Nuclear power growth in India

India now envisages to increase the contribution of nuclear power to overall electricity generation capacity from 2.8% to 9% within 25 years. By 2017, India's installed nuclear power generation capacity will increase to 10,080 MW.As of 2009, India stands 9th in the world in terms of number of operational nuclear power reactors. Indigenous atomic reactors include TAPS-3, and -4, both of which are 540 MW reactors.India's US$717 million fast breeder reactor project is expected to be operational by 2012-13.

The Indian nuclear power industry is expected to undergo a significant expansion in the coming years thanks in part to the passing of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. This agreement will allow India to carry out trade of nuclear fuel and technologies with other countries and significantly enhance its power generation capacity. When the agreement goes through, India is expected to generate an additional 25,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020, bringing total estimated nuclear power generation to 45,000 MW.

India has already been using imported enriched uranium for light-water reactors that are currently under IAEA safeguards, but it has developed other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle to support its reactors. Development of select technologies has been strongly affected by limited imports. Use of heavy water reactors has been particularly attractive for the nation because it allows Uranium to be burnt with little to no enrichment capabilities. India has also done a great amount of work in the development of a thorium centered fuel cycle. While Uranium deposits in the nation are limited (see next paragraph) there are much greater reserves of thorium and it could provide hundreds of times the energy with the same mass of fuel. The fact that thorium can theoretically be utilized in heavy water reactors has tied the development of the two. A prototype reactor that would burn Uranium-Plutonium fuel while irradiating a thorium blanket is under construction at the Madras/Kalpakkam Atomic Power Station.

Uranium used for the weapons program has been separated from the power program, using uranium from indigenous reserves. This domestic reserve of 80,000 to 112,000 tons of uranium (approx 1% of global uranium reserves) is large enough to supply all of India's commercial and military reactors as well as supply all the needs of India's nuclear weapons arsenal. Currently, India's nuclear power reactors consume, at most, 478 tonnes of uranium per year. Even if India were quadruple its nuclear power output (and reactor base) to 20 GW by 2020, nuclear power generation would only consume 2000 tonnes of uranium per annum. Based on India's known commercially viable reserves of 80,000 to 112,000 tons of uranium, this represents a 40–50 years uranium supply for India's nuclear power reactors (note with reprocessing and breeder reactor technology, this supply could be stretched out many times over). Furthermore, the uranium requirements of India's Nuclear Arsenal are only a fifteenth (1/15) of that required for power generation (approx. 32 tonnes), meaning that India's domestic fissile material supply is more than enough to meet all needs for it strategic nuclear arsenal. Therefore, India has sufficient uranium resources to meet its strategic and power requirements for the foreseeable future.

Indian President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, stated while he was in office, that "energy independence is India's first and highest priority. India has to go for nuclear power generation in a big way using thorium-based reactors. Thorium, a non fissile material is available in abundance in our country."India has vast thorium reserves and quite limited uranium reserves.

Web source : Wikipedia.

Nuke News (8th September) - Japan moves towards a strategy

(Dated 30th August)

Analysis of opinion polls confirms public pressure to use as little nuclear energy as possible, while previous communication failures have all but eliminated power companies and the government from the debate.

Three energy scenarios are being put before the Japanese people, based around the contribution to electricity that nuclear power would make in 2030. The consultation and eventual policy decision will be made at the end of the year by the National Policy Unit (NPU), headed by Motohisa Furukawa.

The government unit has solicited comments from the public and held many local meetings. It has also monitored public opinion polling in the media and yesterday released an analysis of what it has found so far, entitled Towards a strategy - where public debate is pointing. It showed overwhelming majority support for the two options that would see nuclear power slashed.

In brief, the scenarios can be called the 0%, 15% and 20-25% options, representing the portion of electricity that would come from nuclear power plants. Before the accident at Fukushima Daiichi the portion was 26% and national policy was to increase that to 45% by 2030 as the main way to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Twelve polls conducted by national media showed support for the 0% option in the range of 31-49%, while the 15% option was preferred by 29-54% of people across all the polls. In one poll, support for one or other of those most extreme phase-out options was 85%, while none showed lower than 71%.

Support for the 20-25% option was in the range of 10-17%, while an option offered by the media - but not the government - of having no set target for nuclear was chosen by 5-15% of people.

The options
	Status before March 2011	Previous policy	0%	15%	20- 25%
Total electricity	1.1 PWh	1.2 PWh	1.0 PWh	1.0 PWh	1.0 PWh
Fossil fuels	63%	35%	65%	55%	50%
Nuclear	26%	45%	0%	15%	20-25%
Renewables	10%	20%	35%	30%	25-30%
Greenhouse gas(relative to 1990)	-0.3%	-30%	-23%	-23%	-25%

From records of public meetings, the NPU broke down the reasons given by people for their support of the 0% option. Top of the list were safety concerns and fears about impact on health. Second was a general preference for renewables, just ahead of perceived problems with the ethics of using nuclear power. Issues of waste management were the last major reason people gave for selecting 0%.

Online voting by media companies saw supporters of all options voice support for renewables and development of new energy sources. Factors in favour of nuclear power among supporters of the 15% and 20-25% options were its reliability and the impacts on jobs, manufacturing and the economy that could result from a phase-out.

