are presently about 300 million Indians earning $2,000-4,000 a year; not only will their numbers and salaries grow, there�ll also be a huge consumption explosion.
With Asia already holding three-fourths of the world�s currency reserves, it�s predicted that a basket of reserve currencies including the Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi and the rupee will become the standard practice� with the percentage held in dollars falling. Interest rate decisions taken here will impact markets in NY and London, and returns from our markets are likely to become a global benchmark for portfolio managers.
Gray matter: Technologies of information, biological, material and nanotechnology will help India�s prospects for joining the �First World�, the report says.
India is better positioned than most countries to integrate and apply new technologies, which not only help leapfrog stages of development, but also land it on the right side of the widening gulf between the �haves� and the �have-nots�, globally. And because of the purchasing power of its huge market, India will be able to"
