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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: PFBR

A Bridge Too Far?

28 Wed Jun 2017

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

≈ Comments Off on A Bridge Too Far?

Tags

CANDU, Fast Breeder Reactor, FBR, hydroelectric power, IAEA, India, Indo-US nuclear deal, International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel, Leviathan, Mari-B, natural gas, Negev, Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, NSG, nuclear energy, Nuclear Suppliers Group, OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PFBR, PHWR, Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor, Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, renewable, safeguard, Shivta, Tamar

Perhaps the most substantial show of friendship India can make towards Israel is to offer cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Some might argue that a complete disavowal of the Palestinian cause and close diplomatic alignment with Israel would be a greater commitment, especially given Jerusalem’s craving for international recognition and normalisation, but an alliance with a middle power who does not have veto power in the United Nations has too many limitations to be worth much. Nuclear cooperation, however, holds far more allure for two critical reasons: one, it has an immediately utilitarian dimension, and two, pace what some academics have argued about prestige, nuclear commerce is tightly controlled by an international cabal who have deemed Israel ineligible to receive nuclear material.

Yet what will nuclear cooperation with Israel look like? Is Israel even interested in nuclear energy? Can India conduct nuclear commerce with a country that is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or have any sort of tacit acceptance such as the waiver India received from the Nuclear Suppliers Group? Will it invoke sanctions? What would be the ramifications for India? Is India capable of becoming a nuclear vendor? There are several questions that deserve careful thought before either country embarks upon such a venture.

Is Israel interested in nuclear energy?

Israel’s present installed electricity generating capacity is close to 17 GW, putting it in the same league as other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. If the country maintains an economic growth of five percent, energy requirements will rise to approximately 45 GW by 2050.

Israel’s policy of amimut – a Hebrew word meaning opacity – regarding its nuclear weapons programme has meant that it has shied away about discussing anything nuclear in public. However, calls for the country to invest in nuclear energy began in 1976 and continued throughout the 1980s. A site in the Negev desert at Shivta was reserved for a nuclear power plant with a generating capacity of 3,000 MW in 1980. Early in the new millennium, the became more frequent early in the new millennium. In February 2007, Uri Bin-Nun, an official at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, said that Director General Gideon Frank had told him that Israel was actively considering building a nuclear power plant in the Negev. Barely six months later, infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer declared that building a nuclear power plant is a national priority and the proposal had the support of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The tsunami at Fukushima also threw water on enthusiasm for nuclear energy in Israel. In an interview with CNN, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that he was having second thoughts about nuclear power after Fukushima. However, Israel’s precarious energy situation meant that calls for nuclear energy would soon resurface. In 2015, the Ministry of Infrastructure raised the test balloon in a report that called for private sector participation in a nuclear energy programme. In an energy plan that forecast the doubling of Israel’s energy needs by 2030, the Ministry of Infrastructure suggested that at least 15 percent of Israel’s energy come from nuclear power by 2050.

Israel’s energy needs are not merely a matter of fuelling the economy – Jerusalem is very conscious of its energy security as well as the environment. After its diversification from coal to natural gas in the late 1990s, Israel discovered what would become the Mari-B gas field off the coast by Ashdod. Within a decade, natural gas became the country’s primary source of energy. Demand became so high that gas had to be imported from Egypt. However, the agreement had to be cancelled after seven years (2005-2012) due to political turmoil and terrorism and this experience underscored Israel’s vulnerability to Jerusalem. The discovery of the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields in 2009 and 2010 has given Israel a new lease of life, at least for the next 50 years, and plans are afoot to even begin exports to Europe; since January 2017, Israel began to quietly export gas to Jordan.

Israel also has no hydroelectric power to speak of, so it must rely entirely on fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear power. Its move away from coal was partly due to environmental factors but also due to rising cost of imports; however, reliance on natural gas is still not quite environmentally friendly if Israel is to meet European emissions standards. More importantly, natural gas can serve as a reliable and valuable source of revenue if other energy sources can be found. Israel has invested in renewable energy and despite several remarkable startups in the sector, the government is not particularly enthusiastic about renewables due to its several shortcomings such as low efficiency, storage issues, water demands, land requirements, and grid stability. That leaves Israel with only nuclear energy.

