Thiruvananthapuram: The Department of Atomic
Energy on Sunday ruled out the possibility of an external hand in
the recent fire at a lab in the premier Bhabha Atomic Research
Laboratory that killed two young scientists.
"Now people are saying this external hand thing but there
is no scientific answer to it. We do not see any thing,"
Srikumar Banerjee, Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy said on the sidelines of the 97th Indian Science Congress.
Banerjee said the place where fire broke out was a basic
research facility on anti-oxidants and did not have any
chemicals that could pose a fire hazard.
"It would have been obvious and easy to point out if you
have a gas cylinder or a hydrogen cylinder. But it was not
there. The lab did not have anything that could be said to be
a fire hazard," he said.
The investigators are now working out a list of different
chemicals that were being brought in the lab which was
renovated and handed over to the scientists the same day the
accident happened, said Banerjee, who is also the Chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission.
"We are also looking at the possibility of vapour
accumulation. The problem is that everything was charred and
there is not much trace of anything left," he said.
PTI
