The Centre for International Governance Innovation
NuClear eNerGy FuTureS PaPerS
The Nuclear Energy Futures Project
The Indian Nuclear Industry:
Status and Prospects
M. V. RaMaNa
Nuclear Energy Futures Paper No. 9
December 2009
An electronic version of this paper is available for download at:
www.cigionline.org
Addressing International Governance Challenges
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
Summary
CIGI's Nuclear Energy Futures Project
In September 2008, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)
offered a special waiver to India, exempting it from the
nuclear export guidelines its members set for themselves.
Under the terms of the waiver, usually referred to as the
US-India deal, India was allowed to import nuclear reactors
and other technology without becoming a party to the
1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It was also
allowed to import uranium for fueling those domestically
constructed reactors that it put under international safeguards. This waiver has raised expectations of a tremendous
increase in nuclear trade with India. To make sense of these
expectations and the prospects for nuclear power in India,
this report offers a historical overview and assessment of
the Indian nuclear industry, including India’s indigenous
efforts and the role of foreign aid and expertise. The assessment points to some successes in India’s nuclear energy
program, but notes significant safety concerns, high costs,
and a limited production of energy. The author concludes
that nuclear energy will remain an important part of India’s
energy plan, but notes that even under the conditions of
the waiver, its contribution will remain modest for decades
to come.
CIGI’s Nuclear Energy Futures Project is chaired
by CIGI distinguished fellow Louise Fréchette and
directed by CIGI senior fellow Trevor Findlay,
director of the Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance
at the Norman Paterson School of International
affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa. The project is
researching the scope of the purported nuclear energy
revival around the globe over the coming two decades
and its implications for nuclear safety, security and
nonproliferation. a major report to be published in
2009 will advance recommendations for strengthening
global governance in the nuclear field for consideration
by Canada and the international community. This
series of papers presents research commissioned by
the project from experts in nuclear energy or nuclear
global governance. The resulting research will be used
as intellectual ballast for the project report.
CIGI’s Nuclear Energy Futures Project is being conducted in partnership
with the Centre for Treaty Compliance at the Norman Paterson School
of International affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa.
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Innovation or its Board of Directors and /or Board of Governors.
Copyright © 2009 The Centre for International Governance Innovation.
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List of Acronyms
MaPS
Madras atomic Power Station
aeC
atomic Energy Commission
MeCO
Montreal Engineering Company
aeCl
atomic Energy Canada Limited
MJ
Megajoules
aerB
atomic Energy Regulatory Board
MOX
Mixed Oxide Fuel
BarC
Bhabha atomic Research Centre
MW
Mega Watts
BarCCIS
Bhabha atomic Research Centre Channel
Inspection System
NaPS
Narora atomic Power Station
NPC
Nuclear Power Corporation
NPT
Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty
NSG
Nuclear Suppliers Group
PFBr
Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor
PHWr
Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor
raPS
Rajasthan atomic Power Station
rar
Reasonably assured Resources
S3F
Solid Storage & Surveillance Facility
uKaea
United Kingdom atomic
Energy authority
WGeP
Working Group on Energy Policy
BFea
BaRC Facilities Employees association
BHaVINI
Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam
BHel
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited
CaG
Comptroller and auditor General
CaNDu
Canadian Deuterium Uranium
CDa
Core Disruptive accident
CIr
Canada India Reactor (subsequently
renamed CIRUS)
Dae
Department of atomic Energy
ear
Estimated additional Resources
eIa
Environmental Impact assessment
eCCS
Emergency Core Cooling System
FBTr
Fast Breeder Test Reactor
GW
Gigawatts
HlW
High Level Wastes
Iaea
International atomic Energy agency
IlW
Intermediate Level Wastes
Ir
Inferred Resources
KarP
Kalpakkam atomic Reprocessing Plant
kPa
Kilopascals
llW
Low Level Waste
p.1
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
Introduction
In September 2008, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)
offered a special waiver to India, exempting it from the
nuclear export guidelines its members set for themselves.
Under the terms of the waiver, usually referred to as the
US-India deal, India was allowed to import nuclear reactors
and other technology without becoming a party to the
1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It was also
allowed to import uranium for fueling those domestically
constructed reactors that it put under international safeguards. This waiver has raised expectations of a tremendous increase in nuclear trade with India. To make sense
of these expectations and the prospects for nuclear power
in India, this report offers a historical overview and assessment of the Indian nuclear industry.
Like the NSG waiver, India’s nuclear trajectory has
also been largely unique. Ever since the country became
independent, its political leadership and technological
bureaucracy have been committed to a future where
nuclear power plays a big role. Though these plans have
not materialized, even six decades since their inception,
hopes of a large expansion of nuclear power still abound.
The most noteworthy successes of the program have been
the acquisition by the Department of atomic Energy (DaE)
of expertise pertaining to the entire nuclear fuel “chain,”1
from uranium mining and milling to reprocessing spent
nuclear fuel, and vitrifying and storing waste (Sundaram,
Krishnan and Iyengar, 1998). But the program has been
marred by various accidents and evidence of poor safety
practices. as elsewhere, nuclear electricity has been
expensive, a greater problem in a developing country
with multiple requirements for scarce capital.
1
The term “chain” is used here deliberately because the more common term
“nuclear fuel cycle” carries with it the connotation of everything being used up
eventually in a cyclical fashion, whereas in fact the nuclear energy production
process inevitably creates large quantities of radioactive and other waste products,
disposal of which remains a challenge.
2
Fast breeder reactors are thus termed because they are based on energetic (fast)
neutrons and because they produce (breed) more fissile material than they consume.
India is also unique in that the proposed nuclear expansion
is based on fast breeder reactors.2 While many countries
were initially enthusiastic about breeder reactors, most
have given up on them (Von Hippel and Jones, 1997;
IPFM, forthcoming). On the other hand, the DaE has
displayed remarkable — though perhaps misguided —
persistence, in part because of a shortage of domestic
supplies of cheap and easily mined uranium.3
This report begins with a history of the Indian nuclear
program, focusing on the role played by aid from other
countries, the impact of the trade restrictions imposed
after the 1974 nuclear test and their waiver as a result of
the US-India nuclear deal, the organizational structure and
system of regulation, and an account of the projections of
nuclear power made in the past as compared to what was
realized. The next section includes an analysis of the economics of nuclear power in India, followed by a section
on the safety of nuclear facilities. Brief sections on waste
management and public perceptions precede the final
section on the future of nuclear power in India.
History
The atomic Energy Commission (aEC), the apex body in
charge of nuclear policy in India, was founded in 1948,
soon after independence from Britain. The timing was a
reflection of the high importance placed on nuclear energy
by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and the
influence of a charismatic physicist, Homi Bhabha, who
was the primary architect of the program. Bhabha had
earlier set up a research institute to work on nuclear
physics with funding from a trust established by the Tata
industrial group.
The bill enabling the creation of the aEC was modeled
after the British Atomic Energy Act and made atomic energy
the exclusive responsibility of the state (abraham, 1995).
3
Lack of uranium also provided an important motivation for the US-India
nuclear deal.
Author Biography
M. V. Ramana is a physicist and a visiting research scholar
affiliated with the Program in Science, Technology and
Environmental Policy and the Program on Science and
Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International affairs (WWSPIa), Princeton University.
His current research interests include nuclear power and
p.2
climate change. Before joining the WWSPIa, he was a
senior fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Environment and Development in Bangalore, India. There he
examined the economics, safety and environmental impacts
of nuclear power in India. He is completing a book on
nuclear power in India that is expected to come out in 2010.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
But the act imposed even greater secrecy over research
and development than did either the British or american
atomic energy legislation (Perkovich, 1999: 18). In response
to criticism of these secrecy provisions, given that atomic
energy was purportedly to be pursued only for peaceful
rather than military purposes, Nehru responded: “I do
not know how to distinguish the two.” Nehru’s dilemma
is clear from his statements while introducing the bill. On
the one hand he said, “I think we must develop it for
peaceful purposes.” But he went on, “Of course, if we are
compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly
no pious sentiments will stop the nation from using it
that way.” Within the aEC itself, it was clear that the
commission was created not only to generate nuclear
electricity, but to develop “atomic energy for all purposes”
(emphasis added) (Ramanna, 1991: 60). M. R. Srinivasan,
who headed the aEC in the 1980s, explicitly states the commission’s opinion: “[N]uclear technology was developed
by a country to be solely available for its own benefit,
whether for peaceful purposes or for military applications”
(Srinivasan, 1997). This ability to use the technology for
both military and peaceful purposes was an implicit criterion in many of the choices the aEC made over the
coming decades. The aEC also claimed it wanted to achieve
self-reliance, and so plans for the nuclear program, even
at the very early stages, were ambitious and encompassed
the entire nuclear fuel chain.
was adequate plutonium to fuel these second-stage
breeder reactors, a sufficiently large fleet of them would
have to be commissioned before thorium blankets were
introduced. The third phase involves breeder reactors using
uranium-233 in their cores and thorium in their blankets.
Six years after the aEC was established, it spawned the
Department of atomic Energy; Bhabha, as its head, became
a secretary to the Government of India – the highest bureaucratic office in the system. The position of the DaE was
further strengthened in 1962 when parliament adopted a
revised Atomic Energy Act that tightened secrecy and the
central government’s control over all nuclear activities.
What was significant, as Itty abraham notes, was that, for
the most part, neither the act nor the associated parliamentary debate referred to what was by then the customary
focus on “peaceful uses” (abraham, 1998: 114-120).
In addition to heavy water for CIRUS, the US was also the
source of the technology used in the first reprocessing
plant at Trombay, which separated plutonium from spent
fuel rods irradiated at the CIRUS reactor. The design of
the plant was based on the blueprints released by the US
atomic Energy Commission as part of the atoms for
Peace program. an american firm, Vitro International,
was responsible for variations in the design used in
Trombay (Wohlstetter, 1977: 3-61).
By that time the nuclear establishment had come up with
a three-phase strategy for nuclear power in India as a way
to build significant nuclear capacity despite relatively small
amounts of uranium ore in the country (Bhabha and
Prasad, 1958). The first phase involved using uranium fuel
in heavy water reactors, followed by reprocessing the
irradiated spent fuel to extract plutonium. In the second
phase, the accumulated plutonium stockpile is used in
the nuclear cores of fast breeder reactors. These nuclear
cores could be surrounded by a so-called blanket of either
depleted uranium or natural uranium to produce more
plutonium; if the blanket was composed of thorium, it
would produce uranium-233. So as to ensure that there
Foreign aid
Despite much rhetoric about self-reliance and indigenous
development, the aEC sought and received ample help
from other countries. Indeed, the next two decades until
the nuclear test of 1974, were marked by India’s acquisition
of technologies related to the entire nuclear fuel chain
from different countries.
Important among these technologies was the CanadaIndia Reactor (CIR), which later became known as the
Canada-India Reactor US (CIRUS) when the United States
supplied the heavy water for it. CIRUS was largely
based on the design of the Canadian National Research
Experimental (NRX) reactor. Financial assistance for the
construction of the reactor was provided by Canada as
part of the Commonwealth’s Colombo Plan, a development
assistance scheme “premised on the relation between
misery and poverty and communism” (Bothwell, 1988).
CIRUS produced the plutonium that was used in the 1974
nuclear test.
