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)