Dr K S Parthasarathy
On September 6, 2010, India became poorer by the passing away of Dr.Homi Nusserwanji Sethna, an outstanding nuclear scientist and a renowned engineer. He was 86 years of age. He was one among the handful of the last of the titans of our atomic energy programme.
My first encounter with him was accidental. In August 1964, within a few days of my joining the then Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay (AEET), I visited the Old Yacht Club (OYC), the DAE Headquarters on my return from Sidhwa Building Colaba where I went to collect my first salary.
I decided to visit the library at OYC. I wandered in the corridors for a while. I could not locate the library. I brusquely sought guidance from the first person I saw. He was apparently amused by my casualness. He asked a security guard to take me to the library. The guard told me that it was Mr Sethna. For me that gesture remained very symbolic.
Over 45 years ago, a colleague had his first encounter with Dr Sethna in a more challenging situation. He had not seen Dr.Sethna before though he was the much feared chief of the plant where my friend worked.
My friend entered the lift in the ground floor of Plutonium Plant at Trombay with a plastic bucket in hand. A lead pot containing a cobalt-60 source sat in the bucket.
He told a person who was just behind him that he could use the staircase, if he was in a hurry or could wait until he released the lift from the 3rd floor. Another colleague who saw my friend asked him whether he knew the person he was talking to. He cautioned him to get ready for a firing session.
Shortly my friend was summoned to the Plant Superintendent’s room;
“So you are the bloke who carried a radioactive source in the passenger lift. Tell me whether what you did is ok”.
My friend told him that the time for transport through the lift was less; “There is always more personnel traffic in the staircase. There is no other lift in the plant”, Dr Sethna was happy that my friend stood ground!
“You are right young man you go back”; Mr Sethna told one of the senior colleagues “May be we should have had one lift for materials”. My friend, Shri A R Sundarajan (ARS) later became an outstanding health physicist and retired as Director, Radiation Safety Division and Director, Safety Research Institute, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.
ARS remembers that during the Ayudha pooja day, the fuel handling crew at the Plutonium Plant was keen that Sethna visited their area. Their boss had doubts; three issues troubled him. Sethna was a Parsee; he was a scientist/ engineer. Did he believe in these rituals? Thirdly the area was designated radioactive, though it was all clean at that time.
Before he decided, their enthusiastic foreman invited Sethna to the area; as soon as he entered, he asked for the coconuts and asked jocularly whether the lead flask can withstand his hammering the coconut; the whole crew gave a big applause; he knew the pulse of the workers very well.
After all, Dr Sethna started his career as Works Manager in Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL), Alwaye.
While at Alwaye he learnt enough Malayalam to understand and decipher and “appreciate” the snide remarks of workers much to their dismay.
Another senior colleague Shri S Vasantkumar, an outstanding chemical engineer who retired as Vice Chairman, AERB, worked with Dr Sethna from the very first day at Trombay.
Dr Sethna entrusted him with the piping erection of one of the process cells at the Plutonium Plant. He recollects that they used to tidy up the cells just before Dr Sethna visited them.
“He told us not to bother and waste time. …things would be scattered only when you are working!!” he would tell them. “He would walk around welding cables, bent pipes etc. As young engineers this gave us a lot of boost and encouragement”.
“At the same time we were always on our toes as he would mercilessly pull us up if he found anything wrong!” Shri Kumar gratefully remembered.
Dr Sethna was one among the very few who contributed in developing advanced technologies in the entire nuclear fuel cycle. In 1949, at IREL Alwaye he was responsible for setting up the plant.
While inaugurating the Plant Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru declared that it was the first public sector plant to make a profit during the very first year.
Dr. Sethna was the project manager of CIRUS, the 40 MW research reactor at Trombay from 1956- 58. He was responsible for designing and constructing India’s first Plutonium Plant.
He supervised the erection of the Uranium Mill at Jaduguda in 1967. His contribution to the peaceful nuclear explosion project in 1974 was legendary. He was awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1975. He played a significant role in India’s nuclear power programme.
Dr Sethna was the Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission from 1972-83. After his retirement from 1984-2000 he was in the board of various industrial institutions.
“We belong to Dr (Homi) Bhabha’s school of thought, you see. We are disciplined to take up any challenge. Dr Bhabha taught us to be ageless. So here I am working more than 12 hours a day, poohpoohing failing health”, he confided in his eighties to a journalist, reading her mind
Dr Sethna wrote a personal letter to me a few years ago after reading one of my articles in Nuclear India. He wanted me to find out the names of the participants of an in camera meeting held by Dr Bhabha at Delhi on the sidelines of the first Conference on Development of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes in India, 1954. I gave a useful note to him but could not get the details he wanted. I could not verify whether he was writing his autobiography?
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