In 1959, the aEC turned to the United Kingdom’s atomic
Energy authority (UKaEa) for India’s first power reactor
(Parthasarathi, 2007: 12). The UKaEa promised to sell
India a Gas Graphite Reactor, which uses natural uranium
as fuel. When a global tender was put out, however, the
UK had the highest bid, followed closely by France. The
surprise winner was the US firm General Electric, whose
bid for two 200 megawatt (MW) Boiling Water Reactors
(BWR), which were to be fueled with enriched uranium,
was half that of the UK. Though enriched uranium was
not available in India and the stated policy at that time
was to only construct natural uranium-fueled reactors,
the pressure to generate cheap electricity trumped other
considerations and General Electric began constructing
two BWRs in Tarapur on the western coast.
p.3
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
In parallel, Bhabha also managed to work out a deal with
atomic Energy Canada Limited (aECL) and the Montreal
Engineering Company (MECO) to construct a 200 MW
Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR, also known as
CaNDU for Canadian Deuterium Uranium). In april 1964,
an agreement was signed between the Government of
India and the Export Credit Insurance Corporation of
Canada to cover financing of materials and services from
aECL and MECO (Graham and Stevens, 1974: 23). The
adopted design was identical to the one used for the first
CaNDU at Douglas Point in Ontario, Canada, even though
no operational feedback from this reference reactor was
available to the designers at that time (Gopalakrishnan,
2002). This proved a premature choice and resulted in many
of the problems faced in some of the PHWRs subsequently
built by DaE based on the CaNDU. Part of the construction
of a twin unit of the same design had been completed
when the 1974 nuclear test was conducted; in response,
Canada pulled out of that project and the reactor was
completed by India only in april 1981.
In addition to water moderated reactors, the Indian aEC,
like its counterparts in many other countries such as the
United States, has always been greatly interested in fast
breeder reactors, a central part of the three-phase strategy.
In 1965, a fast reactor section was formed at the Bhabha
atomic Research Centre (BaRC) and design work on a 10
MW experimental fast reactor was initiated (Bhoje, 2006).
It soon became clear that external help was required. In
1969, the DaE entered a collaboration agreement with
the French atomic Energy Commission and obtained the
design of France’s Rapsodie test reactor and the steam
generator design of its Phenix reactor (Rodriguez, 2004).
This was to be the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR),
India’s first breeder reactor.
as part of the agreement, a team of approximately 30
engineers and scientists were trained at Cadarache, France.
Once they returned, they formed the nucleus of the Reactor
Research Centre (RRC) established in 1971 at Kalpakkam
to lead the breeder effort (Rodriguez, 2004). In 1985, the
RRC was renamed the Indira Gandhi Centre for atomic
Research (IGCaR).
Extensive foreign support for the Indian nuclear program
ended only after the 1974 nuclear test. Canada and the US
were incensed by India’s use of plutonium from the CIRUS
reactor given to India for purely peaceful purposes.
India’s attempt to portray the event as a peaceful nuclear
explosion made little difference. These countries led the
international community in establishing norms for exporting nuclear technology.
p.4
Eventually these efforts resulted in the formation of the
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) with the aim of preventing
exports for peaceful purposes from being used to make
nuclear weapons. NSG guidelines list nuclear materials,
equipment and technologies subject to export controls.
In addition, in 1978 the US Congress passed the Nuclear
Non Proliferation act that required any country, other
than the five Nuclear Weapon States designated by the
NPT, to accept International atomic Energy agency
(IaEa) safeguards on all nuclear facilities (“full scope
safeguards”) before the US would engage in any nuclear
cooperation with it. Safeguards are procedures to ensure
that no fissile material (plutonium or enriched uranium)
is diverted from peaceful purposes to make nuclear
weapons. The Indian government’s refusal to give up its
nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under safeguards meant that no NSG state, including the United
States, would sell nuclear technology to it.
To some degree, the NSG restrictions achieved their desired
effect. all nuclear facilities built in India since 1974 have
taken longer to build and have been repeatedly scaled
back. Replacement parts and equipment became harder
to come by. The first reactors affected by the fallout of the
1974 test were those already under construction: the second
unit of the Rajasthan atomic Power Station (RaPS II) and
the FBTR. Even with help from the Canadians, the first
Rajasthan reactor, RaPS I, had been delayed. It was first
projected to start operating in 1969 (Tomar, 1980), but
was declared commercial only in December 1973 (Mittal,
2004). The fate of RaPS II was worse. RaPS II was originally supposed to come online in 1973, two years after
RaPS I (DaE, 1969: 80), but was declared commercial
only in april 1981 (Mittal, 2004).
The FBTR, based on the French Rapsodie reactor, was initially supposed to be ready for commission by 1976 (CaG,
1993). The reactor finally attained criticality only in October
1985. Its steam generator began operating in 1993 (Hibbs,
1997). Delays were also experienced in the PHWRs constructed by the DaE in the next two decades: the Madras
and Narora atomic Power Stations (MaPS & NaPS,
respectively). MaPS and NaPS are located in the states
of Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, respectively. as per the
DaE’s plans, MaPS I & II and NaPS I & II were to come
online in successive years from 1975 through 1978 (aEC,
1970). The MaPS-I unit eventually began commercial
operations in January 1984, and MaPS-II began in March
1986. The Narora units began operating in 1991 and 1992.
One reason for these delays was the unreasonable expectations of the capabilities of domestic industry, which was
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
unable to manufacture some of the specialized equipment
fast enough. The problem was not that the industry lacked
the technological base and knowledge needed to carry
out the fabrication, but that the DaE did not issue
enough orders to make such manufacturing economical.
Many businesses were therefore reluctant, and those that
fulfilled the DaE’s manufacturing orders did so at great
expense. This was reflected in much higher costs for such
equipment. For example, the turbo-generator for RaPS-I
was imported from Canada for Rs. 64 million, whereas the
same component for RaPS-II from a domestic manufacturer cost Rs. 130.4 million (Mirchandani and Namboodiri,
1981: 35).
Such delays must have been hard to swallow for many
DaE scientists. To the extent possible, they have tried to
put the best face on the situation. The DaE’s leadership
has tried to sustain the morale of personnel, as illustrated
by BaRC Director B. Bhattacharjee, in 2001, when he said:
we are really comfortable when we work under
sanctions. Our scientists and engineers enjoy working
under sanctions because it acts as a catalyst for all of
us, from the lowest level to the topmost level, to give
our best. (Bhattacharjee, 2001)
at the same time, even before the NSG’s recent removal
of restrictions on nuclear trade with India, the embargo
was not strictly followed and commercial or other institutional interests sometimes overrode non-proliferation
considerations. One example is the Tarapur I & II reactors
supplied by the US with a fuel supply guarantee; NSG
members like France and Russia have also sold enriched
uranium fuel (which the DaE does not have the capacity
to manufacture in adequate quantities) for these reactors
by using an exception clause — somewhat disingenuously
— that allows for the sale of material or equipment if
there are safety implications of not doing so. Likewise,
Russia also started supplying the Koodankulam reactors
by claiming the agreement governing that deal was
signed in the 1980s by the Soviet Union before it joined
the NSG. apart from these noticeable instances, there
were many cases when various nuclear facilities in India
procured components from abroad and foreign consultants were hired for projects.
The delays imposed by the sanctions did not deter
the DaE from making confident projections. In 1984, a
decade after the controversial nuclear test, the DaE drew
up a new atomic energy profile (CaG, 1999). It proposed
constructing a number of 235 MW and 500 MW PHWR
units so nuclear power generation capacity would reach
10,000 MW by 2000 (Ramanna, 1985). The results were
even more shocking than India’s previous history of constructing reactors might have indicated: not one of the
proposed new reactors was constructed on time, despite
expenditures in excess of Rs. 50 billion (CaG, 1999).
Projections and achievements
The 1984 projection was just one in a long list made by
the DaE. In 1962, it predicted that by 1987 nuclear energy
would constitute 20,000 to 25,000 MW of installed electricity
generation capacity (Hart, 1983: 61). This was subsequently
updated to about 43,000 MW of nuclear power by 2000
(Sethna, 1972). In reality, installed capacity in 1979-80 was
only about 600 MW, about 950 MW in 1987, and 2,720 MW
in 2000. as of June 2009, nuclear power amounts to just
4,120 MW, roughly 2.8 percent of the country’s total electricity generation capacity. Six reactors with a combined
capacity of 3,160 MW are currently under construction.
Most of the operating reactors are 220 MW PHWRs, modified versions of the CaNDU reactors India imported
from Canada. Two 540 MW PHWRs, based on a scaled-up
design, have been constructed. In the future, the DaE plans
to build 700 MW reactors by modifying the same design
to allow partial boiling of the coolant.
The largest component of the planned expansion consists
of two Russian 1,000 MW VVER-1000 reactors, which are
being constructed in Koodankulam, in the state of Tamil
Nadu, close to Sri Lanka. The first industrial-scale breeder
reactor, the 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor
(PFBR), based on mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, is also under
construction at Kalpakkam.
Notwithstanding this less than modest history, the DaE
continues to make wild claims about the contribution of
nuclear power to the country’s electricity generation
capacity. In the early 2000s, the DaE projected 20 gigawatts
(GW, or a 1000 MW) by the year 2020 and 275 GW by
2052; the latter figure amounts to 20 percent of India’s
total projected electricity generation capacity (Grover and
Chandra, 2006). Following the September 2008 waiver
from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, these estimates have
gone up.4 The aEC chairman has promised that nuclear
power will contribute 35 percent of Indian electricity by
2050 (FE, 2008). Since the DaE has projected that India
will have an installed electricity generation capacity of
1,300 GW (a nine-fold increase from the current 145 GW)
4
Over the last few years there have been a range of figures quoted for future
nuclear power capacities in India and there seems to be no fixed “official”
projection yet.
p.5
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
by that time, the 35 percent prediction implies that installed
nuclear capacity would amount to 455 GW, more than
100 times today’s figure. More recently, in September
2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that India's
nuclear capacity in 2050 could be 470 GW.
Budgets
The failure of the DaE to meet its projections cannot be
attributed to lack of resources. Since its inception, it has
received unstinted financial and political support from
the government. Until the mid-1960s, the DaE cornered
over a quarter of all resources devoted to science and
technology development in the country (Hart, 1983: 62-64;
abraham, 1993: 177). This share declined somewhat by
the 1970s because of the increased budget allotted to the
space program. The only time the DaE did not get all for
which it asked, which it considered “a period of total dryness and stagnation,” was the early 1990s; the government’s
economic liberalization policies required spending cutbacks (Iype, 2000). But this trend was reversed with the
1998 nuclear weapons tests. Since then, the DaE’s budget
has increased from Rs. 19.96 billion in 1997-98 to Rs.
67.77 billion in 2008-09 (approximately US$0.5 billion and
US$1.45 billion, respectively).5 In comparison, the 2008-09
budget of the Renewable Energy Ministry, responsible for
13.88 GW of installed electrical capacity, was Rs. 5.09 billion.
Organizational Structure
The family of nuclear organizations in India is headed
by the aEC. The aEC’s role is to formulate policies and
programs, while the actual execution of these policies is
carried out by the Department of atomic Energy (DaE).
The DaE has in turn set up a number of associated or subsidiary organizations. These include five research centres,
five government-owned companies (“public sector enterprises”), three industrial organizations and three service
organizations. among government-owned companies,
the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) is responsible for
designing, constructing and operating nuclear power plants
in the first stage of the nuclear power program (breeder
reactors are the responsibility of another governmentowned company called BHaVINI, for Bharatiya Nabhikiya
Vidyut Nigam). The government-owned Uranium Corporation of India Limited is in charge of mining and
milling uranium. Industrial organizations, also owned by
the government, include the Heavy Water Board, in
5
The dollar to rupee exchange rate has varied significantly over the years. In
October 1997, it was around Rs. 36/US$, whereas it exceeded Rs. 53/US$ in
October 2008.
p.6
charge of the many plants that produce heavy water, and
the Nuclear Fuel Complex, which manufactures nuclear
fuel. The best known research centres are the Bhabha
atomic Research Centre (BaRC), the most important
facility involved in nuclear weapons research, and IGCaR,
where the breeder program was cultivated. Currently,
these organizations comprise all players directly involved
in the production and operation of nuclear reactors in India.
In contrast to most government institutions in the country,
neither the aEC nor the DaE report to the cabinet and
are answerable only to the prime minister. This structure
makes it difficult for most politicians or bureaucrats, let
alone the public, to challenge the DaE’s policies or practices.
