In comes the deal, so does the demand. Even as dust over the Indo-US nuclear deal is yet to settle in the political circles, the academia is moving forward to meet the demand for hundreds of trained hands to man the power stations envisaged for the future. Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, one of the premier technical institutes in the country, is moving forward to introduce nuclear engineering and technology courses from academic year 2009 to meet the demand for technicians, once nuclear power generation turns commercial. At present, only IIT-Kanpur runs nuclear engineering and technology course in India. "Though we had this proposal for a while, we will not be able to start the course in 2008 academic year. I will now go back to the senate with the plan and introduce the course in 2009,' said M S Ananth, director, IIT-Madras. The details of the course are yet to be worked out, though he said "we can start this quite easily, it is only that we don't want to rush into these things'. According to sources in the institute, they were eagerly following the political developments of the deal over the years before venturing into offering the course. As the subject is interdisciplinary, IIT-M is planning to draw faculty from mechanical and chemical engineering, and physics departments to begin the course. "The Homi Bhaba group has also offered all help to us, by sending their scientists on a temporary basis. If everything goes alright, from 2014 onwards, there will be a set of engineers, and not scientists, working on nuclear power.