Can India become a nuclear vendor to Israel?

At first glance, India seems a most unlikely nuclear partner for Israel. After all, how can a country which cannot sustain its own nuclear programme be of use to anyone else? It is true that the Indian Department of Atomic Energy has countless weaknesses but with a little political prodding, the DAE might just be able to assist Israel and in doing so revive its own domestic agenda. Despite its shortcomings, India does have the second-largest fleet of pressurised heavy water reactors in the world and decades of experience in building, operating, and maintaining them.

Globally, PHWRs are not the common choice for power generation; light water reactors have been preferred by the non-proliferation-minded governments of nuclear vendors. Yet with appropriate safeguards, this should not matter much to the international community which has experience in monitoring Canada’s 19 CANDU reactors of a technology similar to that which inspired Indian derivatives.

India’s reactors have the added benefit of being cheaper and smaller than the standard production models offered by Areva, General Electric, Rosatom, or Westinghouse. While these firms offer reactors with capacities between 1,000 and 1,650 MW, Indian models come at 220 MW, 540 MW, and 700 MW. The smaller size may suit Israeli needs better by allowing it to distribute reactors between three or four sites around the country. Admittedly, Israel may indeed prefer small modular reactors to even the diminutive Indian PHWRs but those models are yet to have a single working model even if Israel were eligible to purchase them.

It is not advisable to compare reactor costs across sites and technologies due to the dozens of variables that could change. However, as a rough illustration showcasing the viability of Indian nuclear exports, the two Russian 1,000 MW VVERs at Kudankulam III & IV cost India just short of ₹40,000 crores; by comparison, India’s 700 MW PHWRs at RAPS VII & VIII cost ₹12,300 crores and ₹11,500 crores at Kakrapar III & IV.

The biggest obstacle to India’s domestic nuclear manufacturing has been that no industrial house is willing to invest in the nuclear sector due to the paucity of orders. If India aggressively pursued nuclear energy for itself as well as for export purposes, it is a reasonable bet that there would be greater interest. India’s recent decision to approve ten more PHWRs for itself is a shot in the arm and if an order for 20 Israeli reactors over the next 30 years were to trickle in, it could reshape the industry.

There is also the issue of quality control. Indian manufacturers have had trouble producing nuclear grade turbines, instrumentation panels, and other equipment to an international standard. Cooperation with Israel need not be a one-way street – if Israeli know-how could augment Indian experience, these minor irritations might well disappear. This does require working with a level of openness the Indian establishment is not used to but it is a good measure to build character!

The biggest challenge to an Indian nuclear partnership will be its inability to provide full spectrum service. Delhi may be able to supply the reactors, manufacture fuel rods, train Israel to operate and maintain them, even buy back the used fuel to assuage proliferation concerns but it cannot guarantee a supply of uranium ore or yellow cake. India’s domestic production is shrouded in unwarranted secrecy but it relies on imports from Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The only way for India to emerge as a full spectrum nuclear vendor is by acquiring uranium mines abroad. This would help with domestic use as well as export and is a sound option that Delhi has anyway been considering, regardless of whether India cooperates with Israel in the nuclear field.

Another option for India to break out of the commercial nuclear stranglehold it finds itself in is to prioritise its thorium reactor programme. India is a leader in this kind of advanced nuclear technology and it is blessed with mineral resources to last centuries. With a technology chain from mining to decommissioning entirely outside the influence of the NSG cartel, India has the ability to emerge as the Saudi Arabia of safe and clean energy. The benefits of such ambition are accrued not only domestically but also contribute towards global environmental health. India can assure Israel and its other clients of full-spectrum service in thorium energy if it ever proceeds with its development.

What are the geopolitics of Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation?

This is the real question the proposal for Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation boils down to. How will the international community react to the news? What will be their counter-moves? Can India and Israel bear the costs, if any? Are the benefits worth the price?