The DaE also tries hard to maintain its position as the
sole repository of nuclear expertise. The 1962 atomic
Energy act vests in the DaE the power “to produce,
develop, use and dispose of atomic energy…and carry
out research into any matters connected therewith.” Few
academic institutions offer courses in nuclear engineering,
and their graduates necessarily have to seek employment
with the DaE. Therefore, the government is compelled to
seek the DaE’s advice on all nuclear matters.
The institutional structure in which the DaE operates
allows it to effectively stonewall external appraisal. For
example, the Comptroller and auditor General (CaG),
whose function is to enhance the accountability of various
public sector organizations and departments to the parliament and state legislatures, has on many occasions not
been able get the DaE to open its accounts for scrutiny
(CaG, 1992, 1994). On one such unsuccessful occasion,
when the CaG was trying to examine the costs of producing heavy water at the DaE’s facilities, the DaE was
reprimanded by the parliamentary Public accounts
Committee for its “disregard of accountability.” But the
DaE simply stated that: “Heavy Water being strategic
material, it is not advisable to divulge information relating
to its production and cost to functionaries at all levels”
(Public accounts Committee (1992-93), 1993). The DaE
similarly explains away cost overruns. For example, in
the case of the Manuguru Heavy Water Plant, the CaG
found that the cost of the facility had increased by 133
percent; when questioned, the DaE stated that “the
grounds for sanction of this project [were] strategic and
not commercial” (CaG, 1994).6
6
Technically speaking, there is nothing more strategic (i.e., having military
value) about heavy water than, say, coal. The only way by which heavy water
production figures could provide information with strategic implications is if the
reactors in the country involved in plutonium production for military purposes
were facing a shortage of heavy water and therefore could not either be commissioned or function efficiently. The argument about strategic significance often
does not have any basis in fact.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
In addition, many official decision-making bodies that set
policies which impinge on energy or security are obliged
to include members of the nuclear establishment. For
example, DaE officials are always a part of the various
energy-related committees of government bodies such as
the Planning Commission or the Central Electric authority.
Two reasons suggested are, first, that the DaE is considered
the sole body “technically qualified” to decide nuclear
policy issues and, second, there is a desire to avoid internal
disputes among government bodies (Hart, 1983: 35).
It is therefore no surprise that reports by such committees
fail to analyze either the performance of the DaE or its
projections. Instead, they invariably extol the importance
of nuclear power. as a member of one of these groups
observed,
The section on nuclear power in the WGEP [Working
Group on Energy Policy of 1977] Report reads like a
public relations brochure of the Department of atomic
Energy and does not really examine any of the basic
issues. (Shankar, 1985: 85)
The Central Electric authority’s Expert Committee on
Fuels for Power Generation opined that “nuclear energy
has the potential of providing long-term energy security
to the country and all research and development efforts
must be pursued to realize this objective” but with the
explicit admission that “the cost of generation of nuclear
projects have not been calculated” (CEa, 2004: vi).
regulatory Bodies
Civilian nuclear installations come under the regulatory
purview of the atomic Energy Regulatory Board (aERB).
They also have to obtain environmental clearances from
the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Safety Regulation
The DaE established the aERB to oversee and enforce
safety in all nuclear operations in 1983. This was modified
in 2000 to exclude facilities involved, even peripherally,
in the nuclear weapons program. The aERB reports to
the atomic Energy Commission (aEC), whose chairman
is always the head of the DaE. The chairman of NPC is
also a member of the aEC. Thus, both the DaE and NPC
exercise administrative powers over the aERB. Its budget
comes from the DaE. There are, therefore, structural limits on the aERB’s effectiveness.
This administrative control is compounded by the
aERB’s lack of technical staff and testing facilities.
as a. Gopalakrishnan, a former chairman of the aERB,
has observed,
95 percent of the members of the aERB’s evaluation
committees are scientists and engineers on the
payrolls of the DaE. This dependency is deliberately
exploited by the DaE management to influence,
directly and indirectly, the aERB’s safety evaluations
and decisions. The interference has manifested itself
in the aERB toning down the seriousness of safety
concerns, agreeing to the postponement of essential
repairs to suit the DaE’s time schedules, and allowing
continued operation of installations when public
safety considerations would warrant their immediate
shutdown and repair. (Gopalakrishnan, 1999)
Elsewhere, Gopalakrishnan has pointed to an example of
direct interference from the aEC, in the context of the
1994 collapse of the containment dome of one of the reactors under construction at Kaiga, Karnataka.
When, as chairman, I appointed an independent
expert committee to investigate the containment
collapse at Kaiga, the aEC chairman wanted its
withdrawal and matters left to the committee formed
by the NPC [managing director]. DaE also complained
to [the prime minister] who tried to force me to back
off. (Pannerselvan, 1999)
Finally, the aERB’s ability to force the DaE to carry
out its directives is limited. For example, according to
Gopalakrishnan:
[The] aERB had directed the DaE to carry out an
integrated Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS)
testing in Kaiga I and II as well as RaPS III and IV
before start up. It also wanted proof and leakage
tests conducted on the reactor containment. and
finally, a full-scope simulator was to be installed for
operator training. None of these directives have been
complied with so far. (Pannerselvan, 1999)
Environmental Regulation
The Environmental Impact assessment (EIa) Notification
of 1994 listed “nuclear power and related projects such as
heavy water plants, nuclear fuel complex, rare earths”
while the EIa Notification 2006 lists “nuclear power projects
and processing of nuclear fuel” as requiring environmental
clearances. However, not all facilities involved in processing
nuclear fuel are subject to this procedure. For example,
the nuclear reprocessing plants located at Trombay, Tarapur
and Kalpakkam that chemically process radioactive
p.7
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
spent fuel discharged from nuclear reactors do not fall
under the EIa Notification (BaRC, 2008).
The EIa process has not been effective (Ramana and Rao,
forthcoming; Rao and Ramana, 2008). all nuclear projects,
barring one, have received environmental clearances. In
the case of the one project that was rejected, the location
had to be shifted because of fears of contamination of
drinking water. However, even in that case, the pathway
and potential impact of such contamination were not
identified in the EIa. The EIa reports that form the basis
of the clearance have been mostly shoddy, with technical
flaws and crucial oversights. as with government committees concerned with energy policy, expert committees
that recommend whether or not a project should be given
environmental clearance always include representatives
from the DaE and its allied organizations.
In practically all cases, the overwhelming opinion
expressed by participants at public hearings for nuclear
facilities has been in opposition to the project. These views
have been uniformly ignored by decision makers. Local
administrative authorities conducting public hearings
have clearly sided with project proponents, allowing them
to dominate the proceedings, denying members of the
public the right to present their views and preparing
minutes of the meetings that make it appear as though
there was little opposition and that project proponents
have assuaged any remaining public concerns.
The uS-India Nuclear Deal
as previously mentioned, India is no longer subject to
various nuclear trade regulations imposed primarily as a
result of the 1974 and 1998 nuclear tests, because the
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has given a special waiver
to India. The waiver was the result of a three-year process
that began publicly in July 2005, when US President
George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh issued a joint statement laying the ground for
resuming US and international nuclear aid to India. In
March 2006, the Indian government designated several
domestically constructed nuclear facilities as civilian, and
volunteered them for IaEa inspection in a phased
manner. This was followed by the US Henry Hyde act7
and a 123 agreement between the two countries.8
7
The Hyde act grants the US president limited and conditional authority to waive
the longstanding american legal restrictions on nuclear trade with countries, such
as India, that have tested nuclear weapons, have not joined the NPT and do not
allow comprehensive international nuclear safeguards.
8
The name derives from Section 123 of the United States atomic Energy act of 1954,
titled "Cooperation With Other Nations," which is a prerequisite for nuclear trade
and other forms of cooperation between the United States and any other nation.
p.8
The deal marked a new phase in the bilateral relationship
between United States and India, requiring both countries
to reverse historical policies. as described earlier, the US
played a key role in putting in place the very nuclear
export control norms the NSG waived for India. India has
traditionally been opposed to international safeguards at
domestically constructed nuclear facilities. In the case of
the United States, the main motivations were geo-strategic
and commercial (Mian and Ramana, 2006; Ghoshroy, 2006).
The DaE’s motivations derived from the need for external
assistance to increase the scale of the Indian nuclear
program and a shortfall of uranium production due to
inadequate mining capacity (Mian and Ramana, 2005).9
The deal is expected to result in a substantial number of
reactor imports by India. The DaE also hopes there may
be possibilities for nuclear exports.
economics
The promise offered by the DaE was not only that nuclear
power would form an important component of India’s
electricity supply, but that it would be cheap. as early as
1958, barely a few years after the DaE was set up, Bhabha
projected that “during the next 10 to 15 years…the costs
of [nuclear] power [would] compare very favourably
with the cost of power from conventional sources in
many areas” (Bhabha and Prasad, 1958). The “conventional source” to which the DaE was comparing nuclear
energy was coal, India’s staple source of electricity. Since
the bulk of India’s coal deposits are in the eastern part of
the country, “many areas” referred to regions remote
from coal mines. The higher cost of transporting coal to
such areas would make nuclear power more competitive.
During Bhabha’s time, and before the first power reactors
were constructed, the DaE claimed that for distances
greater than about 600 km, nuclear power would be
cheaper than coal. Once the first few reactors were constructed, it was apparent that construction costs were
substantially greater than projected. By the 1980s the
DaE was forced to revise its claims to the cost of nuclear
power comparing “quite favourably with coal fired
stations located 800 km away from the pithead.”
Extraordinarily, though, it promised that nuclear power
“in the 1990s would be even cheaper than coal fired stations
9
This was evident in the statement from an unnamed official to the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) soon after the US-India deal was announced:
“The truth is we were desperate. We have nuclear fuel to last only till the end of
2006. If this agreement had not come through we might have as well closed down
our nuclear reactors and by extension our nuclear programme” (Srivastava, 2005).
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
at pithead” (Srinivasan, 1985). That projection, too, was
not fulfilled. By the late 1990s, all the DaE could claim
was that the “cost of nuclear electricity generation in
India remains competitive with thermal [electricity] for
plants located about 1,200 km away from coal pit head,
when full credit is given to long term operating cost
especially in respect of fuel prices” (Nema, 1999).
economics of Pressurized Heavy Water reactors
Not even the 1,200 km projection was borne out when
tested empirically by comparing the construction and
operating costs of actual reactors and coal plants, as
opposed to generic cost estimates. Two collaborators from
the International Energy Initiative and I used the standard
discounted cash-flow methodology10 to compare the costs
of generating electricity at the Kaiga nuclear reactors and
the Raichur Thermal Power Station (Ramana, D’Sa and
Reddy, 2005). We deliberately assumed that the coal came
from mines 1,400 km away.
Because of the different cost structures of the two sources
of power, the discount rate, a measure of the value of
capital, is a key variable. Nuclear power, a very capital
intensive technology, is competitive only for low discount
rates (see Figure 1). But given multiple demands on capital
for infrastructure projects, including electricity generation,
very low discount rates are not realistic.11 at a real discount
rate of five percent, roughly what is recommended by the
Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC, 2006),
nuclear power from the Kaiga reactors is about eight
percent more expensive than thermal power from Raichur
(Ramana, 2007).
The Raichur plant is somewhat atypical because of
the assumption about where the coal came from – 1,400
kilometers away. In reality, over a third of all of India’s
coal plants are at the pithead and a further quarter or
more are within 500 km of one (Chowdhary, 1998). Thus,
except for isolated cases, nuclear power will generally be
far more expensive than thermal power.
This economic comparison is largely based on assumptions
favourable to nuclear power. For example, the comparison
does not include liability insurance against accidents, since
the government has not required that of nuclear power
10
In this approach, all costs are discounted to some arbitrary but fixed reference
date; the total cost reckoned at this reference point is the sum of the present values
(PV) or future values (FV) of costs discounted to this date. For a description of this
methodology, see (Brealey and Myers, 2000).
