• Home
  • About
  • Reading Lists
    • Egypt
    • Great Books
    • Iran
    • Islam
    • Israel
    • Liberalism
    • Napoleon
    • Nationalism
    • The Nuclear Age
    • Science
    • Russia
    • Turkey
  • Digital Footprint
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pocket
    • SoundCloud
    • Twitter
    • Tumblr
    • YouTube
  • Contact
    • Email

Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Bhavini

A Second Nuclear Dawn

01 Tue Sep 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on A Second Nuclear Dawn

Tags

Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, AHWR, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited, Bhavini, breeding ratio, burn-up, carbide fuel, coolant, Fast Breeder Reactor, FBR, Heavy Water Reactor, HWR, IGCAR, India, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Light Water Reactor, LWR, metal fuel, moderator, NPCIL, nuclear, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, oxide fuel, Perumal Chellapandi, PFBR, PHWR, plutonium, Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor, thorium

Tucked away in the tiny, nondescript village of Kalpakkam is one India’s little islands of excellence, the recently formed Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam (Bhavini). Established in October 2003, Bhavini is a nuclear power utility company that is wholly owned by the Government of India and comes under the Department of Atomic Energy. Tasked with the construction and operation of advanced nuclear reactors such as the Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR), the company has till date no operational reactors and works on a modest operating budget. However, the first reactor, the Prototype FBR or PFBR, is scheduled to go critical this month. The nature of the venture attracts the best minds in the country to Bhavini and like the institution, its technical workforce is young with an average age of barely 35 years.

As a utility company, Bhavini does not design or develop new reactors or even improvements to existing ones – that responsibility falls to the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), which was known as the Reactor Research Centre (RRC) until 1985 when it was rechristened. IGCAR has operated a 13 MW Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) since the same year and the experience garnered from that has led to the design of the soon-to-be-critical 500 MW PFBR. Although the FBTR was initially based on the French Rapsodie reactor that operated from 1967 until 1983, several improvements were made to it over time until Indian scientists were confident of developing a commercial variant.

Although much of the nuclear conversation in India has recently veered towards nuclear liability and the import of the latest Generation III or III+ reactors from France and Russia, what makes the mandate of Bhavini so exciting is that it represents a second dawn of the nuclear age. Until now, Light Water Reactors have been the mainstay of global nuclear power generation numbering 375 of 439 commercial power reactors in operation at the beginning of this year. India’s fleet of reactors is comprised mainly of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) which are similar in principle to LWRs and are operated by Bhavini’s sister concern, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL). However, the fleet of FBRs Bhavini will eventually operate promise to dramatically improve on the performance of even the latest LWRs.

All nuclear reactors operate by harnessing the energy released by the fission of atoms of fissile material, usually uranium. When an atom of uranium is made to split by bombardment with neutrons, each fission releases two or three additional neutrons. Some of these neutrons are very fast while others are slower. Natural uranium is composed of two types or isotopes of uranium – U235, which accounts for about 0.7% of the total mass, and U238, which accounts for the rest. The former is more unstable and can be caused to undergo fission by slower neutrons, also called thermal neutrons, while the latter requires the higher energy of fast neutrons to split and maintain a chain reaction.

In the reactors NPCIL operates, energy is produced in the thermal spectrum, meaning that energy is derived from fission reactions caused by thermal neutrons. LWRs slow down the neutrons with the help of a moderator, usually water, so that they may react with the U235. However, water has a tendency to absorb neutrons and remove them from the chain reaction, slowing down and eventually stopping the process. This problem is resolved by simply enriching the fuel slightly so that there is a higher concentration of U235 in it and therefore a greater chance of keeping the chain reaction going. Heavy Water Reactors (HWR) use, as the name suggests, heavy water or deuterium oxide – water in which the hydrogen atom has an extra neutron – as moderator. The extra neutron prevents absorption of neutrons from the fission reactions and the larger size of the heavy water atom allows less energy transfer from neutrons during collision. This obviates the need for fuel enrichment and allows the fission of the more plentiful U238 isotope. In either case, the reactor’s neutron economy is based on thermal neutrons.