Legally, India stands in a unique space to offer Israel nuclear cooperation if it so desires. It is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty nor is it a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the primary cartel that restricts trade in nuclear technology, components, and fuel. Technically, Delhi breaks no laws by extending nuclear cooperation to Israel. Itself a non-signatory to the discriminatory NPT, India is perfectly placed to accept Israel’s refusal to accede to the treaty – albeit the reasons are somewhat different.

The primary concern for the international community, in principle, should be the diversion of civilian cooperation to military applications. To reassure the world, and because it is a better business practice, India can ask Israel to accede to safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency to those specific facilities India will be a partner in or offer a bilateral safeguards mechanism that follows the same protocols. The primary principle of non-proliferation reassured, the international community is but left with a sore nose at this circumvention of their net.

Used nuclear fuel is usually a concern for non-proliferation. India can buy back the used reactor fuel from Israel for use in its eventually coming fast breeder reactor programme. If the FBR programme shows promise, Israel might even be interested in recycling its used fuel with help from India. In a worst case situation, the fuel can be stored in an onsite facility until a suitable geological depository is found as is the case with all current nuclear power plants.

Will cooperation with Israel hurt India’s chances of furthering its own goals, such as getting into the NSG? Theoretically, perhaps. However, with China waiting to veto any mention of India and membership in the same breath, this really need not concern Delhi at all; its chances of getting into the nuclear cartel are as close to zero as one can get. The only way India might squeeze into the NSG is if Delhi is willing to let Pakistan off the hook and give it a clean chit for past transgressions. This is what “principles-based membership criteria” means and it is too high a price to even consider.

It is folly to even think that India is now a partial member of the nuclear community. Barring a handful of countries keen to do deals with it, the hurdles other countries place before Indian aspirations indicates that Delhi is resentfully seen as an interloper with powerful friends. India can expect further outrage from the non-proliferation community through at least these NSG members. Yet legally, India and Israel will have all their bases covered.

It may be tempting to compare Indo-Israeli nuclear cooperation to the Indo-US nuclear deal but it s not – neither India nor Israel are part of the non-proliferation architecture built around the NPT and NSG, freeing to engage in contracts of mutual benefit without restrictions. Regardless, the 2008 deal does establish a precedent and provide a structure for acceptable nuclear commerce outside the strict ambit of the non-proliferation regime. As with India, the non-proliferation community might decide that it is safer to have Israel’s reactors within the fold than without.

Much will depend on how the United States reacts, and as a close ally of Israel, Washington might be amenable to reason. India and Israel may also count on some assistance in lubricating the wheels of power in Washington through the influence of the famed Jewish diaspora. The deal, not a matter of identity or ideology, should not get caught in the internecine conflict in the American Jewish community. Israel has also been cultivating China, mainly for economic interests, who will have to choose between its relationship with Israel and its rivalry with India. The main opposition will likely come from the non-proliferation lobby, or nuclear ayatollahs, as Indian scholar Bharat Karnad has aptly named them.

Conclusion

Nuclear energy is not merely about a diversification of energy sources for Israel. World over, nuclear power plants have proven to have a multiplier effect on the local economy. The Shivta site, for example, would fit perfectly into Jerusalem’s other goal of developing the Negev. Additionally, nuclear power allows cheap desalination of large quantities of water from the waste heat generated by the reactors. A 15 percent share of total national energy creates a need for a fair number of reactors that can ease the pressure off Israel’s water supply. Tamil Nadu has operated desalination plants for over a decade from the waste heat of nuclear power stations in the state. Finally, a booming nuclear industry will also mean high-skilled employment opportunities for the population.

For India, nuclear cooperation will cement relations with an important strategic partner. It will also promote trade and strengthen the nuclear manufacturing sector by providing greater volume to make it lucrative for more players. A nuclear relationship with Israel would in effect set up a parallel nuclear commerce system to the NSG: if they wish to influence Indian policy, they must do so by letting India into the club.

Of course, all of this may be too soon for a country that has itself come in from the nuclear cold barely a decade ago. India, to paraphrase the immortal line of Lt. General Frederick Browning in the 1977 World War II classic, A Bridge Too Far, may be trying to go a bridge too far. People probably said the same thing about the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2005.

