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Elephanta Island

Commons category link is locally definedGeography of Raigad districtIslands of IndiaIslands of MumbaiPopulated places in India
Tourist attractions in Raigad districtUse Indian English from August 2017
India Elephanta Trees
India Elephanta Trees

Elephanta Island (also called Gharapuri (literally "the city of caves") or Pory Island) is one of a number of islands in Mumbai Harbour, east of Mumbai, India.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Elephanta Island (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Elephanta Island
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N 18.96 ° E 72.935 °
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Elephanta Caves
Elephanta Caves

The Elephanta Caves are a collection of cave temples predominantly dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, which have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are on Elephanta Island, or Gharapuri (literally meaning "the city of caves"), in Mumbai Harbour, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of Mumbai in the Indian state of Mahārāshtra. The island, about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) west of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port, consists of five Hindu caves, a few Buddhist stupa mounds that date back to the 2nd century BCE, and two Buddhist caves with water tanks.The Elephanta Caves contain rock-cut stone sculptures, mostly in high relief, that show syncretism of Hindu and Buddhist ideas and iconography. The caves are hewn from solid basalt rock. Except for a few exceptions, much of the artwork is defaced and damaged. The main temple's orientation as well as the relative location of other temples are placed in a mandala pattern. The carvings narrate Hindu mythologies, with the large monolithic 5.45 metres (17.9 ft) Trimurti Sadashiva (three-faced Shiva), Nataraja (Lord of dance) and Yogishvara (Lord of Yogis) being the most celebrated.These date to between the 5th and 9th centuries, and scholars attribute them to various Hindu dynasties. They are most commonly placed between the 5th and 7th centuries. Many scholars consider them to have been completed by about 550 CE.They were named Elefante—which morphed to Elephanta—by the colonial Portuguese who found elephant statues on the caves. They established a base on the island. The main cave (Cave 1, or the Great Cave) was a Hindu place of worship until the Portuguese arrived, whereupon the island ceased to be an active place of worship. The earliest attempts to prevent further damage to the caves were started by British India officials in 1909. The monuments were restored in the 1970s. It is currently maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

CIRUS reactor

CIRUS (Canada India Reactor Utility Services) was a research reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Trombay near Mumbai, India. CIRUS was supplied by Canada in 1954, but used heavy water (deuterium oxide) supplied by the United States. It was the second nuclear reactor to be built in India. It was modeled on the Canadian Chalk River National Research X-perimental (NRX) reactor. The 40 MW reactor used natural uranium fuel, while using heavy water as a moderator. It is a tank reactor type with a core size of 3.14 m (H) × 2.67 m (D). It first went critical July 10, 1960.The reactor was not under IAEA safeguards (which did not exist when the reactor was sold), although Canada stipulated, and the U.S. supply contract for the heavy water explicitly specified, that it only be used for peaceful purposes. Nonetheless, CIRUS produced some of India's initial weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, as well as the plutonium for India's 1974 Pokhran-I (Codename Smiling Buddha) nuclear test, the country's first nuclear test. At a capacity factor of 50–80%, CIRUS can produce 6.6–10.5 kg of plutonium a year. CIRUS was shut down in September 1997 for refurbishment and was scheduled to resume operation in 2003. The reactor was brought back into operation two years late in 2005. During refurbishing, a low-temperature vacuum evaporation-based desalination unit was also coupled to the reactor to serve as demonstration of using waste heat from a research reactor for sea desalination. Even if the reactor has a life of twenty more years, India had declared that this reactor would be shut down by 2010 in accordance with the Indo-US nuclear accord reached between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush. The reactor was shut down on 31 December 2010.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. Founded by Homi Jehangir Bhabha Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 1954 as a multidisciplinary research program essential for India's nuclear program. It operates under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India. In 1966 after the death of Mr. Bhabha, AEET was renamed as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). BARC is a multi-disciplinary research centre with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, chemical engineering, material sciences and metallurgy, electronic instrumentation, biology and medicine, supercomputing, high-energy physics and plasma physics and associated research for Indian nuclear programme and related areas. BARC's core mandate is to sustain peaceful applications of nuclear energy. It manages all facets of nuclear power generation, from the theoretical design of reactors to, computer modeling and simulation, risk analysis, development and testing of new reactor fuel, materials, etc. It also researches spent fuel processing and safe disposal of nuclear waste. Its other research focus areas are applications for isotopes in industries, Radiation Technologies and their application to health, food and medicine, agriculture and environment, accelerator and Laser Technology, electronics, instrumentation and reactor control and Material Science, environment and radiation monitoring etc. BARC operates a number of research reactors across the country.Its primary facilities are located in Trombay, with new facilities also located in Challakere in Chitradurga district of Karnataka. A new Special Mineral Enrichment Facility which focuses on enrichment of uranium fuel is under construction in Atchutapuram near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh for supporting India's nuclear submarine program and produce high specific activity radioisotopes for extensive research.

Mahul

Mahul is a fishing village in Chembur, Mumbai (Kurla Tehsil), located on the eastern seafront of the Mumbai Suburban district. The village is known Since 2017, Mahul has been in news for its high levels of pollution and the dismal conditions of its 72 building slum resettlement colony because of which it has come to be referred to as Mumbai's "toxic hellhole", "gas chamber" and "human dumping ground", where the poor "are sent to die".The Mahul-Trombay belt, which includes the villages of Mahul, Ambapada and Chereshwar were sparsely populated regions, home only to a few local fishing communities and thick mangrove forests. The industrial diversification that began in the country during World War II led to a movement of the population beyond the northern suburbs of the 1930s. In 1947, the Committee on Industrial Development came to the conclusion that "Trombay [is] ... most suitable ... [because of its] proximity to the deep water jetty and [being] far removed from residential populations". This thinking guided the government's actions during the first Five Year Plan after independence, when the state owned refineries now present in the region were first established. Over the next few decades, Mahul became home to major industrial establishments such as Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL), Tata Power, Rashtriya Chemical Fertilizers (RCF), Sea Lord Containers, Aegis Logistics, Indian Oil, Natual Oil Blending Ltd., Chemical Terminal Trombay Ltd. and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). As a consequence, air and water quality in Mahul and surrounding villages have suffered and its biodiversity is threatened.