Science and Technology › Nuclear technology
Fusion, radiation applications and nuclear governance
Atomic energy beyond power stations, and its governance: fusion research, radioisotopes and radiation in medicine, farming and food, the nuclear regulator, and international safeguards and treaties. Prelims has asked about India's membership of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and why some Indian reactors are under international safeguards.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2020: why some Indian nuclear reactors are under international safeguards
- Prelims 2016: India's membership of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
28 Aug 2026 · Prelims
Medical radioisotopes
Nuclear medicine cannot stockpile what it uses, because its isotopes decay in hours or days, so a scan or a treatment depends on a reactor having run recently and near enough. India makes its own, in a research reactor rather than a dedicated one.
- Molybdenum-99, iodine-131 and lutetium-177 are about 90 per cent of nuclear medicine use, and are made in the Dhruva reactor.
- An Isotope Production Reactor is expected around 2035.
PIB, 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 · Prelims
Mutation breeding
Mutation breeding exposes seeds to radiation to create changes within the crop's own genome, and the breeder then selects the plants worth keeping. Nothing is brought in from another organism, which is what separates it from a transgenic crop.
- Radiation has released 72 crop varieties, 17 of them in groundnut and 10 in rice.
PIB, 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 · Prelims
Gamma irradiation of food
The same radiation does a duller and wider job in a gamma plant, where a measured dose kills what spoils food and what infests it. The food is exposed to the source and taken away again, and does not become radioactive itself.
- Forty gamma irradiation facilities are in use for preserving food.
PIB, 28 Aug 2026
Also filed elsewhere
- Ferrocarbonatite BARC B1401 · on Critical minerals and rare earths
A laboratory measuring rare earths in a rock has to calibrate against a sample whose composition is already known exactly, and very few such samples exist anywhere.
- Monazite and the beach sands · on Critical minerals and rare earths
The sands of India's southern coast carry monazite, the mineral that holds both thorium and rare earths.