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In Search of a Nuclear Vision

09 Fri Oct 2015

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

≈ Comments Off on In Search of a Nuclear Vision

Tags

Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, AHWR, AP1000, Areva, Bill Gates, China, Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, CLNDA, Fast Breeder Reactor, FBR, GE, General Electric, Homi Bhabha, India, Jawaharlal Nehru, Narendra Modi, nuclear, PFBR, Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, TerraPower, Travelling Wave Reactor, TWR, Urenco, Westinghouse

Few things are as confounding as watching India mismanage its nuclear energy policy. The Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 raised hopes that the country might be on the verge of a nuclear renaissance but Delhi handled subsequent steps with about as much aplomb as a tapdancing platypus. The latest fallout of this ham-handed approach to nuclear policy has been General Electric’s announcement that it will not participate in the Indian nuclear market until the country’s nuclear liability laws meet international standards.

The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act is but a symptom of a far greater malaise that has plagued Indian nuclear thinking for decades. In the early years after independence, India’s nuclear tsar, Homi Bhabha, had a close relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Consequently, he could count on Nehru’s support in his ambitions for India’s nuclear programme. The prime minister himself was also a devotee of high technology for it signalled to him a way in which India might leapfrog several stages of development.

Bhabha used the fact that he had the prime minister’s ear to dream big: he formulated the three-stage programme which would eventually see the country powered by thorium reactors and free from external dependencies. To reach this goal, India would first have to build a fleet of pressurised heavy water reactors and fast breeder reactors that would produce the fuel for the third stage. The chutzpah is astonishing when one considers that India did not even have a single nuclear reactor then.

Post Nehru, Indian leaders have been distant of the nuclear programme. It was difficult, however, to disavow the programme entirely. This was partly because the energy programme was inextricably interwoven with a weapons programme and India’s principled opposition to international nuclear apartheid linked the political fortunes of both to each other. The closeness between Bhabha and Nehru, not to mention the latter’s childlike fascination and wonder at big science, created a dynamic that has not since been replicated.

One thing India’s political class has never been accused of is possessing in-house expertise and this shows in the way Delhi seems lost at sea when it comes to nuclear energy. The drastic adjustment of the growth target for nuclear energy in the country – from 63 GW to 27.5 GW – by 2032 betrays a worrying incompetence in the Indian bureaucracy, or at the very least a complete disconnect between scientists and policy makers. The plan had been to build 16 domestic and 40 foreign reactors but fumbling on nuclear liability, viewed only through a prism of political expediency rather than technical criteria, repelled desperately needed foreign investment in India’s nuclear energy sector. Even if foreign vendors were forthcoming, the cost of their products has also shot up due to the convoluted bypassing of nuclear liability via the suppliers’ insurance pool. In the seven years since the epochal nuclear deal, the only good news the nuclear establishment can boast of is the securing of uranium supplies for the next decade or so.

The nuclear liability quagmire aside, Indian nuclear energy is still in complete disarray. Only six reactors are under construction in the country presently, a 1,000 MW VVER at Kudankulam, two 700 MW pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) at Kakrapar, two more similar reactors at Rawatbhata, and the 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor (FBR) at Kalpakkam. All have seen significant delays in construction – an inter-governmental agreement between India and the Soviet Union was signed in 1988 but construction only began in 2002; Kakrapar and Rawatbhata were approved in 2005 but construction started in 2010, and the PFBR is at least three years behind schedule. These are among the faster projects – the nuclear power project in Gorakhpur was sanctioned in 1984 but finally broke ground only in 2014!

Delays are rampant across the industry. Yet most are due to political or bureaucratic inefficiencies such as trouble with land acquisition, unforeseen hurdles in financing, and at times, protests and litigation. Once the reactors are built, however, the nuclear enclave seems to have done a splendid job in operating and maintaining them – in 2003, Kakrapar was recognised by the CANDU Owners Group of being the best performing PHWR. Similarly, an IAEA team that visited Rawatbhata in 2012 reported that the reactors they inspected were safe and impressive; in 2014, one of the reactors at the same plant set a world record for the longest continuous operation.