11
Typical values chosen in costing electricity generation (or saving) technologies
in India have ranged from 8 to 10 percent (real values). For examples, see (Shukla,
Ghosh and Garg, 2003) and (Nouni, Mullick and Kandpal, 2006).
plants. There is no equivalent of the US Price anderson
act, which requires nuclear utilities to cover each reactor
they operate by the maximum available amount of insurance; in 2005, the limit was US$300 million per plant, but
the government acts as the ultimate insurer if the damage
from a catastrophic accident costs more than the amount
covered by the insurance package. In India, since nuclear
reactors and other facilities are operated by government
organizations, the entire burden of an accident is on
the government.
Figure 1: Busbar Generation Costs of Kaiga I&II, Kaiga III&IV
(projected costs), and RTPS VII at 80 percent Capacity Factor
Source: Ramana, D'Sa and Reddy (2005) and author’s calculations
Most important, following the methodology adopted by
the DaE (Thakur and Chaurasia, 2005), we have not
included the costs of dealing with radioactive waste from
nuclear power. In essence, the NPC, which operates the
heavy water reactors, simply hands over the irradiated
spent fuel from its reactors to the DaE. However, since
reprocessing is a service rendered by the DaE to the
NPC, the rational choice for the DaE would be to charge
a fee for it. If even half the cost of reprocessing is included
in the tariff for nuclear power, it would be 25 percent
more expensive than thermal power from coal.
By not charging a fee for reprocessing, the DaE, in effect
the taxpayer, is offering the NPC a subsidy.12 The DaE
seems to do this because the recovered plutonium is used
to fuel breeder reactors that produce more plutonium than
they consume. However, the economic competitiveness
of breeder reactors is suspect.
12
The DaE also subsidizes the Nuclear Power Corporation by providing heavy
water at a low lease rate, and at a price much lower than the cost of production
(Muralidharan, 1988; Ramana, 2007).
p.9
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
economics of Breeder reactors
The DaE has been pursuing its breeder program without
ever examining the economics of producing electricity
using such reactors. The argument offered for this pursuit
is that that India has only “modest uranium reserves”
of about 60,000 tonnes (Kakodkar, 2006). While widely
articulated, this formulation is misleading. India’s uranium
resource base cannot be represented by a single number.
For example, the Nuclear Energy agency’s 2007 Red Book
states that the known conventional resources amount to
91,100 tonnes of uranium, with 61,100 tonnes in the
Reasonably assured Resources (RaR) and 30,000 tonnes
in the Inferred Resources (IR) categories (NEa, 2008: 207).13
It also reported an additional 67,900 tonnes in unconventional resource categories in which less confidence can be
placed and which are likely more difficult to mine.
as with any other mineral, at higher prices it becomes
economic to mine lower grade and less accessible ores.
Exploiting these would increase the amount of uranium
available. Therefore, the uranium resources can only be
specified as a function of price. In other words, if the
PHWR operator is willing to bear a higher cost for fueling
the reactor, the amount of uranium available will be much
larger. To address the argument about India’s limited uranium reserves, an economist and I compared the cost of
generating electricity at the PFBR, India’s first commercial
scale breeder reactor, with a PHWR, the mainstay technology of the country’s nuclear program. We did so as a
function of uranium price and calculated the crossover
price when the two technologies generate electricity at
the same cost (Ramana and Suchitra, 2009; Suchitra and
Ramana, forthcoming).
13
Globally, the annual Red Books produced by the IaEa and NEa are the standard
sources of information on uranium resources. These have been published since
the mid-1960s and are based on information provided by various countries
to the IaEa. The Red Book categorizes uranium resources into conventional or
unconventional resources (NEa, 2002: 13-15). “Conventional resources are those
that have an established history of production, where uranium is a primary product,
co-product, or an important by-product (e.g. from the mining of copper and gold).
Very low grade resources or those from which uranium is only recoverable as a
minor by-product are considered unconventional resources.” all other sources of
uranium are considered unconventional resources. The Red Books further divide
conventional resources into multiple categories based on how confident one can
be of the resource estimates. The most important of these are Reasonably assured
Resources (RaR) and Inferred Resources (IR), previously known as Estimated
additional Resources (EaR). RaR refers to uranium resources that have a high
assurance of existence because they occur in known mineral deposits. Because
their grade is known, it is usually possible to estimate the quantities that may be
recovered from that deposit within specific production cost ranges using currently
proven mining and processing technology. IR refers to uranium deposits that are
not included in the RaR category, and are inferred to exist on the basis of direct
geological evidence. For these, though, there is usually inadequate knowledge about
the deposits’ characteristics to categorize the resource as RaR. Estimates in this category
are less reliable than those for RaR. There are also other unconventional resources,
such as phosphate deposits, that are not included in the Red Books.
p.10
We considered the same set of cost components for both
the PFBR and the PHWR, namely construction of the reactor (capital cost), fueling, operations and maintenance,
decommissioning, refurbishment, working capital, and
management of low-level radioactive wastes.14 For the
PHWR, the fueling cost includes the cost of uranium and
the cost of fuel fabrication. also included are the costs of
the initial heavy water inventory and of replacing the
heavy water lost during routine operations. For the PFBR,
the fueling cost includes that of producing plutonium
through reprocessing and fabricating it into MOX fuel.
The plutonium for the initial core as well as for the first
few reloads has to come from reprocessing PHWR spent
fuel. The DaE has never published what it costs to
reprocess spent fuel at its facilities. We therefore used
government budget documents to calculate the construction and operating costs of the Kalpakkam atomic
Reprocessing Plant (KaRP) and associated facilities, and
used these to compute the cost of reprocessing (Ramana
and Suchitra, 2007).15 at a real discount rate of six percent,
our estimate of the total cost of reprocessing is US$659/kg
of spent fuel. This rate is dependent on the efficiency of
the plant, for which we assume the optimistic value of 80
percent.16 assuming losses of one percent of the plutonium
in the spent fuel, this translates to a plutonium cost of
US$178/g.
The PFBR design requires an initial inventory of 1.9 tons
of plutonium in its core and thus just the cost of loading
the reactor with plutonium will add substantially to the
capital costs of the reactor. Subsequently the plutonium
for the PFBR is obtained from reprocessing its own spent
fuel. Because of the higher plutonium content of the
PFBR spent fuel, the cost of such plutonium would be
lower; we estimate it to be US$43/g (Ramana and
Suchitra, 2009; Suchitra and Ramana, forthcoming).
Because of the high cost of plutonium, a result of the
expensive reprocessing plants required to extract the
material from spent fuel, the main cost components of
generating electricity at the PFBR turn out to be those
14
In line with the DaE’s philosophy of not treating spent fuel as waste, we do not
include the cost of dealing with this highly radioactive material; however, in the
case of the PFBR, the cost of reprocessing its spent fuel is indirectly included in
the fueling cost.
15
KaRP is chosen as a reference facility because it is the most recently constructed
plant and is to serve as a standard design for future plants (Dey, 2003).
16
The relatively scant amounts of publicly available data suggest that past
performance of reprocessing plants in India have been mediocre. PREFRE, at
Tarapur, operated at an average capacity factor of less than 25 percent for over a
decade (Hibbs, 1995).
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
related to plutonium. The higher fueling cost offsets the
projected difference between the cost of constructing the
PFBR and PHWRs. BHaVINI has estimated the total
construction cost of the PFBR at US$638 million (in 2004
dollars), or US$1,276/kW. This is about US$95/kW less
than the projected costs of the PHWRs under construction,
but more than the projected costs of the 700 MW PHWRs
the DaE plans to build in order to take advantage of
economies of scale.
One assumption that is particularly dubious is that the
PFBR will operate at a load factor of 80 percent. as the
table below shows, breeder reactors across the world
have operated with relatively low load factors. If the
PFBR experience were to be similar, a load factor of 50
percent might be more plausible, and this would result in
PFBR electricity being 87 percent to 139 percent more
expensive than PHWRs.
Figure 2: Performance of Breeder Reactors
The PFBR cost estimate could be compared to estimates of
breeder reactor construction costs elsewhere. Construction
costs for the French Phenix reactor totaled FF800 million
(at 1974 values) or US$800 million at 2004 values
(US$3,200/ kW) (IPFM, forthcoming). However, a further
€600 million (US$870 million at 2004 values) was spent on
Phenix upgrades between 1997 and 2003. The 1,240 MW
Superphenix was far more expensive, with an initial investment of FF28 billion (at 1985 values, or US$4.9 billion at
2004 values) (NUKEM, 1997: 15). The 300 MW Kalkar
reactor in Germany cost DM7 billion (1985 values or
US$3.6 billion at 2004 values) (Neffe, 1985).
Technically, breeder reactors can be expected to be more
expensive for two reasons. First, the use of molten sodium
as coolant has several operational requirements, such as
heating systems to keep the sodium molten at all times,
and safety requirements, such as extensive firefighting
equipment (Farmer, 1984). The second reason stems from
the realization that accidents at breeder reactors could
lead to the release of large quantities of explosive energies
(Bethe and Tate, 1956). They therefore need even more
extensive safety features, which are a significant component of the total capital cost.
Despite these many reasons to expect cost escalation for
the PFBR, we used the DaE’s estimate. Even with this low
estimate, and for an optimistic load factor of 80 percent,
at a real discount rate of six percent and at a uranium
price of US$200/kg, electricity from the PFBR will be
approximately 40 percent more expensive than from
PHWRs. If the PFBR was compared with future 700 MW
PHWRs, which should have lower construction costs
(Bhardwaj, 2006; Thakur and Chaurasia, 2005), electricity
from the PFBR will be about 80 percent more expensive.
The DaE has argued that the “primary objective of the
PFBR is to demonstrate techno-economic viability of fast
breeder reactors on an industrial scale” (Chetal et al.,
2006). Our results show that the PFBR will not be viable,
even with favourable assumptions. If these assumptions do
not hold, then its economic viability will be further reduced.
Date of Grid
Connection:
Cumulative
Load factor
(%)
Phenix,
France
December 13,
1973
41.34
Prototype Fast
Reactor, UK
January 10,
1975
23.87
BN-600,
Russia
April 8,
1980
73.48
Superphenix,
France
January 14,
1986
6.6
Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (2009).
as mentioned earlier, the main rationale offered for pursuing expensive breeders is the shortage of uranium. We
examined this by increasing the price of uranium from
US$200/kg to the “crossover value” where breeders become
competitive. For the optimistic base case, with a PFBR
load factor of 80 percent and a construction cost lower
than that of the PHWR, the levelized costs of electricity
from the PFBR and PHWR are equal at a uranium price
of US$890/kg. If the PFBR was compared to future PHWRs
that are expected to be cheaper, the crossover value is
US$1,375/kg.
These prices are much higher than current values. The
distribution of uranium among the major geological
reservoirs in the earth’s crust corresponds to a roughly
300 fold increase in the estimated amount of recoverable
uranium for every ten fold decrease in ore grade (Deffeyes
and MacGregor, 1980). If higher costs for uranium are
accepted, going from US$200/kg to US$890/kg, the crossover uranium price if the assumptions made were favourable to the PFBR, might increase the available uranium
reserves by a factor of about 40. This is an underestimate
because it ignores the general trends of reduced mining
costs due to learning and improved technology (Schneider
and Sailor, 2005). Less favorable assumptions would result
in greater quantities of uranium that are economically
recoverable. In any case, India should have sufficient
uranium to fuel PHWRs for decades, without reprocessing
and breeder reactors. India has already embarked on
efforts to recover uranium from unconventional resources
such as monazite, thorium hydroxide and phosphoric
rock (Singh, 1999; Mukherjee and Singh, 2003).
p.11
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
Safety
Of all electricity generating technologies, nuclear power
alone comes with the possibility of catastrophic accidents.
