![]() India's private sector helped out the $2.9-billion project in significant ways. The Rare Materials Project of the Department of Atomic Energy in Ratnahalli, Mysore, supplied the highly enriched uranium, while the submarine itself was built in a completely enclosed dry dock at the shipbuilding centre in Vishakapatnam. The Arihant's 83Mw pressurised water reactor has also been built with considerable assistance from the Russians, who are said to have helped scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in miniaturising the reactor to fit into the 10m diameter hull of the nuclear submarine.īut it is equally true that the Arihant is more than a sum of its imported parts, transfer of technology and consultancy given by the Russians. ![]() The 100-member Indian crew for the Arihant, besides training at the School for Advanced Underwater Warfare at Vishakapatnam, is also training on the INS Chakra. Its design is based on the Russian Akula-1 class submarines, of which the best-known example is the INS Chakra, a nuclear submarine first leased by India from the Soviet Union for three years in January 1988, and leased again from the Russians in 2011. The 'Arihant' was launched on July 26, 2009, exactly 10 years after the end of the Kargil conflict, which means it has taken four years for its nuclear reactor to achieve criticality. ![]() The story of the Advanced Technology Vessel project, of which the INS Arihant is a part, is really the story of the incredible hard work, long-term strategy and clear thinking employed by generations of India's political leaders cutting across party lines, defence experts, foreign policy mandarins and scientists, to build indigenous capability that could give India the chance of becoming a serious power. INS Arihant, India's first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, which went "critical" over the weekend, has enabled India to join a select club of nations like the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France, which possess nuclear-powered submarines.
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