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Thorium and the Return of Small Science

05 Sat Dec 2015

Posted by in Nuclear

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The Narendra Modi government is set to introduce a bill in the Lok Sabha that would seek to amend the Atomic Energy Act, 1962. If passed, under the new and expanded scope of the law, public sector units that are not subsidiaries of the Department of Atomic Energy would be able to invest in the nuclear energy sector. This amendment comes shortly after the government had to turn down a Rs 12,000 crore investment proposal by the National Aluminium Company (Nalco) to become a silent partner with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) in the construction and operation of one Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR). The situation sounds asinine, that even the government cannot invest in itself, but is emblematic of the highly restrictive laws surrounding nuclear activity in India.

Around the beginning of the previous century, the world saw rapid advancements being made in the sciences. It also witnessed the birth of a new discipline, atomic physics, whose revolutionary potential was felt almost immediately. A satisfactory postulation of the atomic structure, the discovery of the electron and neutron, and the classification of the various types of radiation were all made in a short span of about 35 years. These discoveries would go on to spawn industries of their own, worth trillions of dollars, and radically alter human existence.

Around the same time, science also got bigger. Until then, most research was done in universities or was patronised by wealthy citizens. With the advent of the Age of Physics, the necessary equipment became more expensive and the manpower involved increased drastically. No longer could wealthy philanthropists and universities afford to support tinkerers and researchers, and the vastly deeper pockets of the state were required. Of course, the arrival of the state and taxpayer funds changed the very nature of scientific advancement; projects were now desired to have a specific purpose and give the state an advantage, either militarily or economically, over its rivals. This trend seemed irreversible until the end of World War II and the birth of the American military-industrial complex. Even then, nuclear research remained a taboo subject for private entities for a little longer and the few private players remained beholden to the state as their main and sometimes only client.

One of the lasting impacts of the state patronage of high technology has been the secrecy which surrounds most related activity. India, for example, still clings to an archaic notion of secrecy regarding its nuclear facilities that only dampens the entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens and hurts its own economy. Though the private sector is allowed to provide certain components for nuclear reactors, the scenario is by no means anything other than very bleak. Anything transgressing the boundaries of the purely theoretical is forbidden; more importantly, it is next to impossible to acquire any equipment to undertake such studies outside the confines of the behemoth government conclave. Forcing all talent in the country under a government umbrella has stifled the sort of explosive growth needed in clean and safe nuclear technology that India needs, resulting in fewer opportunities, little incentive, loss of innovation, elimination of competition, and poor academic support for the nuclear industry.

Internationally too, it is only in the last few years that nuclear technology has seen a rare entrepreneurial spirit from smaller private players seeking the next big breakthrough but this was more due to the perception that there were no economic incentives in the nuclear arena except for big players. The revival of this techno-optimism, perhaps not dissimilar from the early days of the nuclear age in the 1950s or the sentiment around the late 19th century during the height of the Second Industrial Revolution, has seen big money get behind startups that have little more than a clear idea. Most of these ideas, interestingly, were discarded by governments as impractical in the pursuit of Cold War goals – meaning weapons. Presently, there are some 55 nuclear startups with a total funding of approximately $2 billion, admittedly a drop in the nuclear bucket. However, what is of interest is where this money has come from – seasoned venture capitalists like Peter Thiel, Scott Nolan, Jeffrey Bezos, and Paul Allen who made their billions on their ability to take early calculated risks on how society would be a few years ahead. This alone should indicate the interest nuclear technology has generated.

Some startups are looking at nuclear fusion, the Holy Grail of energy research and considered by most to be a long shot for years to come. Nonetheless, General Fusion, a British Columbia based startup, has attracted the interest of Bezos through Bezos Expeditions, the firm that manages his venture capital investments and Canadian clean tech venture capital firm Chrysalix Partners. General Fusion intends to use shockwaves through a lead-lithium mixture to cause fusion in deuterium and tritium. Similarly, California-based Tri-Alpha Energy has won the backing of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the Rockefeller family. Their approach involves adding boron to the hydrogen fuel, a technique the US government had experimented with earlier but given up on. A third fusion technology startup is Helion Energy out of Seattle, funded by Peter Thiel of PayPal fame via Mithril Capital Management. Helion is experimenting with crashing hydrogen atoms into each other at speeds approaching light to cause fusion. While fusion has eluded their collective grasp until now, these startups argue that they have been far more efficient than government projects.

Of immediate interest to the world and to India are the several private firms working on thorium or related technologies. Most of these ventures have technology that is ready to be deployed but face regulatory checks designed for a different era of nuclear technology. Kirk Sorensen’s Alabama-based Flibe Energy is perhaps the best known of these companies, owing to an aggressive internet and social media presence. Flibe’s product, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, whose acronym, LFTR, is pronounced lifter, is an improved version of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) that was operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1965 and 1969. The LFTR is not only significantly safer than conventional Heavy or Light Water Reactors but is also more proliferation resistant and generates much less waste. A similar design has also been put forward by Transatomic Power, a startup cofounded by two MIT doctoral students barely a week after the incident at Fukushima Daiichi. This reactor, called the Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) or wham-ser, is also a modular Molten Salt reactor like the LFTR but instead of thorium, dissolves spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors into molten salt. Transatomic Power’s concept is not too dissimilar from that of Seaborg Technologies’ Wasteburner reactor, designed to be a transitory bridge between conventional reactors and thorium-fuelled reactor. Scott Nolan of the Founders Fund has been interested in Transatomic Power’s design and made an initial investment of $2 million into the company followed by another $2.5 million earlier this year from Founders Fund, Acadia Woods Partners, and Daniel Aegerter of Armada Investment AG.

