Mumbai, Jun 18 (IANS): A nuclear submarine propulsion and nuclear reprocessing and waste management expert, Sekhar Basu will be the new director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre here, an official said Monday.

Basu, 59, is currently the chief executive officer of the Nuclear Recycling Board and will assume his new charge Tuesday.

An alumnus of the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute, Mumbai, he started his career with BARC in 1974.

Basu has functioned as project director of the Plutonium Recycling Project at Kalpakkam, which led to the construction of India's first indigenous pressurised water reactor, fuelled by enriched uranium.

Later, he was involved in commissioning a land-based nuclear submarine propulsion plant in Kalpakkam.

Basu has also been working in the field of nuclear recycling and built nuclear reprocessing and waste management plants at Tarapur, Mumbai and Kalpakkam.

Basu succeeds R.K. Sinha who was elevated to the post of chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary, atomic energy, last month.