This was most dramatically illustrated by the Chernobyl
accident of 1986, but there have been other accidents that
have resulted in damage to public health and the environment. While the DaE, like other organizations involved
in nuclear activities, often verbalizes safety goals (for
example, “safety is our number one priority”), performance
and decision making often depart from public pronouncements. as a way of assessing the potential for accidents
at Indian nuclear facilities, three related questions must
be answered. What have been the experiences with accidents, both small and large, at DaE’s facilities? What
practices lie beneath the DaE’s planning and operations?
What has been the DaE’s attitude towards nuclear safety?
accidents
In its submission to the IaEa as part of its responsibilities
under the 1994 Convention on Nuclear Safety, the DaE
stated that:
Safety is accorded overriding priority in all activities.
all nuclear facilities are sited, designed, constructed,
commissioned and operated in accordance with strict
quality and safety standards… as a result, India’s
safety record has been excellent in over 260 reactor
years of operation of power reactors and various
other applications. (GoI, 2007)
The actual historical record, however, has not been as
excellent as this statement projects. Practically all nuclear
reactors and other facilities associated with the nuclear
fuel cycle operated by the DaE have had accidents of
varying severity. The description of some accidents offers
a sense of the lack of importance given to nuclear safety
by the DaE. This history suggests the organization cannot
be trusted to safely manage hazardous technologies
(Kumar and Ramana, forthcoming).
Narora 1993
The most serious accident at an Indian nuclear reactor
occurred on March 31, 1993. Early that morning, two
blades of the turbine at the first unit of the Narora power
station (two 220 MW PHWRs) broke off due to fatigue.
These sliced through other blades, destabilizing the turbine
and making it vibrate excessively. The vibrations caused
pipes carrying hydrogen gas that cooled the turbine to
break, releasing the hydrogen which soon caught fire.
around the same time, lubricant oil also leaked. The fire
p.12
spread to the oil and through the entire turbine building.
among the systems affected by the fire were four sets of
cables that carried electricity, which led to a general blackout in the plant. One set supplied power to the secondary
cooling systems, which were consequently rendered
inoperable. In addition, the control room became filled
with smoke and the staff were forced to leave it about
10 minutes after the blade failure.
The operators responded by manually actuating the primary shutdown system of the reactor 39 seconds into the
accident (Koley et al., 2006). although the reactor was
shut down, some operators, concerned about re-criticality,
climbed onto the top of the building and, under batteryoperated portable lighting, manually opened valves to
release liquid boron into the core to slow down the reaction.
It was necessary to do so because even though it was shut
down, the reactor continued to generate heat; the fuel rods
in a reactor accumulate fission products — the elements
created when a uranium atom splits — and these continue
to undergo radioactive decay and produce heat. While
this so-called decay heat is only a small fraction of the
power produced when the reactor is operating, it is generated even when the reactor is shut off. If not removed
promptly, decay heat can cause the fuel to reheat and
melt down. Thus, the reactor must continue to be cooled
even after shutdown. To accomplish this task, operators
had to start up diesel fire pumps to circulate water meant
for fire control (NEI, 1993).
It took 17 hours from the time the fire started for power
to be restored to the reactor and its safety systems.
Operators who were forced to leave the control room
because of smoke could not re-enter for close to 13 hours.
an attempt was made to take control of the plant from
the emergency control room; but, since there was no
power available, the Unit 1 control panel of the emergency
control room was unusable. Thus, Narora was almost
unique in that the operators had no indication of the condition of the reactor and were, in effect, “flying blind”
(Nowlen, Kazarians and Wyant, 2001).
The Narora accident has been the DaE’s closest approach
to a catastrophic accident. More worrisome is the evidence
that the accident could have been foreseen and prevented.
First, the failure of the turbine blades was avoidable. In
1989, General Electric Company communicated information to the turbine manufacturer, Bharat Heavy Electricals
Limited (BHEL), about a design flaw which led to cracks
in similar turbines around the world. They recommended
design modifications, and the manufacturer responded
by preparing detailed drawings for NPC, which operated
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
the Narora reactor. In addition to General Electric, the
manufacturer of the turbine, BHEL, also recommended
that NPC replace the blade design before an accident
occurred. However, NPC did not take any action until
months after the accident (Gopalakrishnan, 1999).
atomic Power Station (MaPS I) was shutdown repeatedly
because of high bearing vibrations in the turbine generator
(IaEa, 1986: 240). RaPS I had to be shutdown due to
high bearing vibrations in 1985, 1989, and 1990 (IaEa,
1986: 242; 1990: 302; 1991: 298).
Second, even if the turbine blade failed despite modification, the accident might have been averted if the safety
systems had been operating, which they presumably
would have if only their power supply had been encased
in separate and fire resistant ducts. By the time the Narora
reactor was commissioned, this was established wisdom
in the nuclear design community and had been ever since
the fire at Browns Ferry in the US in 1975. That accident
resulted in a mandate to make significant changes at all
US nuclear plants (Ramsey and Modarres, 1998: 106). The
physical and electrical systems were altered, with built-in
redundancies, to prevent fires. Other countries adopted
similar measures. all of this took place well before the
Narora plant attained criticality in 1989. Nevertheless,
the plant was constructed with backup power supply
systems laid in the same duct, with no fire-resistant
material enclosing or separating the cable systems.
Oil leaks have also been common in Indian reactors. In
1988, MaPS II was shut down due to an oil leak from the
generator transformer (IaEa, 1990: 288). In 1989, a large
spark was observed from slip rings on the exciter end of
the turbine in MaPS I; there were also two other fires in
the same reactor near the primary heat transport system
(IaEa, 1990: 298). Oil leaked from a turbine bearing in
MaPS II in 1989 (IaEa, 1990: 300). In 1992, there was an
oil leak in the turbine stop valve in MaPS II (IaEa, 1993:
288). In addition in 1992, there were two separate oil leak
incidents in the Narora I turbine generator system (IaEa,
1993: 289). There was at least one hydrogen gas leak prior
to the Narora accident: this happened in 1991 in the generator stator water system of MaPS II (IaEa, 1992: 390).
Third, the DaE had not taken any serious steps towards
fire mitigation despite earlier fire accidents at its own
reactors. In 1985, an overheated cable joint at RaPS II
caused a fire that spread through the cable trays and disabled four pumps (IaEa, 1986: 244; Gopalakrishnan,
1999). a few years later, in 1991, there were fires in the
boiler room of the same unit and the turbo generator oil
system of RaPS I (IaEa, 1992: 394-396).
The factors that contributed to the Narora accident were
repeatedly present prior to the accident. In particular,
excessive vibrations in the turbine bearings were common
in Indian reactors. In 1981, RaPS II was shut down twice
because oil leakage in the turbine building led to high
levels of sparking in the generator exciter (IaEa, 1982:
235). after it was restarted, it had to be shutdown yet
again when it was found that large amounts of oil had
leaked from the turbine governing system. Only when
the reactor was restarted a third time, in early 1982, were
the high vibrations of the turbine bearings noticed and
the failure of turbine blades discovered (IaEa, 1983: 250).
This led to a prolonged shutdown of more than 5 months;
even after this problem had apparently been fixed the
reactor had to be shut down once again because of high
turbine bearing temperatures (IaEa, 1983: 230). again in
1983, high vibrations were noticed in turbine generator
bearings and it was revealed that two blades in the second
stage of the high pressure rotor had sheared off at the root
(IaEa, 1984: 292). In 1985, the first unit of the Madras
The DaE simply did not take these experiences into
account while designing the Narora reactor. Fortunately,
the uproar from the Narora accident was great enough
that the DaE appears to have incorporated some design
changes. The head of the aERB at that time, Gopalakrishnan,
appears to have played an important part in ensuring
improvements. While these changes might prevent an
identical accident, they do not necessarily rule out other
kinds of accidents. Changes made to complex technologies
might have unanticipated consequences and produce new
accident pathways (Perrow, 1984).
Kalpakkam 2003
On January 21, 2003, some employees at the Kalpakkam
atomic Reprocessing Plant (KaRP) were tasked with collecting a sample of low-level waste from a part of the
facility called the Waste Tank Farm (WTF). Unknown to
them, a valve had failed, resulting in the release of highlevel waste, with much greater levels of radioactivity, into
the part of the WTF where they were working. although
the plant was five years old, no radiation monitors or
mechanisms to detect valve failure had been installed in
that area. The accident was recognized only after a sample
was processed. In the meantime, six workers had been
exposed to high doses of radiation (anand, 2003).
apart from the lack of monitoring mechanisms, the greatest
cause for concern was the response of management, in this
case BaRC. Despite a safety committee’s recommendation
that the plant be shut down, BaRC’s upper management decided to continue operating the plant. The BaRC
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Nuclear energy Futures Paper
Facilities Employees association (BFEa) wrote to the
director setting forth ten safety related demands, including
the appointment of a full time safety officer. The letter
also recounted two previous incidents where workers
were exposed to high levels of radiation in the past two
years, and how officials had always cited the existence of
an emergency situation as a reason for the Health Physics
Department’s failure to follow safety procedures. Once
again there was no response from management. In desperation, some months later the union resorted to a strike.
The management’s response was to transfer some of the
key workers involved in the agitation and give notice to
others; two days later, all striking workers returned to
work. The BaRC director’s public interpretation was
essentially that if the place had not been safe, the workers
would not have returned. Finally, the union leaked information about the radiation exposure to the press.
set of problems that led to the Narora accident, which have
persisted in many reactors. Other examples are regular
leaks and heavy water spills. While these leaks are not
themselves serious safety hazards, they could be the
precursors to more serious accidents.18
Once the news became public, management grudgingly
admitted this was the“worst accident in radiation
exposure in the history of nuclear India” (anand, 2003).
But it claimed the “incident” resulted from “over enthusiasm and error of judgment” on the part of the workers
(Venkatesh, 2003). Management also tried to blame the
workers for not wearing their thermoluminescent
dosimeter badges, but this has nothing to do with the
accident; badges would not have warned the workers
about radiation levels until well after they were exposed.17
The 2003 leak occurred while a device called BaRCCIS
(Bhabha atomic Research Centre Channel Inspection
System), which is used to inspect coolant tubes in reactors,
was in operation. after a similar leak in March 1999 at
MaPS, the atomic Energy Regulatory Board reviewed the
BaRCCIS system and suggested design changes, operating
procedures and training (aERB, 2004: 18). a similar leak
at the Narora reactor despite these changes suggests technical weaknesses in the regulatory board, fundamental
flaws in the system or continued operator errors.
For its part, the BFEa claimed the accident was only to be
expected, and that because of the unrelenting pace of
work at KaRP and “unsafe practices being forced on the
workers,” accidents have become regular (anonymous,
2003). Thus, there is no consensus among management
and workers on how to run the Kalpakkam plant safely.
Instead, operations were marred by discontent and opacity,
and management repeatedly disregarded workers’
attempts to have safety features installed.
Inoperative Safety Systems
Practices
a second notable and disturbing trend is the frequent
failure of safety devices. These are the mechanisms by
which control of the reactor ought to be maintained
under unanticipated circumstances. If they do not work
as expected, it is more likely that a small event could
cascade into a major accident. an related problem is that
of safety devices left in an inoperative state or neglect of
periodic maintenance.
One indicator of poor safety practices is repeated occurrences of similar accidents. an important example is the
an example of how minor failures contributed to escalating
an accident was the 1993 Narora accident discussed earlier.
The accident may have been prevented had the smoke
sensors in the power control room at Narora detected the
fire immediately. Since that did not happen, the fire was
detected only when the flames were noticed by plant
personnel (Srinivas, 1993). a different complication arose
three hours and fifty minutes into the accident when the
two operating diesel-driven fire water pumps tripped
17
These badges measure cumulative exposure over a period of time, and are
meant to be submitted to the health physics department for assessment.
18
Further, irradiated heavy water has some admixture of tritium; exposure to
heavy water can also lead to high radiation exposure (Ramana, 1999).
One can look at safety even in the absence of major accidents, in the way that day-to-day work is carried out at
DaE facilities.