Several other companies such as Martingale, Inc, based out of Florida, Terrestrial Energy from Ontario, and Moltex Energy of London are also working to have their first reactors out early in the next decade. The ThorCon project, Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR), and Sustainable Salt Reactor (SSR) respectively, are all advanced nuclear designs that have been recovered from the dustbins of the Cold War plutonium production factories and improved upon. As such, these technologies have been proven and are ready to be deployed if an investor is willing to foot the bill. Martingale found an investor in Indonesia just this month and will be looking to constructing its first reactor by 2025.

Yet other companies, like NuScale Power out of Oregon and UPower from Boston, have optimised on other aspects of nuclear technology. NuScale works on modularity and has designed small modules of up to 50 MW each that can easily be manufactured. The mass manufacture of modules will create economies in construction that can compensate for economies in power generation capacity. These modules can be combined to create facilities of up to 600 MW per location. UPower goes one step further and has conceived of micro-reactors rated as low as 3 MW for rural and sparsely populated regions. These reactors can be manufactured, loaded on to the back of a truck, and deployed near a community with ease. Hyperion Power Generation, headquartered in Santa Fe, have a similar idea – the 30 MW self-moderated uranium hydride reactor that also promises great economies via mass manufacture.

Given India’s numerous rural communities, SMRs may be useful to expand nuclear energy beyond the populous urban and industrial concentrations. Even India’s unintentionally low-rated reactors like the early PHWRs that are now operating at 160 MW could be too big for many regions. The modularity and size of some of the international projects make them ideal for agricultural communities.

Another young company, though hardly a fragile startup, is Bill Gates’ TerraPower, a spin-off from the Nathan Myhrvold founded think tank, Intellectual Ventures. Gates has played philanthropist for a while in the medical arena but since 2008, the billionaire has started to invest in clean technology as well. TerraPower’s primary product is the depleted-uranium-fuelled Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR), which was in the news this September as the company signed a deal with China to develop a 600 MW prototype by 2022 and commercial 1,150 MW reactors by the end of that decade. TerraPower has also been dabbling in MSRs, including thorium-fuelled variants though they believe that their fast reactors will obviate the need for thorium in the medium term.

Admittedly, India has its own thorium reactor design, the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). However, India is also looking at MSRs as a more efficient design and stands to benefit from plugging into international research efforts. There is, of course, also a lot of development going on in other aspects of thorium technology that Indian researchers might find of interest. Steenkampskraal Thorium (STL) of South Africa and Thor Energy from Norway, for example, have spent more effort on thorium fuel research than on reactors. Both companies have studied the use of thorium in various fuel configurations in different types of reactors. Thor, for example, has worked on thorium-MOX fuel that can even be used in conventional LWRs; they have emphasised better utilisation and longer cycle length, therefore less waste generation. STL’s research has focused on pebble bed reactors with thorium-uranium tristructural-isotropic fuel but has also touched upon better thorium extraction, refining, and fuel fabrication.

Luckily for India, it still has the opportunity to benefit from nuclear entrepreneurship despite being late to the game. An important step it can take is to further amend the Atomic Energy Act to allow private sector participation in all aspects of nuclear energy but something less shocking to the ossified establishment is seeking active collaboration with some of these nuclear startups. India is still seen as one of the leaders of the thorium revolution – though China is fast closing the gap – and there is tremendous international interest in working with India from foreign governments as well as companies. At the recent Thorium Energy Conference, ThEC15, organised by the International Thorium Energy Organisation (IThEO) and held at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), delegates from almost 20 countries presented their research and showed interest in the work of their Indian counterparts. Given the importance climate change has assumed on the Indian agenda, it would be foolhardy not to find synergies between Indian interests and the several promising international private ventures. Collaboration on various research projects can improve upon India’s existing technology, save time developing proficiency in some aspects, and hasten the launch of India’s thorium reactor fleet.

An interesting tidbit many might have missed is that Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries purchased a minority stake in Bill Gates’ TerraPower in late 2011 and the Indian business baron sits on the company’s board. Clearly, there is interest among Indian industry leaders to enter into a new and challenging sector that holds a lot of opportunities. With appropriate regulatory framework, private participation in nuclear energy can stimulate competition and harness large pools of capital in service of national development goals. The first step, however, would be to stop the step-motherly treatment of private players in the nuclear sector.

This post appeared on FirstPost on December 11, 2015.

In Search of a Nuclear Vision

09 Fri Oct 2015

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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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.