Whatever Happened To India’s Thorium Advantage?
To think it has been over ten years since
the
hard won July 2005 in-principle accord on civil nuclear cooperation was reached
between India and the US.
And, in all this time, we have just two Russian
1,000 MW nuclear power plants in series at Kundakulam, coming fitfully on
stream now, after horrendous delays and protests.
And there is a promise from Putin that he will help
us build one more, to generate 3,000 MW of power in all from Kundakulam. Russia
will also provide the fuel required to
run the units throughout their life cycle. And
it will let us keep the plutonium produced.
It is ironic that it is the Russian plant, and not one
from the flashier Americans, the Canadians, or the French, who have got to the
operational stage first. But yes, the Canadians and Australians now sell us
uranium, ostensibly without problems, though they tend to change the goal posts
at will after each of their several government changes.
The sticking point is that every operational Indian
reactor is run on uranium, which is a strategic fuel, very expensive too, and
we have almost none available indigenously. This puts us in a very sorry
position with the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.
A month after this accord with the US, on August 25th,
2005, at a week-long international conference on emerging
nuclear energy systems in Brussels, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC)
scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal stated that BARC had designed the “world's safest nuclear
reactor,” after some seven years of
effort.
The scientists unveiled a path-breaking design for A
Thorium Breeder Reactor (ATBR), that can
produce 600 MW of electricity for two years
“with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.”
This
prototype ATBR did need about 2.2 tonnes
of plutonium as “seed”, consuming 880 kg of the plutonium annually to ignite
and generate energy from the reactor core to convert 1,100 kg of thorium into
fissionable uranium 233. This differential gain in fissile formation made the
ATBR a kind of Thorium Breeder that enabled an almost perfect balance between
fissile depletion and production by causing in-bred U-233 to take part in
energy generation.
This, in turn, extended the core life to two full
years. This longevity, it was claimed, was greater than any other nuclear power reactors, because fissile
depletion in other systems takes place much faster than production of new
fissile material.
A US company attempted to market this ATBR abroad in
2009, but nothing came of it. It is still very much a uranium fuelled world.
Plutonium being hard to come by in India, the
successors of this ATBR prototype were
expected to run entirely on thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the ATBR reactor itself or
obtained locally by converting fertile thorium into fissile uranium-233 ,by a
process called “neutron bombardment”.
To cap it all, this Indian ATBR, the two BARC
scientists said, was safer and more economical to run than any other type of
nuclear power reactor extant worldwide.
This is very relevant, in its place, because of the
antipathy towards nuclear reactors in the US (particularly after the accident
at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl in the USSR), that has kept electrical
power generated by a clutch of ageing US nuclear reactors to a relatively low
23%.
The key fact, strategically speaking, was that the
ATBR ran entirely on thorium, except for that seed plutonium in the prototype
to kick start things. Thorium is plentiful in India. We have the 2nd
largest deposits in the world: some 32% of global reserves. What have we done,
since 2005, to exploit this? Absolutely nothing.
The BJP put it in its general election manifesto in
2014, that it would develop our thorium potential. The only thing that happened
with thorium under UPA beyond the ATBR prototype, is that it was being mined
illegally on the beaches of Tamil Nadu, and the sand containing monazite and thorium,
was being exported; in yet another scam to add to the tally.
This lack of action on thorium and the strenuous
efforts to sign the nuclear accord with the US, even though we have practically
no uranium of our own – between just 0.57% and 0.8% of the world’s reserves, is
perplexing. We also cannot make a uranium-based reactor domestically!
This lack of domestic uranium, combined with strict
checks on its importation, plus a chronic shortage of funds, is the historical
reason why India’s atomic power programme has languished.
We have produced a paltry 2,000 MW p.a. of nuclear
energy over the first 34 years of effort, and even in 2015 the tally is at
4,780 MW, far away from the 2020 target of 20,000 MW.
Still, some estimates say, if all the other plants
in various stages, come to operationalise, and the fuel keeps coming, the tally could rise to 10,080
MW by 2017. Against, that is, the
erstwhile Indian Planning Commission target for 2020. Half a loaf is better
than none. And then there’s clean energy- solar, wind etc. initiatives too.
Principally though, with faster growth has come growing dependence on petroleum
instead, and though the prices are below $ 50 a barrel today, we do import 80%
of our huge demand, and it accounts for the biggest chunk of our import bill.
However, if ever the bountiful reserves of thorium become
the fuel of India’s future, things
could change. There are also reports of enormous ‘fractable’ gas reserves on the floor of the
Bay of Bengal, but that too will take a lot of money and technology. And who
can afford to go after it in in a soft petroleum market?
India has had a long standing road map in place
called the "Three-stage Nuclear Programme". In the first stage, plutonium
was to be created in its pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and extracted
by reprocessing. In the second stage, Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs) were to use this plutonium to breed uranium-233
in a thorium blanket around the core. In the final stage, the FBR's were to use thorium-232 and produce uranium-233
for other reactors.
The first stage has been realized, with India's 10
existing nuclear power plants- though there are 22 planned, and 35 proposed as
on 2015.
The second
stage has been proved by a small experimental fast breeder reactor (13 MW), at
Kalpakkam in Kerala. Mind this was already in place in 2005.
And the third
stage is now, on the anvil, but the train has not left the station.
Tedious and tortuous as all this may seem, consider
this: one tonne of natural uranium can produce 40 million kilowatt-hours of
electricity. This is what 16,000 tonnes of coal would produce or 80,000 barrels
of oil. Thorium, mined in India, turned into uranium 233, can do exactly the
same thing. But because there has been no progress we are mining more polluting
coal for electricity in desperation.
But, ever since our pompous and ill-fated civil
liability fracas versus international convention, festering since 2010, though
eased a little now, we have received no foreign technology cooperation. When
will we ever learn?
And our own domestic R&D can’t seem to take it
any further in a hurry.
World Thorium Resources
(economically extractable):
Country
|
Reserves (tonnes)
|
Australia
|
300 000
|
India
|
290 000
|
Norway
|
170 000
|
USA
|
160 000
|
Canada
|
100 000
|
South Africa
|
35 000
|
Brazil
|
16 000
|
Other countries
|
95 000
|
World total
|
1 200 000
|
Pakistan, meanwhile, seems to have all the uranium and plutonium it needs, and is moving towards building its own array of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) for the battlefield. It is slated to have the fifth largest stockpile of nuclear weapons by 2030.
That it has little or no electricity in the interim is quite another matter altogether.
Ghulam Ali anyone?
(1,303
words)
For: Swarajyamag
23rd October
2015
Gautam Mukherjee
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