Patterns
p.14
Such leaks started with RaPS, the first heavy water reactor
constructed in India (Ghosh, 1996). Despite much effort –
understandable because heavy water is expensive and
hard to produce – the DaE has not managed to contain
the leaks. In 1997 alone, such leaks occurred at the
Kakrapar I, MaPS II and Narora II reactors (IaEa, 1998:
301-320). The leaks could be significant. For example, on
april 15, 2000, there was a leak of seven tons of heavy
water at the Narora II reactor (aERB, 2001: 13). Three
years later, on april 25, 2003, there was a six ton leak at
the same reactor (aERB, 2004).
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
inexplicably (Nowlen, Kazarians and Wyant, 2001). as
yet, the cause for the failure has not been identified. a
third pump was out of service for maintenance.
Many of these problems are recurring. In 2005, for example,
the aERB found instances of failure in fire detectors at
Kakrapar and in the power supply for emergency cooling
at the Madras atomic Power Station (PTI, 2005). Heat
transport pumps are also frequently unavailable for many
reasons, most commonly because of frequency fluctuations
in the electricity grid. In 2004, MaPS-2 was shut down for
eight days because the two main primary coolant pumps
were unavailable. after it was restarted, the reactor had
to be shut down again because the motor bearings of one
of the pumps had to be replaced.
Choices in Design and Plans
The DaE has often made choices in which different safety
considerations have been traded off against each other.
The best example is the prototype fast breeder reactor
(PFBR) under construction. The DaE’s choice of containment design and various reactor parameters for the PFBR
are directly linked to cost reduction efforts made in the
1990s (Bhoje, 2001). The DaE has also emphasized that
“minimizing capital cost” was one of the design objectives
for the PFBR as it “would be the head of a series of at least
a few reactors” (Bhoje, 2002). This has significant safety
implications (Kumar and Ramana, 2008).
as with other breeder reactors, the PFBR design is susceptible to catastrophic accidents involving large and
explosive energy releases and dispersal of radioactivity
following a core meltdown. The potential for such a
“Core Disruptive accident” (CDa) comes from the reactor
core not being in its most reactive configuration. If conditions during an accident cause the fuel bundles to melt
and rearrange, reactivity could increase, leading to further
core rearrangement and a potential feedback loop. another
feedback effect in the PFBR design is a relatively large
positive sodium void coefficient. If the coolant heats up
and becomes less dense, forms bubbles, or is expelled
from the core, reactivity increases. The magnitude of the
void coefficient is a measure of the feedback and tends to
increase with core size.19
19
a reduction of coolant density has three effects. The reduced coolant absorbs
fewer neutrons, the mean energy of neutrons is higher, and there is more leakage.
In a fast reactor, higher neutron energy results in more Pu-239 fissions and therefore
the first two effects increase reactivity. Leakage effects are important only near the
periphery of the core, and therefore become less important as a whole as the volume
of the core increases.
Compounding the safety risks that come with this large
and positive sodium void coefficient, the PFBR design also
has a relatively weak containment building, designed to
withstand only 25 kilopascals (kPa) of overpressure
(Chetal et al., 2006). The containment building is meant to
act as the final barrier that stands in the way of radioactive
materials escaping into the atmosphere during a catastrophic accident. The maximum overpressure the PFBR
is designed to withstand is low compared to most other
demonstration reactors.
It is possible to design containment buildings to withstand
much higher pressures. Containment buildings for light
water reactors are routinely designed to withstand more
than 200 kPa (aPS Study Group, 1985: S94). The design
for the DaE’s planned 700 MW pressurized heavy water
reactors includes containment buildings designed to withstand up to 156 kPa (Bhardwaj, 2006). The DaE justifies
this choice of containment design by arguing that its safety
studies demonstrate the maximum overpressures expected
in a CDa are below the building’s limits. But these are
based on favourable assumptions, in particular, that only
limited parts of the reactor core are involved in the CDa
and that only about one percent of the thermal energy
released is converted into mechanical energy. These cannot
be considered “reasonable worst case” assumptions.
Nevertheless, based on such assumptions, the DaE
estimates the maximum credible energy release in a CDa
is 100 MJ (megajoules) (Chetal et al., 2006). The DaE then
calculates that such a CDa leading to sodium leakage
into the containment will result in a containment overpressure of 20 kPa.
Figure 3: Maximum CDA Work Energy Calculations for FBR Systems
Reactor
Year
Critical
Fermi
1963
EBR-II
1964
SEFOR
1969
PFR
1974
FFTF
1980
SNR-300 1983
(anticipated)
PFBR
2010
Power
(MWth)
200
65
20
600
400
760
Approximate Maximum
CDA Work Energy (MJ)
2000
600
100
600-1000
150-350
150-370
CDA/Power
Ratio
10
9.2
5
1-1.7
0.4-0.9
0.2-0.5
1200
100
0.083
Source: Calculations based on Waltar and Reynolds (1981: 524)
There are, however, good reasons to consider much larger
energy releases, to the extent of several hundred MJ, in
the evaluation of the safety of reactor designs, especially
one as large as the PFBR. CDa energy releases calculated
for breeder reactors in other countries can prove useful
comparators. Figure 3 lists the maximum energy released
during a CDa and the ratio of energy released to the
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Nuclear energy Futures Paper
power of the reactor. The ratio is useful to consider because
larger reactors, which generate more power, typically
have larger cores with greater quantities of radioactive
materials in them. Both as absolute figures and when
scaled by reactor power, these estimates for other breeder
reactors are much higher than the DaE’s estimate for
the PFBR.
as an alternative to the DaE’s estimate, an engineer and
I calculated that if a larger fraction of the reactor core is
involved in a CDa, the energy release from a CDa could
be as high as 650 MJ, which could lead to an overpressure
of about 40 kPa on the containment, clearly much higher
than the design limit of the containment building (Kumar
and Ramana, 2008). In arriving at this estimate, we followed
the DaE in assuming an efficiency of conversion of thermal
into mechanical energy of one percent. However, there is
some evidence that the conversion efficiency could be
higher, about four percent (Berthoud, 2000: 594). Higher
conversion factors would imply higher mechanical energy
releases and thus more significant overpressures and a
greater possibility of containment failure.
To summarize, safety considerations have not been
adequately incorporated into the design of the PFBR and
design choices have been rationalized through studies
that use assumptions not justified by empirical studies.
This problem is compounded by an absence of peer
review mechanisms and an unwillingness to expose technical studies to outside criticism.
a similar set of choices were also made for emergency
plans. These do not adequately reflect the gravity of a
potential nuclear accident and the need for rapid action
to protect the public. Though the DaE has argued that
nuclear accidents are impossible in India, it has also prepared emergency plans for dealing with such accidents.
Such plans are typically justified as “a measure of abundant
caution” by DaE personnel (Sundararajan, 1991), but the
DaE has made them inaccessible to the public. as a
result, knowledge of what to do in the event of an
accident among the inhabitants of areas surrounding
nuclear facilities is minimal. among those living near the
Kalpakkam nuclear complex, 68.8 percent of those surveyed
were completely ignorant of what to do in the event of a
nuclear accident (MaI, 1993).
an emergency plan for the Kakrapar power station in the
state of Gujarat, which was unintentionally released, would
clearly not work in the event of an actual accident
(Rawat, 1998). The two 220 MW reactors are located on
the banks of a river, which only had one bridge across it
p.16
in the vicinity of the power station. The plan required all
those evacuated to travel across this single bridge, a recipe
for a major traffic bottleneck. The plan also absurdly
required people in villages and towns further upstream
to move towards the reactor first, cross the bridge and
then travel away. Finally, several facilities, such as schools,
assigned as temporary shelters, were grossly inadequate
for the likely number of people to be housed there.
Perhaps the best illustration of how unworkable these
plans are can be found in accounts of emergency drills
occasionally carried out near nuclear reactors. at such
drills, officials and local inhabitants are supposed to
behave as though a real emergency is underway, but that
has not been the case. During an emergency drill near the
Tarapur reactors in 1988, the local administration official
was informed of the “disaster” at 8:15 PM. according to
the emergency plan, the official is supposed to immediately
proceed to the Emergency Control Room. Instead, he
reached it at 10:50 aM the next morning and it “seemed”
to observers that he was “going about the whole thing as
if he was attending just another function where he was
asked to perform the role of the chief guest” (Shenoy,
1988). at a similar emergency drill around the Kalpakkam
site in July 2001, the wireless set of the official in charge
of the reactor did not function and “produced just a kee-kee
sound” in the words of a staffer (Radhakrishnan, 2001).
Discourse
Despite this historical record of small accidents and near
misses, the DaE and its attendant organizations are completely confident the facilities they build and operate are
safe. In fact, the former chairman of NPC stated that it is
“important” that “the people [operating the nuclear plant]
should be confident about safety” (Subramanian, 2000).
This confident view should apparently not be just a public
position, meant to assuage the concerns of the citizenry
and policy makers, but should be deeply internalized.
DaE officials routinely exhort employees to be confident
of the safety of their operations. an example of this
occurred in the aftermath of the 1999 Tokaimura criticality accident in Japan, when former aERB chairman
Gopalakrishnan, warned that “the degree of automation
and cross-checks on safety in our older plants are very
minimal and one cannot assert at all that an accident like
the one which occurred in Japan will not happen in India”
(Tribune, 1999). Delivering the Founder’s Day Speech,
an annual high profile special event held each year at
BaRC, the head of the aEC’s response to Gopalakrishnan’s
assessment was to suggest that:
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
such a statement, made without any scientific basis,
was a symptom of the technological diffidence in some
persons who considered that as a nation, India was
not capable of dealing with high technology… I do
not think so. and there is no doubt that all of you,
who have a spectacular record of achievements, do
not think so. (anonymous, 1999)
Occasionally, though, some DaE staff have commented on
the nature of the challenge involved. One of them observed
that unlike developed countries, where industrial and
safety culture “developed over a long period has pervaded
the national culture,” there is still widespread disregard
for safety in India (Ray, 1994-95). In contrast, former aEC
Chairman Raja Ramanna reportedly said:
I would like to ask, are we not spending too much
money on health and safety? Should we not have a
look and find out whether the international standards
of safety are indeed that necessary?… Should we
follow the international standards blindly? I think
we should have courage to look at these standards
especially where they are leading to runaway costs.
(Ramanna, 1973, cited in Sharma, 1983: 110)
Fortunately, these views have not led to a repudiation of
international standards and, at least on paper, the DaE
follows these norms. However, due to a lack of transparency, it is not clear how carefully these standards are
practiced during operations (Ramana, 2009). In recent
years, India has tried to establish itself as a responsible
nuclear country and has therefore been even more desirous
of a reputation for adhering to international norms.
While the DaE argued on the one hand that these safety
concerns have been taken into account in the PFBR
design, it also claims such concerns were completely
misplaced in the first place. Thus, a DaE official argued
that the fast reactor community
ought to assert themselves and destroy the sodium
void phobia…the necessity of a dome on the top of
the reactor vessel and the core catchers needs to be
challenged…after all, if the reactor can be designed
to be inherently safe or if the probability of failure of
the shutdown function can be brought down to 1e-8
per demand, why invest more funds for safety
features. (Paranjpe, 1992)
Since they start with the conviction that the reactor is
inherently safe and immune from major accidents, DaE
analysts do not carry out reliable safety studies, often
making unwarranted assumptions, as illustrated by their
studies of potential accidents at the PFBR.
DaE officials often point out that safety is not the sole
criterion, perhaps not even the overriding one, by which
reactor performance should be judged.
a good reputation can be earned by ensuring a good
safety record, but a continuous production is also a
must. Winning safety shields is creditable but we all
must ensure to achieve excellence in production also.
(Bhatia, 1994-95)
Confidence in safety permeates even the DaE’s characterization of its understanding of the world around it. The
DaE’s Reactor Safety analysis Group declared in 1986:
For coastal sites, flooding may be due to tropical
cyclones, tsunamis, seiches and wind waves. In India,
tsunamis and seiches do not occur. Hence cyclones
alone have been singled out for detailed study.