Bhavini’s fast reactors, on the other hand, do not use moderators at all. This reduces the size of the reactor significantly but also reduces its reactivity due to the loss of neutrons. To compensate, fast reactors use plutonium – which gives off three neutrons per fission instead of the two emitted by uranium – as fuel in the core. Interestingly, fast neutrons, though not very efficient in causing fission, are susceptible to being captured by the nuclei of natural uranium. U238, upon capture of a neutron (and ejecting two electrons as β-decay), transmutates to Pu239. Therefore, a fast reactor can generate more plutonium than it consumes by surrounding its plutonium core with a blanket of natural uranium. Such reactors are known as breeder reactors. Not all fast reactors are breeder reactors; depending upon their configuration, they can also be optimised for other tasks such as the burn-up of spent fuel from LWRs.

A second advantage of FBRs is that they can be used to handle the “waste” of thermal reactors. The high kinetic energy of neutrons in fast reactors transmutates the transuranic elements found in the spent fuel of thermal reactors. This substantially reduces the volume of nuclear waste as well as the half-life of some long-lasting elements from tens of thousands of years to a few centuries. The fuel efficiency of fast reactors is at least an order of magnitude higher than thermal reactors – they use far less fuel to generate the same amount of power, augmenting India’s scarce and low-grade uranium stocks. For example, the two PHWRs at the Madras Atomic Power Plant generate 440 MW of electric power and consume about 100 tonnes of fuel per annum; the 500 MW PFBR next door is expected to utilise some 500 kg of fuel over the same period.

Since fast reactors try and avoid anything that might moderate neutrons, they tend to use liquid metals as coolants. The higher density of liquid metals makes them more efficient in heat removal and their heavier atoms absorb less energy from neutrons upon collision. Liquid metals also need not be pressurised as their boiling point is higher than the operating temperature of the reactor. Additionally, their electrical conductivity means that they can be pumped by electromagnetic pumps.

Despite these highly useful capabilities of FBRs, there has been little international enthusiasm for the technology. In fact, India is one of the very few countries that even pursued the technology. Presently, the only commercial fast reactor in the world is operating in Russia at Beloyarsk though Japan is awaiting clearance from its nuclear regulatory authority for its reactor at Monju. At one point, France was at the forefront of fast reactor technology but it shut down its Phénix reactor in 2009. The United States and Britain experimented with the technology in the 1960s but in the 1970s, decided not to pursue it further. However, there are several ongoing projects in Europe such as ASTRID (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration) in France and ALFRED (Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator) and ELSY (European Lead-cooled SYstem) in Europe though none of them are expected to come to fruition for at least another decade. China has also shown great interest in fast reactors of late and is operating a research reactor outside Beijing.

Many of these reactors were shut down prematurely and for political reasons. In the middle of the 20th century, uranium was thought to be scarce and fast reactors were expected to better utilise world uranium supplies through their higher fuel efficiency. This, they could do by a factor of about 60 to 80. Yet the discovery of new sources of uranium dampened interest in fast reactors. Furthermore, the United States was increasingly concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons and the ability of fast reactors to breed plutonium was seen negatively. Washington not only shut down its own programme but also put pressure on other countries to abandon their interest in fast reactors and even reprocessing spent fuel for plutonium.

Admittedly, the technology has not been easy to master. Early sodium-cooled reactors had several mishaps with leaks and fires. Technical problems with the Superphénix, for example, saw the reactor out of commission for 25 months and at low power for 63 months of its 11 years of operation. A major fire at Monju in December 1995, within 18 months of its criticality, shut the reactor down for 15 years and within three months of its restart in May 2010, new problems surfaced and the reactor had to be shut down again. India’s FBTR also had two major mishaps: in 1987, the refuelling mechanism was severely damaged and in 2002, some 75 kgs of radioactive sodium was spilled due a defective valve. The reactor had to be shut down for two years after its first accident in 1987 and operated at very low power until 1992.

The problem with these seemingly small leaks and spills is that sodium has a very high chemical reactivity, causing it to burst into flames if it comes in contact with water. At Monju, for example, the leaked sodium reacted with the moisture in the air and caused thick, acrid smoke almost instantaneously. This made breathing difficult, visibility non-existent, and created a radioactive environment in which repairs would have to be carried out. Critics of fast reactor programmes point out that these reactors already work with dangerous, highly radioactive substances such as plutonium and actinides and even routine refuelling is an arduous task; the additional risk of handling sodium makes the entire venture unacceptably high risk.

