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Nuclear Power and its Discontents

29 Tue Dec 2015

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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With India hoping to follow China in its rapid and mammoth nuclear power expansion, it merits consideration whether such an expensive yet foundational project is feasible. There are many shortcomings of nuclear power, though none of them are what are commonly perceived: though nuclear critics constantly wail from an outdated playbook about radiation, nuclear waste, and accidents, far more realistic problems are financing, regulatory processes, industry-wide deterioration of skills, and transparency. These deficiencies of nuclear power will become a millstone around India’s neck if not addressed soon and adequately. These shortcomings are not merely the responsibility of the industry; in some areas, the government must also play an active and positive role if it genuinely wishes to develop a source of clean, abundant, reliable, and safe energy.

It is true that nuclear power plants are expensive; although nuclear power itself is quite price competitive with other sources of electricity, the economics of nuclear power plants is such that most of the cost of the project – over its entire life – are demanded upfront. The costs of thermal energy are evenly spread over the life of a plant – usually 30 years – whereas the cost of nuclear fuel is a miniscule component of nuclear energy and market price fluctuations hardly affect the cost of electricity unlike with hydrocarbons. Furthermore, nuclear plants are built to last for 60 years, twice the lifespan of thermal power and thrice the duration of solar farms; nuclear regulatory authorities worldwide are looking at the latest nuclear power plant designs and considering extending the potential life of a reactor to a minimum of 80 and a maximum of 100 years. Another factor adding to the cost of nuclear power is that estimates made consider nuclear waste – whether it is stored or reprocessed – and decommissioning. Fossil fuel has so far managed to get off without paying for the massive pollution it causes, in effect subsidising its operations.

This over-engineering raises the initial cost of nuclear power plants. Though the figures periodically released to the Lok Sabha by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) indicate that nuclear energy is competitive with other sources of energy over its lifetime, the high initial cost creates a financial burden few are willing to or capable of taking. Investors are usually not so sanguine on projects that have a long gestation period and the return on investment is low. In a more market-oriented world, the nuclear industry must address this issue if it is to win over any critics. One idea the industry has been playing with is making reactors smaller. The sacrifice in economy of scale is hoped to be compensated by creating modular components that can be fabricated faster and the smaller size will make them suitable not just around urban concentrations but even for use in more sparsely populated or rural areas. Some entrepreneurs are even toying with production line manufacturing on nuclear power plants. If it works, the speed of construction should increase drastically as well as the cost come down; together, these improvements will make the cost of financing more attractive to lenders and inspire greater interest in nuclear power.

The government, for its part, can also make financing of nuclear power easier. In China, for example, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) raised $2.5 billion in May 2015 through an IPO in the Shanghai stock market. Delhi’s reticence to allow any public scrutiny of the nuclear industry – financially, technologically, or administratively – only hampers the nuclear public sector undertaking from realising its full potential. Financial streams from the private sector are also forbidden and it was only a couple of weeks ago that an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act was passed to allow even other PSUs to invest – from a distance – in the nuclear sector! In 2012, there was a proposal to divest some 10 per cent from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) and list it on the bourses but like many files in the Indian bureaucracy, little has been heard of it since.

A second obstacle the nuclear industry faces is the regulatory authority. In the United States, the complaint of the nuclear industry is that the process for the approval of new reactor designs is laborious, expensive, and sometimes done with criteria that reflects older knowledge than the latest developments in the industry. In India, the hurdles start sooner – in that the Atomic Energy regulatory Board (AERB) is not a body independent of the chain of command of those it regulates. Several members of the DAE have stressed on previous occasions that this administrative quibble does not in any way impinge upon the working of the regulatory authority but in a country like India where command influence and the flouting of laws is not at all uncommon, even the appearance of impropriety is reason to worry. Over decades of governmental misconduct, citizens have lost faith in government institutions and in areas like nuclear energy where the scope for damage is enormous, unflattering reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) such as in 2012 are damning.

India is developing a 900 MW Light Water Reactor (LWR) and its Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) have been close to criticality for at least three years now and awaiting regulatory clearances; the thorium-powered 300 MW Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), a technology demonstrator, has been ready to break ground for a few years now. The Russian 1,000 MW VVER at Kudankulam I that shut down for routine maintenance has had its restart delayed, allegedly for thorough regulatory inspections. Each time, the nuclear establishment conveniently hides behind safety inspections – no one can fault the agency for due diligence and yet no one is clear what exactly causes the never-ending delays.

