"In the US, the non-power application of nuclear energy is more of a money earner," BARC director S. Banerjee, who is also member of India's Atomic Energy Commission, told IANS at a celebration function at Kalpakkam, near here.

BARC has set up a medical cyclotron at the Radiation Medical and Clinical Research Centre at the Tata Memorial Cancer Research Hospital in Mumbai to make radio-imaging cheaper.

With millions of people receiving radiation therapy in India every year, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is looking for private partners for commercial manufacture of the cobalt unit, named Bhabhatron (after India's pioneering atomic energy scientist Homi Bhabha) that BARC patented in 2005.

"The Bhabhatron machine can provide state-of-the-art treatment in rural areas at low cost." At least 1,000 such machines are needed in the country for the treatment of cancer, Banerjee said.

Moreover, its export potential to developing countries is huge. "If there are 300 cobalt radiation units in the country, 299 of them have been imported", Banerjee said.

BARC radioisotopes are also being used for diagnosis of cardiac and neurological disorders and diseases of thyroid, lung, heart and kidney and sterilize medical disposable products. Plants have been set up in Bangalore, Delhi, Jodhpur and Kolkata to produce radioisotopes.

The Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre at Kolkata and the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology at Indore support food preservation, radiation processing of materials, curing adhesives and paints, colouring diamonds and making reactor-used water non-hazardous.

Gamma scanning helps detect cracks in metals and leaks in buried pipelines. As many as 1,000 BARC designed industrial radiographic cameras are in use today.

BARC tracers are used for silt movement studies in harbours and to map ground water. A major study of how sewage goes into the sea was done recently in Mumbai.

BARC's nuclear agriculture programme and desalination technology are also in high demand.

BARC's Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) in Hyderabad, set up in the early '70s, makes different kinds of seamless alloy tubes, a technology that is sought after for next generation reactors. This expertise is at present sold only to the Indian Navy, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and other defence organisations.

Kamini, a 30-KW reactor at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam, is a pioneer in thorium research.

A 100-KW High Temperature Reactor is being developed to provide electricity in remote places with the use of a special Thorium-Uranium-233 system that reduces the storage time of long-life radioactive wastes, yet another path-breaking technology.

Last year, BARC was sanctioned over Rs. 12 billion ($260 million) to spend on developing technology and DAE is hoping its super specialty centres will turn it into a profit-making organization.