Given these high risks and the reticence of other industrially advanced countries to commit to fast reactor development, is the Indian nuclear conclave acting prematurely? Perumal Chellapandi, the chairman and managing director of Bhavini, does not think so. “We have to do it,” he simply said. What might come off as stubbornness to the casual outside observer has a long institutional and national history. Ever since independence and the days of Homi Bhabha, Indian scientists and research institutions have insisted on indigenous mastery of high technology. In this, they have usually received the full support of the country’s political class. Where possible, Indian scientists have developed the science and engineering in-house but purchases from foreign sources have usually included a clause for transfer of technology.

By repeatedly carping on technical challenges that have already been resolved, critics have painted an unfair portrait of fast reactors, said Chellapandi, though he refused to ascribe motive to their analyses. Despite its initial difficulties, the FBTR achieved a burn-up of 100,000 MW days per tonne without a single fuel pin failure in 2002 – this is a very important milestone and is a measurement of how much energy has been extracted from nuclear fuel before it needs to be recycled. The greater the burn-up, the lower the cost of recycling or storage. By way of comparison, burn-up for PHWRs is around 7,000 MWd/t and 40,000 MWd/t for LWRs; scientists at IGCAR are confident that India’s FBRs will achieve a burn-up of 150,000 MWd/t or more. Much is also made of radioactive sodium but its half-life is barely 15 hours, and the pumps, steam generators, and other reactor components have logged in tens of thousands of hours of trouble-free operation since 2002. This October marks 30 years of operation of the FBTR  and in 2011, it was announced that the reactor would continue to function for another 20 years.

FBRs form the second phase of India’s three-stage nuclear programme as envisioned by Homi Bhabha. In the first stage, PHWRs burned natural uranium and generated plutonium as a by-product. Based on India’s natural resources, there is a limit to how many indigenously fuelled PHWRs can be built – approximately 13 GW worth. In the second stage, FBRs will burn a plutonium-uranium carbide mix and breed more plutonium. Once plutonium stocks are built up, thorium can be introduced into the reactor as a blanket material to be transmuted into U233 for the third stage. Finally, in the third stage, thermal breeder reactors will be deployed with Th232-U233 fuel. These reactors can be refuelled with only thorium once they have been initiated with a neutron-rich source. The third stage is not likely to be launched until second stage reactors are capable of generating at least 50 GW and large-scale deployment of thorium reactors is not expected until 2050.

It has also been argued that India is too optimistic in calculating the time it will take for sufficient plutonium stocks to be built up by FBRs. Doubling time, the term used to refer to how long it will take to breed twice the amount of fissile material as the reactor was initially fuelled with, has been recalculated by some scientists to be as high as 70 years instead of IGCAR’s claims between 10 and 30 years, depending upon the type of fuel. Chellapandi is not fazed by this, confidently explaining why doubling time is not even an issue. “There will be multiple reactors simultaneously in operation,” he argued, “and each will contribute to the stockpile.” With a fleet of FBRs, even the exaggerated 70-year doubling time will come down by a factor of the number of reactors. The Department of Atomic Energy is not particularly concerned with doubling time because several FBRs have been planned – after the PFBR, work will begin on two more 600 MW FBRs at Kalpakkam itself; two more have been approved and are in the geographical and environmental survey phase while two more have been planned and are in the final stages of approval. Technically, these are different definitions of doubling time – over a reactor vs. over a system – but that does not hinder the rapid deployment of more FBRs.

Yet if doubling time were a concern, the system could be optimised for that by delaying the introduction of thorium into the fuel cycle, increasing the density of the oxide fuel, and making the stainless steel container – which absorbs some neutrons – thinner. Metal fuel could also be used instead of oxide or carbide fuel as it has a breeding ration of almost 1.5 as compared to around 1.1 for oxide fuel and 1.3 to carbide fuel. However, as scientists have repeatedly stated, the PBFR is a prototype reactor and the primary objective is to provide power at the lowest possible cost. Yet even before that, it is of paramount importance to ensure that the PFBR operates to textbook perfection. As per current plans, Bhavini expects the nuclear energy sector in India to show rapid growth only post 2030.

Another option to bypass the potential bottleneck of the time required to breed more plutonium is to import the fuel. Although the element has been treated as a pariah for its long half-life and potential for weaponisation, nothing inherently obstructs the trade of plutonium in an international nuclear market just like uranium provided adequate safeguards are established. If India were willing to put some of its fast reactors under safeguards, it could have a fleet of 20 FBRs virtually overnight.

