The fire in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, which killed two nuclear scientists, was caused by low intensity explosive energy released from accidental mixing of small quantities of reactive chemicals.
"The reason for the fire accident, as indicated by the report of Investigation Committee set up by BARC, is low intensity explosive energy released from accidental mixing of small quantities of reactive chemicals stored in the Chemical Laboratory," Minister of State in PMO Prithviraj Chavan said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
The committee had made several recommendations to prevent recurrence of similar incidents, he said.
Two PhD students were killed when a fire broke out on December 29 last year in a chemistry lab at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai.
Chavan said BARC Investigation Committee had recommended remedial measures to improve not only safety, but also emergency response to an incident, which can prevent escalation of the incident and can mitigate the consequences.
The BARC Safety Council is taking further steps for implementation of the recommendations of the Committee to enhance the safety status of all the laboratories, he said.
Chavan said the police officials were also conducting forensic and other investigations.
Department of Atomic Energy Secretary Srikumar Banerjee had 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.
The modular lab at BARC is home to a number of departmental labs and hundreds of people work on different floors of the building. Instruments, chemicals and gadgets required for research are stored at the labs.
Banerjee had ruled out the possibility of an external hand in the fire. The chemistry lab stored scientific equipment like Spectrometers for kinetic and spectroscopy measurements.