This assertion was proven false by the December 2004
tsunami that devastated parts of India. Though that event
triggered some additional safety initiatives at coastal
reactors, it does not seem to have resulted in introspection within the DaE about how other assumptions
underlying their analyses might prove wrong. There is a
parallel between the way the DaE concluded that just
because no tsunamis and seiches had hit India by 1986
that they “do not occur,” and the way it concludes from
the record of no catastrophic accidents that its nuclear
facilities are safe. The latter simply does not follow from
the former.
Such confidence is not conducive to safety. One of the
many paradoxes about safety is that “if an organization is
convinced that it has achieved a safe culture, it almost
certainly has not” (Reason, 2000).
Despite the claims of the Indian nuclear establishment
that its facilities are operated safely, the historical record
of accidents and the attitudes of upper level and lower
level personnel towards safety both suggest that safety is
a low priority. The absence of catastrophic accidents at
DaE facilities is not evidence of safety. The absence of
evidence of “accidents should never be taken as evidence
of the absence of risk”…and “…just because an operation
has not failed catastrophically in the past does not mean
it is immune to such failure in the future” (Wolf, 2001).
Or as James Reason argues, “even the most vulnerable
systems can evade disaster, at least for a time. Chance
does not take sides. It afflicts the deserving and preserves
the unworthy” (Reason, 2000).
None of this means a major accident will necessarily
occur soon. Due to the multiple factors involved, many of
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Nuclear energy Futures Paper
which cannot be quantitatively predicted, the probability
of such an accident is difficult to estimate with any reliability. But there is a high likelihood of one occurring
eventually, especially if the problems with poor reliability
of operations continue. When such an accident occurs,
post facto analyses are likely to come to the conclusion,
just as with Bhopal or Chernobyl, that it was an accident
waiting to happen.
Waste Management
One major concern about nuclear power has been the
production of radioactive waste; this concern has been
an important factor in the decision by some European
countries to phase out nuclear power. Even in those that
continue to pursue nuclear power, dealing with spent
fuel has been a problem. For the DaE, however, spent
fuel is not waste to manage but “a resource to extract
plutonium from” and consequently it has pursued
reprocessing as the way of dealing with spent fuel
(Chidambaram, 1996).20 The DaE has not revisited this
practice, despite several studies based on the experiences
of Western Europe countries and the US which found
that reprocessing is uneconomical (Bunn et al., 2005;
Deutch et al., 2003; Charpin, Dessus, and Pellat, 2000).
reprocessing
India has three full-scale reprocessing plants. The first,
commissioned at Trombay in January 1965, is used to deal
with spent fuel from India’s two plutonium production
reactors. The plutonium produced at this facility is used
for nuclear weapons.
The second reprocessing plant, at Tarapur, was commissioned in april 1977, but the first batch of spent fuel rods
was fed into it only in april 1978 (Mirchandani and
Namboodiri, 1981: 73). after years of trial runs involving
spent fuel from plutonium production reactors, the plant
started reprocessing spent fuel from safeguarded
PHWRs in 1982 (DaE, 1983: 31). It was only in 1987 that
reprocessing spent fuel from non-safeguarded PHWRs
started (DaE, 1987: 42). In the 1990s, it was reportedly
running “substantially” below its nominal capacity, perhaps
as low as 25 percent (Hibbs, 1992, 1995).
The third reprocessing facility, the Kalpakkam atomic
Reprocessing Plant (KaRP), with a capacity of 100 tHM/y,
was commissioned in 1998 (DaE, 2000: 25). This plant
was set up primarily to reprocess spent fuel from MaPS
(Hibbs, 1997). KaRP is to serve as a standard design for
future plants (Dey, 2003). after being commissioned in
1998, it has reportedly been operating satisfactorily since
1999 (DaE, 2000, 2001, 2002).
Reprocessing results in large quantities of waste, because
radioactive substances are separated from spent fuel into
multiple waste streams. The DaE classifies its wastes into
Low Level Waste (LLW), Intermediate Level Wastes (ILW)
and High Level Wastes (HLW) (DaE, 1990). The term
Medium Level Wastes has also been used, presumably, as
a synonym for ILW. LLW is in some cases released into
the biosphere and is therefore a conduit for various
fission products to potentially reach human beings.21
Because it contains the bulk of the radioactivity in spent
fuel, the greatest concern is HLW. The DaE deals with
this waste by immobilizing or vitrifying it – the waste is
mixed with glass at a high temperature and allowed to
cool, which slows down the diffusion of radionuclides
from HLW.22 These blocks are stored at the Solid Storage
& Surveillance Facility (S3F), which uses natural convection
air cooling (DaE, 1990). Intermediate level liquid wastes
generated in reprocessing plants are concentrated and
fixed in cement (DaE, 1992: 2.26).
Gaseous wastes produced during routine operations at
nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants are released
through stacks (75-100 metres tall) into the environment
after filtration. Likewise low level liquid wastes – consisting
mostly of tritium but also small quantities of Cesium-137
and Strontium-90 – are released into nearby water bodies,
such as the sea in the case of coastal reactors. Data on such
releases are scarce – and often conflicting – but suggest
that releases at Indian reactors are much higher compared
to similar reactors elsewhere.
Geological Disposal
The DaE proposes to dispose of vitrified HLW in geological repositories about 500–600 metres below the ground
in some appropriate host rock such as granite or basalt
21
20
Spent fuel from reactors under safeguards is stored at away-From-Reactor storage
facilities and is no longer reprocessed, as it was for a few years when the original
reprocessing plant to deal with power reactor spent fuel was first constructed.
p.18
Some low level wastes are immobilized in polymer matrices (Sunder Rajan, 1986).
The vitrification is in a borosilicate (SiO2-B2O3-Na2O3-TiO2-MnO2) matrix system
and the vitrified waste product consists of SiO2 (34.1), B2O3 (6.4), Na2O3 (13.7), TiO2
(6.3), MnO2 (9.3), and waste oxides (30.2 Wt%) (Raj et al., 1995).
22
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
(Raj, Prasad and Bansal, 2006). Some alpha wastes are
also slated to be disposed of in similar fashion (Sunder
Rajan, 1986). Initially, deep geological formations in the
southern Indian peninsula were explored as likely burial
sites. a number of bore holes 0.6 miles deep were dug in
an abandoned chamber of the Kolar gold mines to test
the formation’s behaviour under simulated radioactive
decay heat (Chellaney, 1987). Those tests evidently did
not yield the desired results and in 1999 it was reported
that an area of about 100 square kilometres in the state of
Rajasthan in the western part of the country had been
identified as suitable for burying wastes. This led to public
protests from local communities. Shortly afterwards, the
government announced in parliament that it had not
taken any decisions on the disposal of nuclear waste,
and such a decision might “take another two decades of
research and development” (PTI, 2000). So far no geological disposal site seems to have been finalized.
Public Perception
In contrast to the enthusiasm for nuclear power that successive governments have displayed, plans for every new
nuclear reactor and uranium mine since the early 1980s
have been met with strong opposition from local groups
(alvares, 1987; Varghese, 2000; Dias, 2005; Menon and
Ramana, 2007). One setting where opposition has been
recorded consistently has been at public consultations
to discuss Environmental Impact assessments (EIa) of
nuclear facilities, a necessary step for any project to be
accorded environmental clearance. For example, at the
first ever consultation to discuss a nuclear EIa in July
2001, of the nearly 30 members of the public who presented
their views at the hearing, only one supported the project
(Sri Raman, 2001; DOSE, 2001). Similar levels of opposition
have been seen at other projects (Staff Reporter, 2005;
Reporter, 2006; Menon and Ramana, 2007).
Unlike in the West, however, the reasons have less to do
with concerns about safety or radioactive waste, though
these do cause apprehension among locals. The vast
majority of the population does not have any understanding about radiation and the associated hazards. a
1993 survey near the Kalpakkam nuclear complex, home
to multiple nuclear reactors and other facilities, revealed
that on average about 53 percent knew nothing about
radiation, whereas a further 34.5 percent had some
knowledge but were quite unclear (MaI, 1993). Rather,
because of the much greater dependence on natural
resources like land and water, the primary concern with
nuclear facilities is their impact on lives and livelihoods.
Reactors, for example, require cooling water and land, for
which farmers compete, and discharge hot water and
radioactive effluents into the sea, affecting fish workers.
Similar factors also drive opposition to large hydroelectric
dams, thermal power plants, and automobile factories.
The Future
Following the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s exemption,
Indian policy makers have been predicting their country
will produce significant amounts of nuclear electricity in
the future. The Ministry of Power, for example, hopes to
add 40 GW of nuclear power by 2020, as a result of the
US-India nuclear deal (MoP, 2008). This is a tall order by
any scale. The most rapid growth of nuclear power in a
single country has been in France, which added about 39
GW during the 1980s, or 3.9 GW/y (IaEa, 2009). That
growth was based on a standard design, in contrast to DaE
plans to import reactors with a range of designs. In the
context of India’s chequered history of nuclear power over
the decades, such projections seem extremely ambitious.
One motivation behind making such large projections
seems to be a need to hype up the demand for nuclear
reactors and other technology so nuclear vendors will be
tempted lower their prices in order to gain a foothold in a
potentially large market. Lowered prices will be necessary
if nuclear power is to compete in an Indian electricity sector
that has been restructured over the last decade to promote
competition. This process has resulted in increased sensitivity to electricity tariffs and costs of generation.
The major problem imported nuclear reactors will face is
the high cost of electricity generation as a result of high
capital costs, a factor that has increased in salience as
estimated costs of new nuclear reactors mount. Recently
completed domestic nuclear plants in India have cost
around US$1,500/kW (2007 US dollars), though these
were constructed before the observed price escalations in
other countries (Bohra and Sharma, 2006).23 The costs of
LWR construction in other countries have been much
higher. In March 2008, Progress Energy, a Florida utility,
filed a Certification of Need document with the state’s
Public Service to construct two reactors, for which it estimates overnight construction costs of about US$5,000/kW
for the first unit and US$3,300/kW for the second unit,
with an average of about US$4,200/kW (NUKEM, 2008).
23
as explained earlier, even at this relatively low cost, they are not cost-competitive
with domestic coal-based thermal plants.
p.19
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
The cost of the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland being constructed by areva has been estimated at upwards of
US$4,000/kW (at 2007 prices). It is fairly clear that imported
nuclear reactors will be priced out of the Indian market.
This problem was recognized well before negotiations on
the deal began. In the case of French reactors, M. R.
Srinivasan, former head of the DaE, stated in 2003 that,
Recent cost projections show that if an LWR were to
be imported from France, the cost of electricity
would be too high for the Indian consumer. This is
because of the high capital cost of French supplied
equipment. (Srinivasan, 2003)
Indian nuclear officials have set their hopes on licensed
domestic manufacturing. In the words of Sudhinder
Thakur, the executive director of the state-owned Nuclear
Power Corporation, “When you build a reactor here, costs
come down dramatically” (Jishnu, 2008). The chairman
and managing director of NPC, S. K. Jain, says “India is
pushing for a steady indigenisation of imported plants
with the vendors” which “could go up to as much as 80
percent for future plants” (Chengappa, 2008). This is a
strategy that finds favour with the domestic power
industry. Companies such as Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) have asked the
Indian government to incorporate clauses for localization
of imported reactor technology as part of the entry norms
for foreign companies (Sasi, 2008). L&T from the private
sector and BHEL from the public sector have historically
been important suppliers to NPC’s reactors. BHEL is also
reportedly looking to join with Larsen & Toubro to build
manufacturing capacity for both the conventional island
and reactor portions of Light Water Reactors (Sasi, 2008).
The two companies are also in talks with the four shortlisted global reactor vendors.