What of the long time it takes to construct a nuclear reactor? To this, the CMD of Bhavini accepted that the PFBR had taken a little longer than usual but insisted that there would be no delays in future reactors. A combination of 40 years of sanctions and the low priority India has placed on nuclear power has resulted in poor skill development and Indian industry is presently not capable of providing for a rapidly expanding nuclear energy sector. The PFBR was delayed by three years, for example, because Bhavini had to work closely with the steel industry to develop and forge metal to exacting standards. With the experience of one 500 MW reactor under their belt, components for future similarly sized reactors can be manufactured with haste. If Bhavini were to develop a 900 MW or 1,200 MW fast reactor at a later date, Indian industry would likely need more time to redesign the enlarged pressure vessel and other components.

On the whole, fast reactors will work out cheaper than present-day reactors because they use substantially less fuel, produce far less waste that has shorter half-life, and is much smaller – the core of the PFBR is approximately two metres tall and 0.75 metres wide. Like the latest LWRs, they also come with inherent safety features such as a negative void coefficient – a fancy way of saying that the reactions slow down as the reactor gets hotter, thereby making a meltdown impossible.

It is LWRs that have captured India’s imagination at the moment. Since the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008, several proposals for purchasing foreign reactors have been floated. The 1988 deal with the Soviet Union is being continued with Russia at Kudankulam and Rosatom has offered up to 20 more reactors if India so desires; Areva is expected to construct the world’s largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur with six 1,650 MW EPR reactors; Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh is supposed to get six of GE’s 1,530 MW ESBWRs and Mithi Virdhi has been chosen for six of Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactors. Would so many LWRs not hurt the growth of FBRs? Chellapandi does not think so. After all, the waste produced by those reactors can easily be used to fuel fast reactors. Thus, in no way is NPCIL in competition with Bhavini and an ideal reactor fleet would be a combination of Gen III+ as well as fast reactors.

Although Bhavini will run the world’s second commercial fast reactor, the scientists behind the programme are not resting on their laurels. Between IGCAR and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, several new reactor designs are being studied. One design that has received some publicity is the thorium-fuelled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) which is scheduled to break ground next year. With much less fanfare, India is also investigating reactor designs that reduce the time until direct thorium utilisation. Molten Salt Reactors, Accelerator Driven Systems, and Compact High Temperature Reactors are all under study as well has various fuel mixes in PHWRs. It is very likely that these new designs will also one day come under Bhavini. Some of these designs may not be as fuel-efficient as the FBR but they make up for it with even greater safety. In fact, as one director at NPCIL boasted, the AHWR is so safe and requires so small an exclusion zone that it can be built in the middle of a city!

The Indo-US nuclear deal was a landmark in Indian nuclear history because it ended four decades of sanctions against India. There was great excitement at what it would mean for India’s energy sector and the ripple effects that would have on industry and quality of life. Bhavini holds the potential to eclipse that promise. Not only will India have more reactors producing energy but they will be safer and can be fuelled indigenously after a few years. This will reduce India’s exposure to the vagaries of international nuclear politics. Like every scientist who has occupied so senior a position before him, Chellapandi insists that self-reliance is crucial. But if India is to be self-reliant in this arena, industry will have to also simultaneously develop its manufacturing capabilities. However, Indian industry will be interested in developing skills in this area only if there is potential for repeat orders and perhaps exports – otherwise, their investments in manufacturing infrastructure will not make economic sense. When asked about potential exports and establishing India as a major nuclear player, Chellapandi was not opposed to the idea but feels that there is sufficient domestic need to sustain the industry in the medium term.

On a non-technical and more frustrating issue, how does one address the public paranoia about nuclear technology? This is one question Chellapandi does not have a definite answer for. “All you can do is continue to engage with them, do community outreach, and explain what is being done,” he said. Yet NPCIL and Bhavini already do this – free health camps are held, lectures are given at schools and universities, public amenities are provided in the vicinity of the nuclear facilities, villages are adopted, and the townships developed around reactor and research sites are far better planned and maintained than most Indian habitations. “You can only keep talking. What else can you do?”