Admittedly, some delays do arise due to technical shortcomings. For example, the design and construction of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) for the PFBR took Larsen & Toubro almost three years more than anticipated; any increase in the power rating of future FBRs will again require a similar timeframe to re-design the RPV. The reason Indian manufacturing lags behind nuclear industry needs, P. Chellapandi – Chairman & Managing Director of Bhavini – explained, is that there is little incentive to pre-empt demand given how small and infrequent it is. India has built some 21 reactors in the 70 years since independence; by contrast, France built 60 reactors in just 20 years from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s under the Messmer Plan; the United States built 100 reactors before the lull that set in under President Jimmy Carter; the European Union’s nuclear trade association, Foratom, has just called for 100 new reactors by 2050; China has 25 reactors under construction presently, has plans for 43 more, and is sitting on proposals for 136 more by 2030!

In the last couple of years, Areva, Toshiba, and Urenco have all looked for outside investors in their nuclear divisions. India has let the opportunities by without so much as a whimper. While India has secured nuclear fuel for the next decade, uranium prospecting or acquisition of mines abroad – especially when prices are so low – does not seem to have factored high on the Indian agenda.

In terms of technological cooperation too, India is nowhere on the international scene. China is the hot destination for nuclear vendors and startups – the size of Beijing’s orders has persuaded GE to share its AP1000 technology with Chinese firms, and Bill Gates’ TerraPower recently signed a deal with China National Nuclear Corporation to build the first of a new generation of reactors, the travelling wave reactor (TWR), a 1,150 MW liquid sodium-cooled fast reactor that uses depleted uranium as fuel. This type of reactor will generate less waste, be cheaper, and safer. In the meantime, India postponed the start of its PFBR again and the advanced heavy water reactor is nowhere in sight.

Like any large national project, say, for example, the highways or the railways, the utility and efficiency of nuclear power increases with scale. Furthermore, the high upfront cost of nuclear power demands a clear set of short and medium-term goals with a long-term vision. It is, therefore, essential that the government, either in partnership with the private sector or on its own, have a considered and clear-eyed policy for the industry. The urgency to meet deadlines, the impetus to remove roadblocks, must come from the top to galvanise the entire chain. Indian nuclear fingerprints appear nowhere in the various international nuclear ventures, from mining through construction to development.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has outlined an environmentally friendly trajectory for Indian development that is mindful of climate change, air quality, and other environmental concerns. It is unclear how he intends to meet these goals and grow the economy at eight per cent per annum at the same time without substantial help from nuclear power. Admittedly, plans for nuclear reactors at ten sites were announced in April 2015 but it is unlikely any of this will come to fruition in a timely manner without developing Indian manufacturing and bringing the CLNDA in line with international practices. Thankfully not ubiquitous, the attitude that the world needs India more than vice versa is far too common among Indian bureaucrats, planners, and citizens. They are in for a rude surprise. As former commerce secretary Rahul Khullar succinctly explained in a recent article, this attitude, combined with domestic calculations, narrow ministerial interests, a fundamental lack of understanding of negotiating give and take beset India’s negotiations with the outside world.

Even more helpful would be to rekindle the relationship between the prime minister’s office and the heads of the nuclear community to the same level as that between Bhabha and Nehru – after all, nuclear energy does fall under the PMO and not the Power or New and Renewable Energy ministries. Modi seems to be the point source for visions and thinking big in the ruling party and were senior nuclear scientists to have the prime minister’s ear, it may be just the sort of thing to accelerate growth in Indian nuclear energy. With their domain expertise and confidence of the prime minister’s support, an ambitious yet realistic nuclear expansion programme can be launched. To be clear, there is no Indian century without nuclear power – clean air, carbon emissions control, plentiful energy, employment, economic growth, energy security…in one industry can India find solutions to so many of its needs. We just need a little vision. Desperately.


This post appeared on FirstPost on October 29, 2015.

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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.

 

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