It is not clear how far international nuclear vendors are
willing to go down the route of localizing manufacturing
in India. Lowered costs achieved by local manufacture in
India would reduce profits and not allow for job creation
efforts, despite promises made to the contrary by nuclear
vendors in countries like the US and France as a reason to
support the India nuclear deal. For example, in October
2008, as the US Congress approved the nuclear agreement, President George W. Bush stated that the deal “will
strengthen our global nuclear nonproliferation efforts,
protect the environment, create jobs and assist India in
meeting its growing energy needs in a responsible manner”
(agencies, 2008). Further, the time it would take to set up
manufacturing facilities in India would add to the already
considerably long reactor construction periods. Therefore,
p.20
vendors would obtain reduced profits, following a lengthy
wait, and after substantial investments in Indian facilities.
The growth of nuclear power, using imported reactors, is
likely to be slow and limited. In the near term, however,
there will at least be a few reactor purchases. as the price
for shepherding the nuclear deal through the NSG, the
Indian government seems to have promised the US, France,
and Russia that it would purchase some nuclear reactors
from them. at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearings, Undersecretary William Burns stated that:
The Indian government has provided the United
States with a strong Letter of Intent, stating its intention to purchase reactors with at least 10,000 mega
Watts (MW) worth of new power generation capacity
from US firms… India has committed to devote at
least two sites to US firms. (Varadarajan, 2008)
NPC has reportedly shortlisted four major reactor
manufacturers: Westinghouse Electric Company with its
advanced Passive 1000 reactors; General Electric-Hitachi
with its advanced Boiling Water Reactor and Economical
Simplified Boiling Water Reactors; areva with its European
Pressurized reactors; and Russia’s Rosatom with its
Vodo-Vodyanoi Energetichesky Reactor (VVER1000).
The plan is to devote one site each to clusters of reactors
from each vendor. Sites have been identified across the
country.24 at the first of these, Jaitapur, south of Mumbai,
land acquisition efforts have already been initiated. This
site seems to have been earmarked for areva (agencies,
2007). another site that has been identified is Mithi Virdi
in the western state of Gujarat, likely for a US vendor
(Shah, 2008). at both sites, public protest against the
proposed construction of reactors has commenced.
While the primary focus has been on importing reactors,
there are also plans to export nuclear technology. In
addition to the NPC, the state-owned BHEL is emerging
as an important player. Following the establishment of a
joint venture to manufacture 700 MW turbines, NPC and
BHEL are reported to be in talks aimed at setting up a
joint venture company to export Pressurized Heavy
Water Reactors (Mehdudia, 2008). The process began in
april 2008 when the two companies signed a memorandum
of understanding to float a joint venture company for
executing engineering, procurement and construction
contracts for nuclear power projects in India and abroad
(Bureau, 2008).
24
Two Russian VVER-1000s are already being constructed at the Koodankulam
site in southern Tamil Nadu and further reactors imported following the NSG
waiver will likely be constructed at the same site.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
There seems to be widespread realization that, in view of
the enormous costs involved, a large-scale expansion of
nuclear power in India will require the involvement of
the private sector. There has been interest in setting up
nuclear reactors from large industrial houses like the Tatas
and Reliance; however, there remain several uncertainties
with regard to private companies, especially foreign ones,
operating nuclear power plants in India.
The first uncertainty is whether private parties can be
legally involved in this activity. The usual reading of the
1962 atomic Energy act is that it gave the central government power over all matters relating to atomic energy.
It can exercise those powers either by itself or through
any authority or corporation established by it or by a
government company. The 1962 act defines “Government
Company” as a company in which not less than 51percent of the paid-up share capital is held by the central
government. a liberal interpretation of the atomic
Energy act, therefore, could be that the private sector can
already participate in nuclear power generation with
minority equity participation (Ram Mohan, 2009).
The government, however, seems not to interpret the
act in this manner. In February 2009, Minister of Power
Jairam Ramesh stated that the role for the private sector
in the first phase of Indian nuclear power generation
would be very limited, in view of issues relating to the
safety, fuel and management aspects of nuclear power
plants (Bureau, 2009). Even the country’s largest government-owned power company, the National Thermal Power
Corporation, which wanted to start operating nuclear
power stations, could not do so by itself. It had to enter a
joint venture with the Nuclear Power Corporation, in
which the latter held a 51 percent stake (Bureau, 2009).
The second uncertainty is the question of liability. Under
section 29 of the atomic Energy act, the government is
not subject to legal proceedings for good faith actions
taken in pursuance of the act. Thus, a governmentowned company, such as the Nuclear Power Corporation,
would be protected from public claims in the event of an
accident. This has been a source of concern to private
vendors, especially in the US, who have been urging
India to sign the international nuclear liability convention.
Breeder reactors in the Future
although the NSG waiver might result in India importing
LWRs, in the longer term the DaE’s projections are
dependent on breeder reactors. The DaE’s projection of
275 GW by 2052 includes 262.5 GW from breeders
(Grover and Chandra, 2006). Not surprisingly these estimates are based on very optimistic assumptions that cannot be substantiated on the basis of historical experience.
But even if one were to give the DaE the benefit of doubt,
these projections are erroneous. The DaE has simply not
accounted properly for the likely availability of plutonium
(Ramana and Suchitra, 2009).
The performance of the one breeder reactor India currently
operates, the FBTR, has been mediocre. Its construction
was delayed as a result of sanctions following the 1974
nuclear test. Since it attained criticality, the FBTR has
experienced numerous accidents and unusual occurrences
(Suresh Kumar et al., 2002). It was 15 years before the FBTR
managed more than 50 days of continuous operation at
full power (Prasad, 2001). Over the first 20 years of its life,
it has operated for only 36,000 hours, or only 20 percent
of its life thus far (DaE, 2006: 16). The FBTR experience
does not offer a good basis for optimism about Indian
breeder performance.
The DaE’s projections are primarily based on assumptions
about doubling time – how long it would take a breeder
reactor to produce enough plutonium to fuel a new breeder
reactor core. The rate of growth also depends sensitively
on the out-of-pile time, the time period taken for the spent
fuel to be cooled, reprocessed, and fabricated into fresh
fuel. The DaE assumes very optimistically that all of
this can be accomplished within one year (Grover and
Chandra, 2006).
as mentioned earlier, the DaE’s methodology is flawed
and does not account correctly for plutonium flows. To
start, the base capacity of breeders assumed in 2022, which
provides the basis for the 2052 projection, would require
much more plutonium for startup fuel than the DaE will
have at that time. The DaE does not currently have enough
reprocessing capacity to handle the spent fuel produced
by the heavy water reactors operating and under construction. Constructing new reprocessing plants typically
takes ten to 15 years.25 Even if the DaE manages to inexplicably obtain the necessary plutonium to construct its
25
The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing plant in the United Kingdom, with a capacity
of 800 t/y, received government approval in 1978 but started operating only in
1992 (Forwood, 2008). More instructive is the case of the most recent commercial
reprocessing facility, the Rokkasho plant in Japan, again with a capacity of 800 t/y.
Built on the basis of the design already used for the French La Hague reprocessing
plant, Rokkasho’s construction commenced in 1993 (Walker, 2006). Construction
was completed and tests began in 2006. as of December 2008, the ongoing delays
were reportedly the result of numerous technical problems in the last stage of testing
(Sawai, 2008). In India, the Kalpakkam atomic Reprocessing Plant (KaRP) facility,
with a much smaller capacity of 100 t/y, received financial sanction in 1983 (DaE,
1987: 19), but was commissioned only in 1998 (DaE, 2000: 25).
p.21
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
projected reactor capacity with an equal quantity
to spare, under the DaE’s assumed rate of growth, the
plutonium stockpile would be reduced by about 40 tons
in the first ten years. This loss is the result of a three-year
lag between the time a certain amount of plutonium is
committed to a breeder reactor and when it reappears
along with additional plutonium for refueling the same
reactor, thus contributing to the start-up fuel for a new
breeder reactor.
a more careful calculation, taking into account plutonium
flow constraints, shows the capacity for breeders in 2052
would be at best about 40 percent of the DaE’s projections
(Ramana and Suchitra, 2009). If a more realistic out-ofpile time of three years were taken into consideration,
India’s breeder capacity in 2052 based on plutonium from
PHWRs will drop to about 17 percent of the DaE’s
projections. The only constraint assumed here is fissile
material availability. These calculations are based on
assumptions that there will be no delays because of
infrastructure and manufacturing problems, economic
disincentives due to the high cost of electricity, or accidents.
all of these are real constraints and render even the lower
end of the 2052 projections quite unrealistic.
Thorium
There is a lot of discussion in the literature on the Indian
nuclear program about thorium-based breeders, the third
stage of the three-phase strategy. However, even in the
DaE’s plans, these become significant only after 2052
(Grover and Chandra, 2006), primarily because of difficulties in dealing with the highly radioactive contaminant
uranium-232 that is produced along with uranium-233,
the fissile material produced from fertile thorium. Even if
such reactors are constructed, they will likely have
the same features that make plutonium-based breeders
uneconomical: the need for reprocessing and the requirement for extensive safety precautions in fabricating fuel
with uranium-233 if it is contaminated even at very low
levels with uranium-232.
Conclusion
Nuclear power is likely to remain a major part of India’s
energy plan. Though it has had some success, notably the
development of some expertise over most steps in the
nuclear fuel chain, India’s atomic energy program has not
achieved any of its promises. The most important failure
has been that after more than 60 years, nuclear power
constitutes only three percent of the nation’s electricity
p.22
generation capacity. To some extent, this has been a result
of international sanctions imposed on India after its nuclear
weapon tests. an important lesson from this experience
is that while export controls and other trade restrictions
might not cause a nuclear program to completely shut
down, sanctions may slow its growth.
The limited amount of nuclear electricity generated has
been at a relatively high cost. The DaE’s reactor construction costs have not dropped over the years and, despite
their claims of improved construction practices, show little
evidence of learning. The operational efficiencies of reactors
have improved over the decades, however.
The DaE claims safety is its primary concern, but it has
been a low priority, as demonstrated by India’s history
of small accidents, unsafe design choices and operating
practices. The DaE’s obsession with secrecy inhibits
independent studies of the complex (Ramana, 2009). The
agency in charge of regulating safety at nuclear facilities
comes under the administrative control of the aEC, and
is therefore not truly independent.
The effects of the NSG waiver remain uncertain. Though
the DaE’s nuclear reactor construction has been marked
with time and cost overruns, overnight construction costs
are cheaper than reactors sold on the international
market, primarily because of lower labour costs, but also
because licensing requirements are easier to meet.
Nevertheless, nuclear electricity remains more expensive
than coal-based thermal power that is and will remain the
staple source of electricity in the country. Unless foreign
countries offer cheap loans for purchasing imported
reactors, India is unlikely to be able to afford them. Such
financing is unlikely to be a viable means for large-scale
expansion of nuclear power in India.
Despite media hype and continued government patronage,
nuclear power is unlikely to contribute significantly to
electricity generation in India for several decades. apart
from the high cost of the power it produces, one important
factor that will reduce the potential contribution of nuclear
power even further is the reliance on breeder reactors, a
technology shown to be unreliable in most countries that
have experimented with them. a shift to the more reliable
light water reactors might increase nuclear power’s contribution to electricity generation; however, in doing so,
the nuclear establishment is faced with a dilemma. On
the one hand, LWRs can be imported from the West at
unit costs much higher than Indian PHWRs. This would
make nuclear electricity uncompetitive. On the other
hand, if the DaE were to insist on local manufacture of
The Centre for International Governance Innovation
reactor components, as a way of leveraging India’s lower
labour costs, many of the construction projects might
proceed slowly, as has been the case in the past. In any
case, nuclear power will only contribute a modest share
of electricity to India’s energy needs for several decades
at the very least.
p.23
Nuclear energy Futures Paper
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The Centre for International Governance Innovation
Who We Are
The Centre for International Governance Innovation is an independent, nonpartisan think tank
that addresses international governance challenges. Led by a group of experienced practitioners
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