Without any exaggeration, Bhavini can be said to represent a second dawning of the nuclear age. The first dawn in July 1945 brought with it the horsemen of the apocalypse but this one holds the promise of redemption. Bhavini and its reactors will consume almost 80 times less fuel than a comparable LWR and generate substantially less nuclear waste in the process; it will even breed more fuel in the process. Most importantly, the waste it generates will have radioactive half lives around 400-700 years rather than the 24,000 years LWR waste will have. This will make handling and storage cheaper and safer in FBRs than in LWRs. As the second phase in India’s nuclear power journey, fast reactors will optimally utilise Indian natural resources and insulate the country’s nuclear energy establishment from geopolitical games while providing cheap power to a growing population and economy. Simply put, fast reactors can bring energy security within India’s grasp.

Chellapandi joined what was then the Reactor Research Centre in September 1978 and has spent his entire career on developing and perfecting various aspects of India’s fast reactors. In September 2015, he will complete 37 years of service just as India’s first commercial fast breeder reactor goes online. It is a fitting work anniversary token for a man who most deserves to be called the father of India’s fast reactor programme.


This article first appeared in the August 2015 print edition of Swarajya.

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Aspects of India’s Nuclear Renaissance

22 Fri Aug 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Aspects of India’s Nuclear Renaissance

Tags

ACR-1000, BARC, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited, Bhavini, Canada, CANDU, EC6, EPR, India, Kudankulam, LWR, MOX fuel, NPCIL, nuclear power, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, PHWR, PWR, Russia, Tarapur, thorium, United States

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is famous for his commitment to solar power. In the past month, however, Modi has praised nuclear energy and declared that it will form a vital part of India’s energy mix. In July 2014, the prime minister visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, praising the country’s scientists and challenging them to strive for even greater achievements. Within ten days of Modi’s BARC visit, it was announced that India would be setting up 22 nuclear power projects with Russian assistance. In addition to the six nuclear reactors planned for Chhaya Mithi Virdhi from Westinghouse, another six reactors for Kovvada from General Electric, and six more from Areva for Jaitapur, India is in talks to import 40 reactors – almost 200% of its present number and over 700% of its installed nuclear capacity.

However, it must be remembered that the time for celebration in India is post delivery, not post announcement; bureaucracy can frustratingly distort timelines and projections. There is reason for nuclear power enthusiasts to be cautiously elated with the development but beyond India’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, there are some issues arising from India’s massive nuclear expansion that require some careful thought.

The first concern is that the 40 reactors India is looking at are all light water reactors (LWRs) with which India has little experience. Barring the original two reactors at Tarapur, India’s nuclear fraternity operates a fleet of pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). After the initial purchase of a 220 MW CANDU reactor from Canada for Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) I (a second purchase was interrupted by the post-Pokhran sanctions), Indian scientists modified and improved the technology to produce CANDU-derivatives known as INDU. The two boiling water reactors (BWRs) at Tarapur were purchased to prove to a sceptical Lok Sabha that Indians could indeed operate nuclear power plants safely on their own and the sector receive full support.

Kudankulam is India’s first LWR, and as such, Indian knowledge about operating the reactor is only bookish. To master the technology and be able to come up with improvements and indigenous designs will require time, training, and large transfers of technology. One of the benefits of the tens of billions of dollars of nuclear imports ought to be that India learn to at least replicate if not design the reactors indigenously. Training engineers to operate the LWRs is fairly easy and quick but with 40 more reactors added to the mix, the autonomous Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) will be busy with plant management to do additional research and experimentation on LWR designs. As it is, some 90% of NPCIL’s budget goes towards operations and management, leaving only crumbs for research & development and nothing for expansion.

Corporations and governments do not engage in technology transfer without extracting a steep price. However, even if India were able to secure a painless technology transfer from its nuclear vendors, to whom would the transfer be made? Due to the clause in the Indo-US nuclear deal that stipulates the separation of India’s nuclear facilities, only those designated for exclusive civilian use can be the beneficiaries of such transfers. Otherwise, the military facility receiving the transfer will lose its status and come under international safeguards. With BARC disqualified and NPCIL incapable, only the fledgling BHAVINI is left whose main purpose is the development and operation of fast breeder reactors. In effect, there is presently no agency in India capable of conducting in-depth studies of other reactor designs or doing extensive research on new and promising reactor designs such as the molten salt reactor; even India’s thorium reactor programme is proceeding at a snail’s pace.

However, why is India suddenly interested in LWRs? The primary reason India chose HWRs over LWRs and BWRs in the 1950s was that the former did not require the large investment in the development of enrichment technology. Furthermore, the technology to make the heavy water needed for PHWRs was easily available and only had to be mass-produced. A further advantage of HWRs is its ability to achieve criticality at lower concentrations of fissile isotopes than in LWRs. This makes it ideal for the use of thorium or MOX fuel without much redesigning, something India has been interested in for a long time due to the paucity of domestic uranium.

