Unveiled: Arihant’s elder brother

Inside a cavernous, 20-metre-tall, light greenish building at the nuclear complex in Kalpakkam lies the elder sibling of India’s “secret weapon”.

Here, 75km from Chennai, is located the prototype of the nuclear plant that powers the Indian Navy’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine, the Arihant.

While the sleek, 112-metre submarine was revealed to the world last week amid fanfare, the media today got their first glimpse of the top-secret project code-named — deliberately and misleadingly — Plutonium Recyling Project (PRP) since no plutonium is involved in the process.

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