Prof. Prabhat Ranjan CEO and Co-founder of a nuclear fusion company called ASPL Fusion. He is former Vice Chancellor of D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune
This blog tries to summarize my research journey from Universe to Sun to Moon to Earth to Body to Brain.
[ This blog tries to summarize my research journey from Universe to Sun to Moon to Earth to Body to Brain. Some of this is covered in a talk I gave at IIASA, Vienna – https://youtu.be/327A01oYqdo ]
Continue reading “My Research Journey to Brain”Milk, water and electrons look like three different
stories. They are one story told three times: the country builds ahead of schedule, and what the citizen receives lags behind.
Two draft instruments will decide, far more concretely than any policy statement, whether fusion energy has a path in India. Having read them line by line, I want to explain what I found — because the most important issue turns on one word.
On 14 August the Department of Atomic Energy and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board placed two draft instruments in the public domain: the SHANTI Rules, 2026 and the SHANTI Regulations, 2026, made under the Act passed last year. Comments close on 4 September. Anyone may file them.
These are not glamorous documents. They are long, technical, and written in the flat register that subordinate legislation demands. But they will determine, far more concretely than any policy statement, whether fusion energy has a path in India. I have spent the past fortnight reading them line by line, and I want to explain what I found — because the single most important issue turns on one word.
A note on where I stand, before you read any further. I am Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of ASPL Fusion Pvt. Ltd., a private company that would be a potential applicant under the rules I am about to discuss. I also chair the committee constituted by the Central Electricity Authority to prepare a national roadmap for fusion-based power generation. What follows is written in my personal and professional capacity and not on behalf of that committee. Some of what I argue for would benefit companies like mine. I have tried throughout to argue on grounds that are neutral as between technologies and as between companies, and you should judge whether I have succeeded.
The medical sciences roadmap was the most quantitatively explicit of the twelve. That is to its credit, and it is why the sector can be graded harder than any other.
Technology Vision 2035 named twelve prerogatives, ten Grand Challenges and hard figures with a date attached. Ten years and seven months of the twenty are gone.
This is the audit, done in public, against our own numbers.
He said, “You can go ahead. But I will live till 100 years at least.” He fell ten years short of his own promise. Remembering Dr. D. Y. Patil — Dada — and a photograph he would not allow to be taken until he had finished his tea.
In memory of Dr. D. Y. Patil — “Dada” — 22 October 1935 to 4 August 2026
We lost Dada today.
I met him for the first time on 25 April 2018, the day I joined as the founding Vice Chancellor of D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune. I had gone to him with a request. At the time I was working on digital avatar technology, and I wanted to build a digital avatar of Dada — to preserve his voice, his presence, his way of speaking to young people, for the generations of students who would come long after him.
He listened. Then he smiled and said, “You can go ahead. But I will live till 100 years at least.”
Continue reading “He Finished His Tea, and Then Held My Hand”The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor went critical at Kalpakkam in April. It is a good moment to ask what we actually mean when we say “thorium” — because it is not one technology but at least six distinct engineering routes, and all of them are answers to the same question: how does India get more U-233, sooner?
On the many roads from monazite sand to megawatt-hours — and where a fusion-driven neutron source fits in.
On 6 April 2026, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam attained first criticality. For those of us who have spent our working lives around India’s nuclear and plasma programmes, it was a moment to sit with quietly. Construction began in 2004. First operation was once planned for 2010. The reactor is now running, and India has formally entered the second stage of the programme Homi Bhabha sketched in 1954.
I want to use that milestone to ask a question we do not ask often enough: when we say “thorium,” what exactly do we mean?
Continue reading “India’s Thorium Question Has More Than One Answer”She filled in the form honestly. Her details were sold before anyone read it. She was called by someone who sounded official and steered somewhere she had not chosen. At no point did her family attempt anything dishonest — and at no point did the system protect them.
In my last piece I wrote about parents who go looking for a shortcut, and about the ecosystem that has grown up to sell them one. There is a fair objection to that piece: most parents never make that call. What about them?
Continue reading “Your Child Is a Lead: The Trade in Honest Applicants”