It is puzzling why India has not reached out to Canada to help with its nuclear renaissance. Delhi has a history with Ottawa, albeit complicated, and Indian scientists are familiar with the basic CANDU design. Since 1974, when Canada imposed sanctions on India, Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) has significantly enhanced its designs to the CANDU-6, the Enhanced Candu 6 (EC6), the Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR), and others. These reactors retain the advantages of tolerance to multiple kinds of fuel – including thorium – and have better safety mechanisms installed, a perfect fit for India’s nuclear needs.

In the long run, India should think about emerging as a nuclear vendor, from reactors and components to services. This can hardly be done with a research establishment trapped in the civil-military divide; the role of NPCIL and/or Bhavini must be expanded while simultaneously encouraging private players to participate in the nuclear market. This can be hastened only with more training, experience, and research, for which the choice of India’s partners will be important. Contrary to public perception, the United States and Canada were far more forthcoming with Tarapur and RAPS I & II than the Russians are with Kudankulam.

Decades of neglect has brought the Indian nuclear power sector to a point where it is forced to make sub-optimal choices for the near-term. Forty years of sanctions forced indigenous development, which has been a success story with mixed results. However, the country’s power crisis is so acute that like Tarapur in 1962, a few LWRs are needed to provide momentum to a moribund industry. Thankfully, India is a large country with a growing population, medium industrialisation, and a massive power deficit. These disadvantages can work in India’s favour now over the purchase of LWRs – if the government can sustain growth, by 2050, India may well need up to 200 new reactors and 40 or even 80 LWRs with a 40-year lifespan will appear a notable but not subversive trend in Indian nuclear development. However, the government should be aware of the history of India’s nuclear development and the trajectory it has plotted for itself before making any major purchases or decisions.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

India’s Nuclear Millstone

30 Mon Sep 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

123 Agreement, Areva, Atomic Energy Act, Bhartiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited, Bhavini, Brussels Supplementary Convention, Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, CLNDA, Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, CSC, India, India-US nuclear deal, INES, International Nuclear Event Scale, Krishna Bahadur v. Purna Theatre, Kudankulam, NPCIL, nuclear, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, operator liability limit supplier liability, Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy, Price-Anderson Act, Rattan Chand Hira Chand v. Askar Nawaz Jung, Rosatom, SCI, SDR, Special Drawing Rights, Supreme Court of India, Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage

The India-US nuclear deal ratified, amidst scandal, in 2008 gave great hope to the country’s hopelessly inadequate energy sector. For the deal to be operationalised, however, India needed to create a nuclear regulatory framework for security and safety as well as liability. Such a framework consists of ex ante and ex post components, neither of which can stand alone. Ex ante legislation concerns itself with strict regulatory mechanisms to improve safety of nuclear operations and hopefully prevent a nuclear incident, while ex post legislation deals with compensation in the rare case of an accident. Security has been addressed by the Atomic Energy Act (1962), while the compensation question was only recently considered and addressed in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA).

The CLNDA has succeeded in upsetting all sides involved – some are insulted by the paltry liability limit of ₹1,500 crores, while others insist that allowing nuclear power plant operators right of recourse against suppliers will hamstring a nascent industry. Both are right…sort of.

Presently, India’s CLNDA applies to nuclear installations owned and/or operated by the Government of India [Art. 1(4)]. This includes all of India’s fleet of reactors, but a larger role for the private sector in the future will have to see this clause modified. Furthermore, the operator is not liable for damages caused by acts of personal negligence, war, terrorism, or the gods [Art. 5]. As far as the victims of a nuclear accident are concerned, the operator is solely liable for all damages [Art. 4]. This means that victims need not prove fault, merely that an accident has happened, to receive compensation. It also channels all responsibility for compensation to one source, the operator, so the victim is not burdened by following up with many players.

So far, so good. However, Articles 6 and 7 of the CLNDA caps operator liability to varying amounts depending upon the facility at which an accident may take place – nuclear power reactors ₹1,500 crores, reprocessing plants ₹300 crores, and research reactors ₹100 crores. A Nuclear Liability Fund, set up by levying contributions from each operator – in this case, the government-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Bhartiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI) – will help defray liabilities beyond the operator caps, and the Central Government stands in as the guarantor of last resort up to a limit of 300 million Special Drawing Rights (SDR). The government has reserved the right to raise these limits at any point in the future.

