Talk:CIRUS reactor
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Dear Madam, / Dear Sir;
The CIRUS research (and plutonium producing) reactor that Canada supplied to India under the 1955 Colombo Plan is NOT the Canada-India Reactor United States. The letters U and S do NOT stand for United States. This is a long held misconception by some of our American cousins.
The reactor was named the Canada - India Reactor (CIR) and yes the United States supplied the heavy water for the moderator system. The reactor was renamed the CIRUS reactor by the Indian Government. Dr Homi Sethna, who had been appointed to succeed Dr. Homi Bhabha (who died in an airplance crash) as Director of the Trombay Nuclear Research Centre (later renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, BARC)presided at the meeting in December 1965 when the name CIRUS was adopted.He stated that CIRUS was the abbreviation for Canada India Reactor Uranium System. He also mentioned that CIRUS was chosen in memory of CYRUS, the shah of ancient Persia.
From the outset of negotiations between Canada and India leading up to the decision to proceed with the CIR project the Indian authorities were very unwilling to accept IAEA safeguards on the reactor. Instead a system of bilateral safeguards was incoprporated into the Canada - India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.
I performed the first and only safeguards inspection at CIR in July 1968 with my colleague John McManus. Our report to the Canadian Government cited the unexplained premature removal of fuel rods from CIR. We suspected that the Indians wished to ensure that the plutonium extracted from these rods contained only trace quantities of Pu 240.
Jon Jennekens (former peacekeeper (Korea), former nuclear operations engineer at NRX, former staff member and President of the Atomic Energy Control Board and former Deputy Director General (Safeguards) International Atomic Energy Agency.
