India’s premier nuclear research body, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), has struggled to spend the funds allocated to it by the government for R&D.

The publicly funded BARC has several projects of national importance on its table — ranging from advanced conventional reactors and fast-breeder reactors (key to harnessing India’s thorium resources) to thermal reactors for green hydrogen, isotope development and high-energy particle accelerators. These are critical for energy, nuclear medicine and even food preservation. Yet, BARC has been unable to fully utilise its R&D allocations.

This pattern extends across other Department of Atomic Energy institutions under the Prime Minister’s Office, such as the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) and the Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology (BRIT). BARC, the largest among them, was allocated ₹1,100 crore for R&D in 2025-26, while “establishment expenses” were nearly three times higher at ₹3,135 crore.

The R&D allocation was later revised down to ₹919 crore. Till December 2025, BARC had spent about 55 per cent.

The Budget for 2026-27 has nearly doubled BARC’s R&D allocation to ₹1,800 crore.

BARC’s inability to spend allocated funds has been flagged by the Parliamentary Standing Committee examining the department’s demands for grants. The committee noted that the gap between budget estimates and actual utilisation “reflects a recurring pattern of over-estimation… compounded by procedural delays in project execution”.

Among the major projects pending for decades, the accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADSS) project has been on the anvil since at least 2001. Similarly, plans for a high-intensity 1 GeV proton accelerator, potentially placing India at the forefront of nuclear fusion technology, have seen little progress for over two decades. BARC’s high-temperature reactor for hydrogen production was presented internationally as early as 2006, but no product is yet in the market.

The committee cautioned that higher allocations must be matched by “improvements in execution readiness”.

BRIT, a unit of BARC, allocated ₹88 crore in 2025-26 (later revised to ₹35 crore), spent only ₹12.43 crore, a third of the revised estimate. The 2026-27 Budget has again raised the allocation to ₹76 crore.

RRCAT spent ₹42 crore (till December 2025) against an original allocation of ₹178 crore and a revised estimate of ₹63 crore. The gap is even starker for IGCAR, where the original allocation of ₹225 crore was cut to ₹68 crore, with actual spending at ₹50 crore.

‘Expenditure vacuum’

The department attributed the underspending to project cycles — several projects were concluded in 2023-24, while new ones began only in October 2025. The committee, however, was not convinced, calling it “indicative of a deeper structural issue”. It observed that the gap between the conclusion of one project cycle and the initiation of the next cycle “has resulted in a prolonged expenditure vacuum at a premier nuclear research institution”.

Data from the report also show that establishment costs of the four research units — BARC, IGCAR, RRCAT and BRIT — are more than double their R&D spending: ₹5,171 crore versus ₹2,396 crore in 2025-26 (revised estimates).

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Published on April 6, 2026