The ₹1,500-crore cap on operator liability has been considered low by most experts. In the event of a Level 7 INES (International Nuclear Event Scale) nuclear accident, damages could easily reach into the billions of dollars. The cap is undoubtedly low, but it must be understood in its context. International experience has been that a higher limit is built gradually as the industry expands and the insurance asset base increases. Actuaries calculate insurance limits and premiums based on the number of people covered, frequency of claims, insurance pool, safety protocols, operating track record, and other factors. Unlike other industries, nuclear insurers have few customers – in India, the government is presently the only client, but even in countries with private nuclear utilities, the number is still small.

The US nuclear industry, regulated by the Price-Anderson Act, increased liability coverage from an initial $60 million operator liability and $500 million government guarantees to a liability pool of nearly $13 billion today that includes an operators’ indemnity above private insurance and no government coverage. In France, the limit was set at €91 million but is now being raised to €700 million; in the United Kingdom, the limit has been in a phased increase from about €150 million in 1994 to the present €1.2 billion; Sweden has also seen its operator liability cap increase from around €350 million to €700 million; in Canada, a 1976 limit of $75 million has been raised to $650 million in 2008.

Insurance companies will also hesitate to insure single reactor facilities because a serious accident would probably render the main source of income, the reactor, worthless. Insurers therefore prefer to pool the risk of all facilities to create a larger asset base and allow a greater coverage while simultaneously lowering the cost. Thus, a large nuclear industry presents a greater asset base and will allow for a higher liability limit. India presently has only 14 civilian reactors, making a small collective pool. By comparison, South Korea, approximately the size of Bihar, has 23 reactors. It is only with the growth of India’s nuclear industry that operator liability will rise to reflect the actual cost of damages.

It must be noted here that India signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) in 2010, allowing it access to a supplement of 300 million SDRs for damages beyond the first tier operator liability. As per Article IX of the CSC, 50% of this shall be for damages within the installation state and the remaining 50% for damages without.

The second bugbear in the CLNDA is the GoI’s decision to allow the operator to have a right of recourse against the supplier. While the operator’s right of recourse against the supplier in case of i) the nuclear incident arising out of an act or omission by the supplier with an intent to cause damage or ii) a contractual right of recourse has been well-established in international law, Article 17(b) of India’s CLNDA extends the scope of such a right of recourse to consider “consequence[s] of an act of [the] supplier or his employee, which includes supply of equipment or material with patent or latent defects or sub-standard services.” In addition, Article 46 states that the CLNDA provisions “shall be in addition to, and not in derogation of, any other law…and nothing contained herein shall exempt the operator.” This exposes the operator, and thereby the supplier, to additional proceedings under Indian law.

Sections 17(a) and (c) of the CLNDA are standard provisions under international law too, and can be compared directly with Article X of the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, Article 6(f) of the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy, and even Article 10 of the Annex to the CSC. However, the expanded right of recourse against the supplier mentioned in Section 17(b) of the CLNDA has been objected to strenuously by international nuclear vendors on grounds that it violates international law and India’s treaty obligation to the CSC.

Supplier liability is an interesting notion that has been suggested in other countries too, with proponents arguing that exemptions are a hidden subsidy to nuclear vendors; given that the nuclear power industry has grown since the 1950s, it no longer needs such subsidies. This logic betrays a lack of understanding of nuclear economics – suppliers will pass on the additional costs of liability to the end consumer, the taxpayer, but the insurance industry will have to allocate funds to cover entities other than the operator. By making only the operator liable, the amount of coverage insurers can make available, via the operator, to the victims of a nuclear incident is maximum.

A second reason floated to pass liability on to suppliers is that there would be no incentive for them to improve their reactor designs otherwise. This is fear-mongering for two reasons: 1. regulatory requirements can force them to consistently improve on their designs, and 2. operators, cognisant of the liability they face, will veer towards safer designs and even a minor accident can affect the sales of a product line adversely.

