The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India’s leading nuclear research facility, located in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. In January 1954, Homi Jehangir Bhabha established the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) as a multidisciplinary research program critical to India’s nuclear program. It is run by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), which is directly overseen by India’s Prime Minister.
BARC is a multidisciplinary research facility with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development in nuclear science, chemical engineering, material sciences and metallurgy, electronic instrumentation, biology and medicine, supercomputing, high-energy physics, and plasma physics, as well as associated research for the Indian nuclear program and related areas.
The primary mission of BARC is to maintain peaceful nuclear energy applications. It oversees all aspects of nuclear power generation, from reactor theoretical design to computer modelling and simulation, risk analysis, the development and testing of new reactor fuel and materials, and so on. It also studies spent fuel processing and nuclear waste disposal. Other research areas of interest include isotope applications in industry, radiation technologies and their applications to health, food and medicine, agriculture, and the environment, accelerator and laser technology, electronics, instrumentation, and so on. BARC operates several research reactors throughout the country.
