Power Pursuit

ON A VISIT TO London a little more than a year ago, Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh heard an interesting proposal from representatives of the British Rolls-Royce (RR) group during a presentation on clean energy and likely public-private collabora­tions in India. Known globally more for its luxury cars and aero engines, the delegation indicated a strong interest in India’s nu­clear energy sector. The firm’s executives said that RR’s factory built small modular reactors, a great option for cost-competitive and scalable nuclear power with the added advantage of be­ing clean and highly reliable. The idea of developing a range of modular reactors was already doing the rounds within India’s nuclear establishment and after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election for a third term, the proposal took concrete shape with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) expressing confidence about developing the technology and the interest of foreign firms indicating that the project is possible.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech of July 23 makes a bold commitment to substantially enhance the scope and scale of India’s nuclear programme by outlining initiatives to achieve India’s stated target of increasing atomic energy power pro­duction by 73 per cent in the next five years. At the centre of this ambitious push is a plan to set up small modular reactors with capacities of 300MW and less by promoting newer nuclear tech­nologies. “Our government will partner with the private sector for setting up Bharat Small Reactors, research and de­velopment of Bharat small modular re­actor, and research and development of newer technologies for nuclear energy,” Sitharaman said. A mega research and development fund of ₹1 lakh crore to be utilised over five years, announced in the pre-election Interim Budget, would be accessed for the research component of the nuclear programme to develop new components and processes for modular reactors. “Modular reactors are a break­through and will be an important source of energy that can be scaled up. They are easier to set up and transport. Conceptually, they are something like moving from large radio sets to small transistors,” Singh told Open.

The advantage of modular reactors lies in a smaller exclusion zone of 500 metres and they take less time to come up. They are suitable as captive power plants for high pollution-emission industries and can even be considered for power supplies to industrial parks in and around 100 cities

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Often enough, Budget references to the nuclear programme are limited to allocations and a few occasional sentences. The paragraph outlining the commitment to set up compact nuclear reactors is followed by one that pledges to promote indigenous technology for Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) thermal power plants that have a higher efficiency through a joint venture between National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL). The collaboration will set up an 800MW commercial plant. Production of high-grade steel and 15 other advanced metallurgy materials has strong spin-off benefits for the economy, the finance minister said. It is apparent that the energy policy advocates an integrated ap­proach incorporating non-fossil and conventional energy sources within the overall objective of reducing greenhouse gases and developing advanced technologies for industries using special­ised metallurgical alloys. The decision to vastly expand the scope of the nuclear energy programme is a vindication of the capaci­ties and safety record of DAE and reflects a rejection of the anti-nuclear campaigns that have worked to stall or rollback the Indian programme. The lengthy agitation against the Kudankulum nuclear plant in 2012 at a time when its first two units were 98 per cent complete added hundreds of crores to the cost of the project first proposed in 1988. The Modi government’s decision to commit resources towards a quantum jump in nuclear energy production puts the ghost of Kudankulam-type stirs to rest.

India has 23 nuclear reactors of varying capacities produc­ing 7.48GWe (Gigawatt electric) power that accounts for just 1.84 per cent of installed power production, a contribution which clearly requires to be stepped up to keep the country on track for the 2070 net zero goal. The government plans to add 5.6GWe by 2029 which will take India’s nuclear power capacity to 13.08GWe. This is to be raised to 22.48GWe between 2029-32, an addition of another 9.4GWe. The plans for modular reactors will be central to achieving the target even as older and larger convention plants are augmented. Units 3 and 4 of the Ku­dankulam plant are nearing completion and civil work is in progress for units 5 and 6. Units 7 and 8 at Rawatbhata in Ra­jasthan are also coming up with a capac­ity of 700MW each. The Koodankulum nuclear plant is India’s biggest with each unit generating 1,000MW. The 2024-29 period will see the addition of seven nuclear reactors along with work on the modular ones, the installation targets for which are yet to be finalised. DAE feels 15PHWRs (pressurised heavy water reactors) with 220MWe baseline technology it is operating can be adapted to modular technology, which will be an improvement in technology and efficiency apart from new units developed indig­enously as well as through foreign participation in public private partnership (PPP) mode. The advantage of modular reactors lies in a smaller exclusion zone of 500 metres—Rolls-Royce public­ity statement says its reactors occupy the space of two football fields—and they take less time to come up. They are suitable as captive power plants for high pollution-emission industries, like cement and steel, and can even be considered for power supplies to industrial parks in and around 100 cities that are part of the Budget announcements. There is an element of “portability” about the compact nuclear power plants despite their concrete and steel frames.

