India Needs A Vibrant New Roadmap To Achieve 100 GW Of Nuclear Power By 2047

Given the history of fast reactors worldwide and our unhappy experience with BHAVINI, it is unlikely that the government will give the go-ahead to make multiple fast breeder reactors as envisaged in the second stage of India's three-stage program

Dr. Homi Bhabha, the visionary founder of India's atomic energy program, laid the cornerstone of the country’s nuclear power program with his three-stage strategy.

The first stage involved the construction of Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) for power generation, chosen for their ability to operate on natural uranium fuel, which was available in India.

In the second stage, it was envisaged that plutonium from the spent fuel of the PHWRs would be mixed with natural uranium to make a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. This fuel would be used in fast breeder reactors (FBRs) to breed more plutonium from natural uranium or uranium-233 from thorium.

The advanced reactors of the third stage would be thermal breeders that operate on a self-sustaining thorium cycle. This would enable India to meet its energy requirements using its vast thorium resources without dependence on foreign energy suppliers.

Bhabha conceptualised this three-stage program in the early 1950s. In 1954, he predicted that nuclear power would contribute 8,000 megawatts of electricity by 1980. However, India could reach the 8,000 MW target only in 2024. Understanding the reasons for this slow progress in nuclear power generation and whether Bhabha's vision is relevant today is worth considering.

The first stage of the program, construction of PHWRs, has been a remarkable success story for the Department of Atomic Energy. The construction of the first PHWR unit, RAPS-1, started in 1963 and was mostly built with equipment and technology supplied by AECL, Canada. However, Canada's cooperation halt after the Pokhran explosion in 1973 led to delays in completing and building more plants. Yet, Indian scientists and engineers successfully indigenised all the equipment and systems, making IPHWR-220 the mainstay of the country’s nuclear program, with 14 such plants operating presently. While indigenisation of PHWR-220 was a creditable achievement, each plant was relatively small and produced only 220 MW of electricity. In response to the burgeoning electricity demand, NPCIL designed scaled-up versions of the 220 MW plant that could produce 540 MW and 700 MW of electricity, respectively. Two 540 MW and two 700 MW plants are operating currently and six more 700 MW plants are under construction. In addition, eight more 700 MW plants have been approved by the government and will be constructed in the coming decade.

India started work on the second stage, the fast breeder reactor program, in 1965. An agreement to build a small, experimental Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) with French collaboration was signed in 1969. The design of the FBTR was based on French RAPSODIE reactor. FBTR’s construction was completed in 1985, and the reactor ran successfully for 20 years. The success of the FBTR encouraged DAE to build a 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), later christened BHAVINI. The detailed design of BHAVINI was completed in 2002, and government sanction for its construction was given in 2003. The BHAVINI project has seen significant time and cost overruns and the reactor hasn’t been made operational so far.

The problems faced in building and operating a fast breeder reactor is by no means unique to India. The United States pioneered fast breeders but cancelled their fast breeder program in the mid-1970s. Two fast reactors were built in the UK for civil energy generation at Dounreay. The first shut down in 1977, and the second in 1994.

France built three fast reactors: an experimental reactor called RAPSODIE, a prototype reactor called PHENIX, and a full-scale power generation reactor called SUPERPHENIX, which, incidentally, was plagued with technical problems and was shut down in 1998 after only 11 years of operation. PHENIX was operated intermittently from 1973 till it was finally decommissioned in 2010. France planned to build a new fast reactor called ASTRID, but that plan has been shelved for now.

Japan has successfully operated an experimental fast reactor called JOYO since the 1970s, and it commissioned a prototype plant called MONJU in 1994 and was shut down a year later due to a sodium fire. The plant was resumed in 2010 but had to be shut again in August 2010 because the refuelling machine fell into the reactor. MONJU never operated after this incident, and the decision was taken to decommission the plant in 2018. It reportedly had cost over eight billion dollars and produced electricity for only one hour over its entire life.

Russia has had the most success operating fast breeder reactors. In the 1950s and 1960s, they built three experimental reactors, BR-1, BR-2, and BR-5. Subsequently, they built successively larger plants called BOR-60, BN-350, BN-600, and BN-800. The BN-600 has been operating since 1980, and the BN-800 since 2016. There was a plan to build a larger BN-1200 reactor, but it appears to be on the backburner presently.

Given the history of fast reactors worldwide and our unhappy experience with BHAVINI, it is unlikely that the government will give the go-ahead to make multiple fast breeder reactors as envisaged in the second stage of India's three-stage program.

India’s progress on the third stage of the three-stage program has been even more dismal. BARC worked on the design of an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) that could breed uranium-233 from thorium for many years. The reactor design was based on the Winfrith Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor.

Much research was done on this project, but there is no plan to make a prototype reactor based on this design.

To sum up, India made slow and steady progress in the first stage of the three-stage program, struggled with the second stage, and has more or less given up on the third stage.

It is clear that Bhabha's blueprint of 1954 is no longer valid, and a new roadmap is required to reach the target of 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047.

(The author is a nuclear engineer and Navy veteran. He is currently Director of the School of Engineering at DY Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune. He can be reached at [email protected])