Perhaps the single greatest problem that faces nuclear power is the deterioration of skills in its workforce. This includes not just the engineers in the control room at a plant but the cement mixers, welders, and the dozens of other professions involved from the groundbreaking until the commissioning. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at Olkiluoto, the site in Finland where Areva is building its latest 1,650 MW reactor, the EPR. The crew did not have a proper understanding of nuclear safety, there was poor communication, problems witnessed were not immediately addressed, many of the workers were not trained in nuclear-grade construction, and the chain of command was unclear. According to industry reports, these problems arise from a lack of experience in nuclear construction: Europe had gone through a nuclear lull for 15 years and many of its best engineers and specialists had migrated to other industries since the last reactor was built.

India’s pace of nuclear construction has been lethargic at best, constructing only 20 reactors in the 46 years since its first civilian reactor went critical in 1969. It is only with a large and regular orders that the nuclear industry in India will be able to overcome its umpteen issues and streamline its efforts to reduce construction delays and improve quality. An example of this can be seen in the United Arab Emirates, where the experience of working on multiple reactors simultaneously has enabled efficiencies between construction sites. The Indian seems to have noticed this too, with reports on imminent nuclear agreements with Rosatom and Westinghouse suggesting that six reactors will be built at once rather than the traditional India two-at-a-time. Nonetheless, efficient nuclear builds require a decent tempo and given India’s shortage of power and commitments to clean energy, this ought not be a problem. The era of taking over a decade to construct one reactor, however, must be left behind.

The root of many fears about nuclear energy comes from a lack of transparency in the establishment. Nothing shuts mouths or doors faster on a researcher in India than mentioning the word, ‘nuclear.’ Despite their claims to openness, the DAE remains remarkably opaque to outsiders. From exploration for uranium to reprocessing, the Indian establishment reveals little about its civilian programme under the guise of security. So far, this policy has done a better job at covering incompetence than actually increasing security. Some of the more informative studies of the Indian nuclear programme, as a result, come from foreign think tanks who employ scientists to monitor nuclear developments worldwide. From observations that mean little to the uninitiated, these scholars have painted a picture of the Indian nuclear programme beyond what the Indian government reveals to its own citizens.

Most of this secrecy is unnecessary and only breeds suspicion in the minds of the public. The fantastic tales of malfeasance within India’s nuclear conclave gain weight only because it is difficult to know what to believe. The CAG has upbraided NPCIL on its resistance to greater transparency yet there seems to be little done to ameliorate the situation. This is not entirely within the hands of nuclear scientists and administrators – the laws of the land could well land them in jail if they were to actually embrace a more transparent work ethic. Some have suggested that greater public awareness is required but on this, it is difficult to fault the Indian nuclear establishment – although more can always be done, there has been an impressive array of events at various levels by the various nuclear agencies to reach out to the public and explain the basics of nuclear physics and safety. However, these efforts do not extend to questions on policy, processes, or administration. Wherever the fault lies, the DAE has a Herculean task before it to rectify the perception that it may or may not know what it is doing behind closed doors.

These are the main challenges ailing nuclear energy and those old concerns from the 1950s that make for more scintillating headlines – if the nuclear industry can address these four issues, they would be in a much better position to power the country to a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-secure future. However, as one nuclear engineer with almost three decades of experience told me, how a society handles the first set of concerns from the six decades ago is usually a good indicator of how they will approach the real challenges today.

This post appeared on FirstPost on December 31, 2015.

Reconsidering India’s Thorium Scam

17 Thu Apr 2014

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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A few years ago, a story appeared in the Indian press that a massive scam involving the illegal mining and covert export of thorium was taking place in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Then two things happened: one, the story died out quickly without anyone investigating it further (but repeating the allegations over and over again), and two, many just assumed it was true. Given the opacity of the Indian state, particularly in matters involving nuclear materials, there is a tendency for suspicions to become allegations and allegations to become guilty verdicts. In an era of scams, government denials made little difference to the public discourse.

In a scam-studded decade of Congress rule, the public has reached scam fatigue and numbers as stratospheric as Rs. 60 lakh crores, the amount the thorium scam is supposed to have embezzled, are out of the comprehension of the common man. Two other numbers offered in terms of the scale of embezzlement are Rs. 48 lakh crores and a more reasonable Rs. 96,000 crores. Yet an alleged scam of such value, not just pecuniary but also strategic, is worth reconsideration.