The double containment systems used in India’s PHWRs and a replacement of the calandria, the cylindrical vessel that holds the heavy water moderator, with a pressure vessel can be incor­porated in light water-based modular reactors. DAE is also devel­oping Modular Micro Reactors (MMR) that can produce 5MWe of power with a 4 per cent uranium dioxide (UO2) fuel and CO2 coolant. Ultra Safe Nuclear, a US firm that makes micro reactors, describes them as fourth-generation nuclear energy systems that deliver clean, safe, and cost-effective electricity. Rolls-Royce says micro reactors are “high density”, which means they are flexible and reliable and can be transported by rail and sea and even into space. The reactors are excellent off-grid power sources that are useful in remote locations not easy to reach through conven­tional transmission lines. Consider the utility of micro reactors, which can be serviced by stocked fuel, in difficult terrains like deserts or cold altitudes where residents struggle to access reliable power. The fuels used are stable and safe and MMR units can be linked to enhance supplies or parked wherever there is a need to supply electricity. While the US firm’s MMRs use ceramic-coated uranium pellets, Indian scientists are also working on ceramic processes. A discussion at IIT Madras incubation centre in January 2024 saw top scientists and technologists agreeing that micro reactors can work and hundreds can be deployed safely. The systems are designed to shut down in case of any leak and cooled by ambient air, requiring no human intervention. In India’s case, the fuel will come from the DAE, and spent fuel returned to the department. India is also working on the water-cooled modular advanced nuclear reactor (VAMAN), the acronym is an invocation of Lord Vishnu’s ‘Vaman’ or dwarf avatar by which he tricked the demon Bali into the netherworld, which has a 100MW capac­ity and a rod drive. The range of reactors that India is developing reflects a full spectrum of nuclear technology that will boost na­tional capacities in terms of scientific and technological know-how, energy sufficiency, and strategic security. The tasks are both a challenge and motivation for the DAE establishment.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech makes a bold commitment to enhance the scale of India’s nuclear programme to achieve India’s target of increasing atomic energy power production. At the centre of this is a plan to set up small modular reactors with capacities of 300MW and less by promoting newer nuclear technologies

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The Modi government has worked to increase DAE’s interface with various ministries in devising interventions and applications that can be put to use in a manner that has a direct bearing on the dai­ly lives of the people. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is involved in deliverables for radiation therapies used in medical treatment and food irradiation to improve preservative qualities and prevent contamination. In agriculture, BARC is developing radiation techniques that protect crops from disease and produce more sturdy and high-yielding seed varieties where the research in­volves mutations through gamma radiation. The work in ‘nuclear agriculture’ is carried out at Trombay, Vashi, and Nashik. There is a particular focus on tomatoes, onions, and potatoes (TOPs), the main kitchen staples, to improve disease resistance and storage shelf life.

The Tata Memorial Hospital functions under the administra­tive control of DAE and has branches in several cities like Vara­nasi, Mallanpur, Guwahati, Muzaffarpur, and Raigarh, providing high-quality cancer treatment. A large 17-floor platinum jubilee oncology block is coming up at Parel in Mumbai, which is sched­uled for completion by 2026. These and other DAE activities and research projects are intended to improve the quality of life of citizens and constitute a major part of its brief. DAE is running an important project in Hanle in Ladakh at 14,000 feet above sea level where it has installed a 21-metre gamma ray Major Atmospheric Cerenkov Experiment (MACE) telescope that studies ‘galactic and extra-galactic’ celestial imprints of objects like pulsars and supernova and has been able to track radiation from the Crab Nebula. The Laser Interferom­eter Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a DAE-Department of Science and Technology project, will come up at Hingoli in Maharashtra. The Cabinet approved the ₹2,600-crore mega-science project meant to study gravitational wave astronomy in April 2023.

Over time, both the National Democratic Al­liance (NDA) and Congress governments have made important decisions related to atomic energy. The Vajpayee government stunned the world by carrying out a nuclear test at Pokhran in 1998, undetected by Western satellites, and the Manmohan Singh administration showed the political will to conclude the nuclear deal with the US that led to the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifting its ban on commerce with India. But for China’s intransigence, India would have become a full-fledged member of NSG years ago. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposed the nuclear deal but backed the participation of foreign players in the construction of reactors and encouraged DAE to form collaborations with public sector enterprises. The plan for modular, micro, and thorium-based reactors is a leap of imagination that widens DAE’s am­bit manifold. India has large thorium reserves and research is being conducted on converting it in a reactor to Uranium 233, which can then be burnt as fuel. Over the past decade, India has gained experi­ence in different areas of the thorium fuel cycle. In a 2019 state­ment, DAE said thorium-related research was being scaled up to develop technologies for the third stage of India’s nuclear power programme. The initiatives are now bearing fruit though the ap­plication of new technologies takes time given the government’s accent on safety. For India’s atomic energy community, the an­nouncements in Modi 3.0’s first Budget are nothing short of a new dawn in nuclear science and technology.

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Rajeev Deshpande

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