India needs to have material policy: Satheesh Reddy

India needs to have a policy to identify materials required for next 100 years while taking into account available resources in the country, scientific advisor to defence minister, G Satheesh Reddy, said today.
"Country needs to have a Material policy...The policy we need to decide...What is the quantum of materials available as natural resources and what is the quantity and how much it will suffice for the future needs," he said, speaking at the NFC Day organised by Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) here.
"First we need to work out the future needs and then look for what are the imports you need, whether you need to import and put it as a reserve...Based on the future requirements the policy needs to be formulated," Reddy said.

Complimenting NFC for achieving 130-140 per cent of targets, he acknowledged the contributions of NFC in supporting the missile programme of the Ministry of Defence.
He felt the composition of research & development and production by academic institutions, R&D organisations, public sector undertakings besides private sector needs to be reviewed.
"(As) the potential of research is being enormous all these institutions need to enhance their research and development efforts," Reddy said.
NFC's Chairman and Chief Executive N Saibaba said Nuclear Fuel Complex had achieved a record production of 1252.30 million tonne pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) fuel bundles in 2014-15 .

P Sudhakar, Chairman & Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) and P S Parihar, Director, Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD) were among those who spoke.