Saha Insitute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) has requested the West Bengal government to allot 200 acres of land for its Rs 6,000 crore Synchrotorn project. If gets approval for the proposal it has submitted to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and with adequate land, India would become the fifth country to have third generation high-energy synchrotron.
“We have submitted the proposal and it needs a clearance now. However, the institute has asked the chief minister Mamata Banerjee for 200 acres of land to set up the facility. We have got a positive response from her,” said Milan K Sanyal, Director, SINP. The Salt Lake-based institute requires 200 acres in an hour’s ride and also 20 Mega Watt of uninterrupted power supply for the project. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee assured that the state would give all assistance for the development projects in the institute.
The Rs 6,000-crore project is expected to be executed over a ten-year period during the 12th and 13th Five Year Plans and will help in “energy harvesting” and other fields of medical science, he said. Synchrotrons are particle accelerators that produce light beams, used in research in various fields including particle physics, condensed matter, chemistry, nanoscience and medicine.
Currently, APS in the United States, PETRA III in Germany, Spring-8 in Japan and ESRF in France have this kind of Synchrotrons. “The directors of all these projects were here last November. We had signed a memorandum of understanding with the director of German facility. I hope that the PM will take up the matter further,” he said. The agreement was signed in presence German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in May. Singh visited the campus on Sunday.
According to Sanyal, synchrotron will help in producing beams of less nanometre size and high energy that will enable researchers to see the molecular structure of a material being scanned.