The beach sands of Tamil Nadu and Kerala are rich in several heavy minerals such as ilmenite, rutile, leucoxene, garnet, sillimanite, zircon and monazite. These minerals are used in several industries from steel and electronics to jewelry and ceramics. Monazite, however, contains thorium a nuclear fuel of much interest. Discovered in the 1880s, monazite was the primary source of commercial lanthanides. India and Brazil dominated the market until World War II but with the commercial viability of bastnäsite – a rare earth mineral with lower thorium content than monazite – in the mid-1960s, interest in monazite waned. The export of monazite, used to procure nuclear cooperation from foreign states, was also banned by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962.

It was illegal to mine these rare earth heavy minerals until recently; the only entity allowed to do so was the government-owned Indian Rare Earths Limited. In October 1998, the Government of India opened sand mining to private companies. This would be done on the basis of two licenses, one to mine the sand and another to handle nuclear materials. A further change in the law in January 2006 removed several of the minerals in the beach sands from the prescribed list and thus reduced the paperwork required to just one license to handle nuclear materials; private companies were now allowed to mine the sands for export of any mineral except monazite. The law retained thorium as a prescribed substance under the Atomic Energy Act and as a result, monazite remained off-limits to private entities.

However, the law also recognised that these minerals were mixed in the sand and therefore stipulated that companies handling the beach sand have to get a licence under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. The company would have to either dispose of the monazite or store it on its premises as per regulations. The Indian government denied private companies the permission to process the monazite for thorium or to export the mineral: only IREL would be allowed to do that.

The thorium scam allegations make four claims: 1. a private company is exporting thorium-rich sand illegally; 2. between 2002 and 2012, some 2.1 million tonnes of monazite has gone missing, which amounts to approximately 235,000 tonnes of thorium; 3. the monazite has not been returned by the private company to the DAE after mining for other minerals; and 4. only a gentleman’s agreement requires the private company to inform the government about how much monazite they posses. The newspaper article makes no mention of the name of the company accused but the Indian Bureau of Mines reveals the company that matches the description provided – 96 of 111 garnet mining licenses and 44 licenses to mine ilmenite – to be VV Mineral.

The first claim is based on some circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that certain people were denied access to the beaches where the sand mining was taking place and to the warehouses where the monazite was stored. There could be two plausible reasons for this. The first is that private corporations do not let unauthorised people to access their facilities, be it the beaches or the warehouses, for reasons of safety and security. In fact, it may well be illegal for companies to do so without appropriate government clearances. A second reason could be that the facilities are under the jurisdiction of the AERB and only their authorisation can give visitors or inspectors access to premises storing nuclear materials. To an outsider, the plethora of government agencies that make up India’s nuclear conclave may be confusing and appear to be the same but each of them have distinct legal responsibilities.

The second accusation springs from a discrepancy between two reports by the Atomic Minerals Directorate For Exploration and Research of the Department of Atomic Energy. In a report read to the Lok Sabha in 2012, the AMDER stated that there were 10.7 tonnes of monazite on India’s beaches; in a similar report prepared in 2002, the AMDER had claimed 12.8 tonnes of the mineral to be present. This would indicate that 2.1 tonnes of monazite, or approximately 235,000 tonnes of thorium, had gone missing in the intervening period.

World thorium deposits

There is much reason for scepticism at these claims. Though India is estimated to have the second largest deposits of thorium after Brazil (different surveys show different results but all agree India is in the top three), the nuclear fuel is not exactly rare elsewhere in the world. Any international concern that wished to buy thorium can do so relatively easily on the open market without risk of running afoul of international and domestic laws. In this environment, it is difficult to envisage a situation in which anyone would wish to acquire thorium illegally.

Secondly, the amount of thorium that has allegedly been exported – 235,000 tonnes – is quite simply nonsensical. If India had 100% of its present energy output, about 200 GW, supplied entirely by thorium reactors, the amount alleged to have gone missing in the scam could power India at present rates for some 700 years. To give another example, the amount of thorium exported in the scam could power the entire world for 36 years! A final statistic to underscore the absurdity of the allegation is the annual consumption of thorium by the United States – four tonnes. With world consumption around ten tonnes, the amount exported from India illegally represents 23,500 years of global supplies. IREL itself exports barely five tonnes of monazite per annum.

Thorium cannot be used to make nuclear weapons either and so it even lacks the value of exotic contraband weaponry. Given the abundance of the mineral, it is also impossible for anyone to try and corner the market on thorium in anticipation of a surge in production of thorium reactors in the coming years. In conjunction with minuscule global thorium use, it is difficult to fathom whence the demand for such vast quantities of monazite comes.

The third allegation that the private companies have not returned any of the monazite to the government makes little sense either, for the law clearly stipulates that the mining company may store the monazite on its premises in full compliance of AERB regulations regarding the storage of prescribed substances. As of 2013, five private firms have been licensed to secure monazite on their premises.