The CLNDA has raised flags in France, Russia, and the United States, three of the world’s largest nuclear suppliers and important to India’s military and economic growth. While state-owned nuclear firms or firms with a large government stake such as Areva and Rosatom have expressed strong dissatisfaction with India’s liability law, private concerns such as General Electric and Westinghouse have declared that they would not enter the Indian market on such onerous terms. The impact of the CLNDA can already be seen – at Kudankulam, when India decided to retroactively apply liability to Russian-supplied reactors provided under a 1988 agreement, Moscow raised the price of the reactor, thereby passing the cost on to the consumer.

India’s leaders had arrogantly thought that the sheer size of their market would bring anyone to their doors; they have been proven horribly wrong. The nuclear renaissance everyone had expected from the Indo-US nuclear deal, even after five years, has not materialised. As a result, Delhi has started considering waivers to foreign companies or a curtailment of the duration of their liability to lure them to Indian shores. This will, in all likelihood, be found illegal by Indian courts. While a plain reading of Section 17 may suggest that clauses (a), (b), and (c) are distinctive and separate, they are interlinked. For example, if a contractual understanding between an operator and a supplier as per 17(a) can invalidate supplier liability in case of accident, can the same contract be extended to exonerate willful damage too? Furthermore, the Supreme Court of India (SCI) has declared in Krishna Bahadur v. Purna Theatre that a statutory right in favour of a party can be waived as long as no public interest or policy is adversely affected. In addition, Section 23 of the Indian Contract Act clearly stipulates that clauses of a contract would be unlawful if they go against the law or declared public policy. This was upheld by the SCI in Rattan Chand Hira Chand v. Askar Nawaz Jung in 1991.

Although Article 45 give the GoI discretionary powers to waive liability for some nuclear facilities, it stipulates that this power exists only in cases where the amount of nuclear material is insignificant.

In sum, the CLNDA appears to be a piece of legislation framed in the shadow of Bhopal than by pragmatism. The supplier liability clause and the vague additional torts clause will keep foreign vendors out of India – with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and China pushing hard on nuclear energy, India’s disorganised market, despite its size, is not a draw. These clauses do not make economic sense either; safety must be balanced by costs, probability and scale of accidents, and affordability – the reason everyone does not commute in tanks.

The liability limits are admittedly small, but these must be continually raised as India’s nuclear industry develops. It is unrealistic to expect the country’s insurance sector and nuclear industry to perform at European levels when they are half a century behind.

There is nothing stopping the GoI from setting an operator liability of ₹10,000 crores, but premia will be correspondingly high and nuclear power will become unaffordable. This is not something India can afford, environmentally or economically. Consider this: there are 115,000 premature deaths per year in India alone due to respiratory problems caused by coal, and there has been a shift for the worse in the climactic conditions over a startling 27% of the Indian landmass. The costs of myopia over the CLNDA are far greater than one realises.


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on October 05, 2013.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Chirps

  • Elysium's new reactor eats nuclear waste: youtube.com/watch?v=C6BGLg… | See? Nuclear "waste" is a red herring 3 days ago
  • Iran resumes uranium enrichment up to 20% at Fordow: bbc.in/38akZug | Yeah, how has that walking out of th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 weeks ago
  • Along the LoAC, India is clumsier in 2020 than it was in 1962: bit.ly/3o8z29g | Or at least, a sparrow wou… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 weeks ago
  • נובי גוד שמח קמראדים 🙂 youtube.com/watch?v=W_6Vs8… 3 weeks ago
  • US authorises sanctions in case of Chinese interference in selection of next Dalai Lama: bit.ly/37T5lTR |… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 weeks ago
Follow @orsoraggiante

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 213 other followers

Follow through RSS

  • RSS - Posts

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

  • The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews
  • Polarised Electorates
  • The Election Season
  • Does Narendra Modi Have A Foreign Policy?
  • India and the Bomb
  • Nationalism Restored
  • Jews and Israel, Nation and State
  • The Asian in Europe
  • Modern Political Shibboleths
  • The Death of Civilisation
  • Hope on the Korean Peninsula
  • Diminishing the Heathens
  • The Writing on the Minority Wall
  • Mischief in Gaza
  • Politics of Spite
  • Thoughts on Nationalism
  • Never Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)
  • Earning the Dragon’s Respect
  • Creating an Indian Lake
  • Does India Have An Israel Policy?
  • Reclaiming David’s Kingdom
  • Not a Mahatma, Just Mohandas
  • How To Read
  • India’s Jerusalem Misstep
  • A Rebirth of American Power

Management

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com
Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

Blog at WordPress.com.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: