VZCZCXRO6010
OO RUEHCHI RUEHDBU RUEHNEH RUEHPW RUEHSK RUEHSL
DE RUEHBI #0450/01 3370533
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O P 030533Z DEC 09
FM AMCONSUL MUMBAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7582
INFO RUCNIND/ALL INDO COLLECTIVE
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUCNNSG/NUCLEAR SUPPLIERS GROUP
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 2815

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MUMBAI 000450 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
USDOE FOR SHANE JOHNSON, TOM CUTLER, AND COURTNEY GILLESPIE 
STATE FOR EEB/ESC/IEC  DAVID HENRY 
NSC FOR ANISH GOEL 
UNVIE FOR GEOFF PYATT 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: IN ENRG TRGY BEXP EINV ECON PREL
SUBJECT: KAKODKAR RETIRES, BARC'S BANERJEE NEW HEAD OF INDIA'S 
NUCLEAR PROGRAM 
 
REF: A. 09 Mumbai 341 
     ¶B. 08 Mumbai 559 
 
MUMBAI 00000450  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:  On November 30, Anil Kakodkar, the guardian 
of India's nuclear energy program and one of the chief 
negotiators of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation 
Agreement, retired after over 45 years with India's civil and 
military nuclear energy programs.  His successor, Srikumar 
Banerjee, will oversee India's ambitious plan to generate 63 GW 
of nuclear energy by 2032 as the chairman of the Atomic Energy 
Commission and the Secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy 
(DAE).  Banerjee, a metallurgist, has managed the Bhabha Atomic 
Energy Research Center (BARC) for the past five years, India's 
research hub for civil and military nuclear applications.  He 
will now be instrumental in implementing civil nuclear 
cooperation.  However, Kakokdar may yet retain a key role in 
determining India's nuclear energy future.  The government 
reportedly is considering a plan to establish a nuclear energy 
committee chaired by Kakodkar with authority over India's entire 
nuclear energy landscape.  If this materializes, Kakodkar's role 
in shaping the course of India's nuclear future is not likely to 
diminish anytime soon and could overshadow his replacement.  End 
Summary. 
 
 
 
¶2.  (U) Dr. Anil Kakodkar, the Secretary of the Department of 
Atomic Energy and one of the primary negotiators of the 
U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, retired on 
November 30 after exhausting his extension to stay past 
mandatory retirement.  Srikumar Banerjee, the Director of BARC 
-- India's main nuclear research and development center where 
the country's nuclear weapons capability was forged -- assumed 
charge December 1 as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy 
Commission and the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy 
(DAE).  He will be responsible for overseeing India's efforts to 
achieve 63 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2032 and to grow the 
share of nuclear energy in the total energy mix from the current 
level of three percent to 20 percent by 2050. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (U) Banerjee, now 63 years old, has been in charge of BARC 
since April 2004.  Internationally renowned for his work in 
physical metallurgy and materials science, Banerjee is the 
recipient of several prestigious awards (bio paragraph 6).  As 
the director of BARC, Banerjee has been responsible for 
complying with the requirement of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear 
Cooperation Agreement to separate the civil and military sides 
of BARC.  Banerjee announced on November 11 that India would 
shut down and decommission BARC's 40-MW CIRUS nuclear research 
reactor by December 2010.   (Note: The CIRUS reactor, which 
utilizes a Canadian design with heavy water, supplied the 
fissile material used in India's 1974 nuclear test.  End Note). 
 
 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Congenoffs have interacted with Banerjee when he was 
the head of BARC.  He has been a warm and hospitable host to 
several delegations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
Banerjee has promoted BARC's work in the field of nuclear 
sciences, especially relating to medical radiation and crop 
irradiation.  He comes across as an open and honest person who 
appears to be favorably inclined to the United States.  However, 
he can also be impatient and pedantic in his outlook.  For 
example, Banerjee persistently interrupted his fellow 
scientists, either correcting them, urging them to speed up the 
process or altogether taking over the presentation made before a 
visiting delegation from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
 Inside sources believe that R.K. Sinha, the Director of the 
Reactor Design & Development group at BARC, will be assigned to 
oversee the BARC facility. 
 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU) During a meeting with Congenoffs in early November, 
Ramesh Deshpande, who recently retired from the DAE and now 
works for Westinghouse, expressed skepticism about Banerjee's 
ability to effectively succeed Kakodkar as the head of the 
country's nuclear energy program.  According to Deshpande, 
Banerjee is more of a metallurgist than a nuclear scientist.  He 
said Kakodkar was a workaholic and a micro-manager with a 
penchant for details who scrutinized every document that passed 
through his hands.  Deshpande claimed that the Indian government 
 
MUMBAI 00000450  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
was not able to find a suitable successor to Kakodkar due to a 
lack of candidates of Kakodkar's caliber and experience.  The 
government is therefore considering setting up a Nuclear Energy 
Committee chaired by Kakodkar to oversee India's ambitious 
nuclear energy plans, he said.  If this materializes, Kakodkar, 
although officially retired from government service, would 
maintain overall control of the Indian nuclear energy landscape 
and continue to be a key player in shaping the country's nuclear 
future. 
 
 
 
Biography 
 
------------ 
 
 
 
¶6.  (U) Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, the recently appointed Chairman 
of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secretary of the 
Department of Atomic Energy, joined the Bhabha Atomic Research 
Centre in 1967 and became its director in April 2004.  He is 
internationally well known for his work in the field of physical 
metallurgy and materials science.  He has contributed 
extensively to basic research on the metallurgy of zirconium and 
titanium-based alloys and their applications in the development 
of thermo-mechanical treatments for processing several nuclear 
reactor components.  His work provides a basis for analyzing the 
radiation stability of structural materials in nuclear reactors. 
His work on the development of shape memory alloys and their 
applications in heat shrinkable couplings is finding 
applications in the light combat aircraft project.  His work 
also provided a basis for developing a novel fabrication 
schedule for pressure tubes used in the indigenously-developed 
pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs).  Dr. Banerjee has been 
the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Shanti 
Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Engineering Sciences (1989), G.D. 
Birla Gold Medal of the Indian Institute of Metals (1997), INSA 
Prize for Materials Science (2001) and Indian Nuclear Society 
Award (2003), as well as the Acta Metallurgica Outstanding Paper 
Award (1984) and the Humboldt Research Award (2004).  Dr. 
Banerjee is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Indian 
Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering and 
the National Academy of Sciences.  He has been a visiting 
faculty member at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; the 
Max-Planck Institut fuer Metalforschung Institut fuer Physik, 
Stuttgart; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow and Awardee 
at the Forschungszeutrum, Juelich, Germany; and the University 
of Cincinnati and Ohio State University. 
 
FOLMSBEE