The final accusation, that only a gentleman’s agreement exists between the companies and the government in reporting the companies’ monazite holdings, is not entirely out of the realm of impossibility in a country like India, famous for its bureaucratic lapses and inefficiency. However, the high priority given to the country’s nuclear assets makes this unlikely and any lapse is a result of a lackadaisical bureaucracy at most.

It is astonishing that an allegation based on such flimsy, uncorroborated evidence and numbers that bore no resemblance to reality received even the iota of attention that it did. Even the alleged cost to the exchequer, varying from Rs. 96,000 crores to Rs. 60 lakh crores – a 6,250% variance!! – should have set off some journalistic alarm bells. Perhaps the political environment of the times created a favourable disposition towards believing any ill of the government and reversed the country’s default position to an assumption of guilt rather than of innocence.

There remains, of course, the question about the missing 2.1 million tonnes of monazite. Is it in fact missing? Are the DAE’s figures accurate? If it has not been exported and is not missing, do the records show that amount in the holdings of the mining companies? If not, why not? Unlike the allegations against VV Mineral and the other four companies, these questions are merely about paperwork and should be asked of the DAE now that attention has been drawn to India’s beach sands.

Nonetheless, thorium holds great promise for India’s energy dreams. The Bharatiya Janata Party looks more and more certain to win the ongoing Lok Sabha elections and if they are to keep their manifesto promise to develop India’s thorium assets, it is time to dispel the dark cloud hanging over India’s fledgling thorium industry and give it the attention and support that it needs.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on April 28, 2014.

Reading the NTI’s Nuclear Materials Security Index

09 Thu Jan 2014

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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The Nuclear Threat Initiative released its Nuclear Materials Security Index for 2014 on January 8. After the positive response to the index when launched in 2012, the NTI and the Economist Intelligence Unit sought feedback from experts and incorporated several new indicators and sub-indicators to produce this year’s report. Given the paucity and unreliability of data the NTI and EIU have had to work with, the outcome is indeed laudable. Furthermore, the creation of some sort of measurement for nuclear materials safety is most welcome and one hopes that the index will be expanded to cover nuclear safety and proliferation risks in the future.

That said, the findings of the report must be taken with a grain of salt. This is not for any fault on the part of NTI or the EIU but the subjective nature of some indicators. One of the key findings for Indians from the latest NMSI is that India now ranks below even China and Pakistan in the security of its nuclear material. Undeniably, there are many concerns about how Delhi is running its nuclear programme, but the NMSI’s ratings must be put in context.

Countries with weapons-usable nuclear materialsThe NMSI covers 25 countries with weapons-usable fissile material and 151 countries without (less than one kilogramme). The latter group is part of the study because terrorists will target areas which are most vulnerable, not most plentiful, in nuclear material. However, there exist substantial differences between the two groups that considering their results together would skew the findings. It is important to point out that the NMSI does not address proliferation risks, disarmament, nuclear safety, or the threat of sabotage of nuclear facilities. Rather, it restricts itself to evaluating the potential of theft of weapons-usable nuclear materials.

Countries without weapons-usable nuclear materialsEven within this circumscribed ambit, the NMSI does not consider the theft of radiological material or lightly enriched uranium used in many civilian reactors – as the study accepts, these are also dangerous materials but would do damage on a vastly smaller scale than weapons-usable fissile material; additionally, they “require a different analytical approach and represent different challenges.” However, the NMSI does not make a distinction between military use and civilian use of fissile material unlike the International Atomic Energy Agency; this brings the 85% of nuclear materials that are for non-civilian use and outside the scope of the IAEA’s inspections within the purview of the NMSI. As the report reminds us, the IAEA’s mandate is strictly civilian and is restricted further by budgetary constraints and the discretion of nuclear weapons states in opening their civilian facilities to inspections.

NTI IndexThe NMSI evaluates risk across five categories – 1. Quantities and Sites (16%), 2. Security and Control Measures (29%), 3. Global Norms (17%), 4. Domestic Commitments and Capacity (20%), and 5. Risk Environment (18%). Each of these categories are weighted differently as indicated in parentheses and have further sub-indicators. Countries were ranked within their respective categories, out of 25 and out of 151.

