BS reported that American, Japanese and European nuclear non proliferation officials are keenly aware that Hyderabad based Mishra Dhatu Nigam supplies key materials for India’s nuclear, space and missile program and it figures on all these countries Entity Lists which have legally blocked supplies of materials, know how and equipment. But this international blockade has been in vain.
Mr K Narayana Rao CMD of Midhani said that “Despite the sanctions. Midhani today manufactures the world’s best maraging steel a critical component in nuclear reactors, fuel enrichment centrifuges, missiles and space rockets. The Indian Space Research Organization’s GSLV rockets are clad in Midhani’s maraging steel.”
Such breakthroughs in strategic materials have placed Midhani in an unusual position. With international sanctions still in place, Midhani has joined one of the world’s most challenging, futuristic and expensive projects: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, a USD 10 billion, multinational project that aims to generate electricity through nuclear fusion by 2018. India joined the project in 2005.
A Midhani scientist said that “We have produced a material called Low Activation Ferretic Martinsitic Steel which the ITER project urgently needs. This steel must have very low activation, allowing it to be placed in a highly radioactive environment without becoming highly radioactive itself. The ITER authorities are presently evaluating it at the Institute of Plasma Research in Gandhinagar.”
This foray into ITER is a one time thing. Midhani remains a boutique manufacturer, focused exclusively on high performance materials for India’s space, nuclear and defense program to save these from being hostage to a supplier abroad. This is production at the cutting edge, groping in the dark, mixing and matching elements to develop materials that users have defined only as a set of properties.
(Sourced from www.steelguru.com
Monday, October 5, 2009
Midhani on high growth curve
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