The results will make dismal reading for Japan's power companies, which have been in dire financial straits since being disallowed from restarting their nuclear reactors after refuelling and inspection outages. However, communication mistakes made by Tepco and the government during the early days of the accident - and their subsequent failure to explain the true effects of the accident - appear to have effectively ruled them out of the debate.

Three of the polls identified by the NPU asked people which option they support as well as which information sources they considered reliable. Overall, information from power companies was thought to be reliable by only 3.5-3.9% of people. Two of the polls found that none of the 0% supporters thought utilities were reliable - and in the third, the figure was only 1.1%. Instead, those people trusted information from NGOs (30.8-33.8%) and the Internet (13.7-21.8%).

The government was trusted only slightly more than nuclear companies, at 6.0-6.3% overall. The figures for utilities and the government tended to be higher among the 15% and 20-25%, while well trusted sources were independent nuclear experts at 18.2-21.4%.

(Researched and written

by World Nuclear News)

Nuke Quotes

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-Albert Einstein.

Adequate engineers to serve India's Nuclear Mission

India has, and always had, well trained and excellent engineers to go for its Nuclear Mission. Some of the famous R&D and training centres include:

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Research

Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre

Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research

Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership







Source : HBNI, India

 

Nuke Quotes

"Nothing in life is to be feared – it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
-- Marie Curie

Introduction To Nuclear Fission

Fission means ‘cleavage’ or ‘splitting’, hence in simple words nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction or a decay process (radioactive in nature) in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller and lighter nuclei, often producing sub-atomic particles which may be free neutrons and photons (gamma rays), and leading to a release of a large amount of energy.

It is an exothermic reaction which can release energy both as electromagnetic energy and as kinetic energy of the fragments. In order for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be greater than that of the starting element. Heavy elements, such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium, undergo both spontaneous fission (a form of radioactive decay) and induced fission, a form of nuclear reaction.

The amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of free energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very dense source of energy.

Basic types of fission reactions:

Binary Fission: Those producing two charged fragments.

Ternary Fission: those producing three charged fragments (happens just 2 to 4 times per 1000 events!!).

For the nuclides, "Fissile" is distinct from "fissionable"

Fissile isotopes: Isotopes that undergo fission when struck by a thermal, slow moving neutron are also called fissile.

Fissionable isotopes: Elemental isotopes that undergo induced fission when struck by a free neutron are called fissionable.

According to the fissile rule, heavy isotopes with 90 ≤ Z ≤ 100 and 2 × Z – N = 43 ± 2, with few exceptions, are fissile (where N = number of neutrons and Z = number of protons).

²³⁵U and ²³⁹Pu are generally used as nuclear fuels as they can sustain chain reactions and can be obtained in large enough quantities to be useful. ²³⁸U, the most abundant form of uranium, is fissionable but not fissile: it undergoes induced fission when impacted by an energetic neutron with over 1 MeV of kinetic energy. So no chain reaction is possible with this isotope.

 





Nuclear Fission



Uranium Fission

The fission of U-235 in reactors is triggered by the absorption of a low energy neutron, often termed a "slow neutron" or a "thermal neutron".

Why choosing a so called ‘neutron bullet’ for fission?

Now, two particles emitted by radioactive elements are the Alpha particle and the neutron. The Alpha particle is essentially a Helium (2+) nucleus & carries an overall positive charge. So, due to repulsion from the nucleus, the Alpha particle won’t be able to get there .And because neutron is electrically neutral and thus would not get repelled from a positive nucleus, it can reach the nucleus to trigger reaction.

When a neutron strikes a 235U nucleus, it is at first absorbed into it. This creates 236U. 236U is unstable and this causes the atom to fission. The fissioning of 236U can produce over twenty different products like 92Kr , 142Ba, 92Sr,  140Xe.

 

Nuke News (14 August) - Uranium supplies good for the long haul

(Dated 26 July 2012)

Uranium oxide 'yellowcake' in production

     

World uranium resources are ample to meet requirements for the foreseeable future but timely investment in facilities will be needed to make sure production keeps pace with growing demand, according to a new edition of the flagship Red Book.

Officially named Uranium 2011: Resources, production and demand, this is the 24th edition of a periodic assessment published by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Universally known as the Red Book, it is currently published every two years and draws together official data on uranium exploration, resources and production, and uranium demand related to its use in nuclear reactors. The new edition covers data to the end of 2010.

Total identified uranium resources have increased by over 12% since the last edition, which covered data up to 2009, although lower cost resources have decreased significantly because of increased mining costs. Nevertheless, with total identified resources standing at 7,096,600 tU recoverable at costs of up to $260 per kg, identified resources are sufficient for over 100 years of supply for the world's nuclear fleet. (An additional 124,100 tU of resources have been reported by companies but are not included in official national figures.) So-called undiscovered resources - resources expected to exist based on existing geological knowledge but requiring significant exploration to confirm and define them - currently stand at 10,400,500 tU.

(by World Nuclear News)



Source: MIT study on The Future of Nuclear Fuel Cycle