In the first category, Argentina and Australia came first, with Iran in fourth place, France in 18th, the United States in 20th, India, Japan, and Pakistan sharing 22nd, and the United Kingdom closed the list; in terms of security and control measures, the United States took pole position, China 15th, Iran and Pakistan 23rd, and India sealed the bottom; Australia, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom all led the pack in following global norms while the United States was 13th, India 18th, and Pakistan 20th; when it came to domestic commitments and capacity, not one nuclear weapons state made it into the top 10, with France at 11, the United States at 17, Pakistan 20th, China 21st, and India 23rd; nuclear weapons states maintained their nuclear material in riskier environments than non-nuclear weapons states did with France being the highest ranked NWS at 8, the United States 10th, India 22nd, and Pakistan at rock bottom on 25. Overall, Australia’s nuclear materials were deemed safest, the French were 7th safest, United States 11th, Chinese 20th, Pakistani 21st, and Indian fissile material was 23rd safest.

Nuclear Materials Security Index Methodology
Categories and Sub-Indicators Scoring Weightage
NTI methodology NTI scoring NTI weighting

These results may be statistically sound but raise questions about their implicit assumptions. For example, “Quantities and Sites” makes the statistically understandable assumption that more material or sites raises risk. This basis inherently biases the category against closed fuel cycles, nuclear propulsion, accession to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and in India’s case, its three-phase nuclear programme.

Weapons-Usable Fissile MaterialThe logic of more-is-worse is similar to arguing that everyone who drinks is an alcoholic. The peculiarities of each national nuclear programme prevents it from certain decisions. For example, India needs plutonium to fire up its thorium reactors and is therefore investing in breeder technology. India’s closed fuel cycle is not a cause for concern if security considerations are integrated into every stage. Furthermore, India has recently launched the INS Arihant, a nuclear-powered submarine whose reactor operates with 40% enriched uranium. India plans an additional two to four more such vessels and the maintenance of this fleet precludes a high score for India in the first category of the NMSI. Finally, India has hesitated to sign the FMCT because the treaty would limit its fissile material stockpile while committing no other power to disarm (Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty worked out very well).

India’s “Security and Control Measures” remain weak as the Comptroller and Auditor General has already reported in 2012. Record-keeping, the ability to detect and prevent theft on nuclear material, periodic background checks on personnel, licensing, regular assessments, and internal surveillance all remain wanting but there is a silver lining – an International Atomic Energy Agency assessment in November 2012 found India’s reactors in Rajasthan to be safe and the facility to have sound procedures. Delhi’s problem is not a lack of awareness in these matters but an irrational devotion to secrecy and limited qualified manpower to implement all the safety precautions immediately.

NTI IndiaSimilarly, “Global Norms” seeks membership to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT), the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), and other such regimes. The section also measures safety by considering contributions to the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) and the IAEA Nuclear Security Fund, much like papal indulgences once upon a time. However, there may be reasons a state might not want to accede to a treaty but may still behave in a responsible manner, sometimes even more so than signatories to the treaty. A classic example is the NPT – India has been a better non-signatory member of that treaty than either the United States or China. It is also highly unlikely that a state would allow a terrorist to go unpunished if its nuclear facilities were attacked because it was a non-signatory to an international treaty affirming the same.

Perhaps India’s single gravest failing is, as “Domestic Commitments and Capacity” highlights, the failure to have an independent nuclear regulatory authority. This was also mentioned in the 2012 CAG report but secrecy and inertia have meant that the country’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is yet to develop any teeth. However, India has committed to and implemented other standards such as the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 as well as the CPPNM.

“Risk Environment” tries to measure political stability and regional conflict but has its own problems. For one, public unrest and violence has varying reasons – the Taliban attack on a Pakistani military base housing nuclear material, for example, is quite different from the large demonstrations that rocked India after the gangrape of a woman in Delhi last year, the Taksim Square protests, or the Occupy movement. The Airin Riots in Osaka in 1990 or the Koza Riot on a US military base in Okinawa in 1970 hardly put Japan’s fissile material or US nuclear weapons on the island in any danger. If disputes, tensions, and armed conflict were truly a criterion, the United States would be close to the bottom of the chart for the talented multitasking it does in this department.

None of this is to disparage the NMSI – the report attempts to create a broad framework in which to understand the safety of nuclear materials, and in this it has been successful. There is little doubt that India’s nuclear establishment needs to be more forthright on transparency, regulations, and security, that India lags behind Japan or the United States in these matters as the NMSI indicates. To read the report with greater accuracy than it promises is unfair and one’s understanding would be compromised due to the various reasons that have been pointed out. A comprehensive report on any country that factors in its individual peculiarities would require significantly more heft and would only attract experts, leaving policymakers and educated citizens in the dark. The NMSI is an excellent first step towards forming a global evaluation system for nuclear safety but it should be read with discernment and an awareness of its limitations.