Project in peril

Anil Kakodkar speaking to the media in Mumbai on July 10, the day after the government sent the draft safeguards agreement to the IAEA.-PTI

Thorium, long seen as crucial to energy security, is now debunked as having properties that do not allow fast growth of power generation.

FOR nearly three years, until July 4, Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, was talking of the India-United States nuclear deal as a means only to an additionality of nuclear power that would not affect in any way the three-stage Indian programme, which was firmly on course. In an interview soon after the July 18, 2005, Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement (Frontline, September 9, 2005), he said: We will continue our domestic nuclear power programme. We will look at external inputs as additionalities. The configuration of this additionality will be determined by the financial package. But the important point is that this is an additionality.

Even in his later interviews (The Hindu, February 8, 2006, and Frontline, August 24, 2007) he reiterated this. In the former, he said: [O]ur strategy should be such that the integrity and autonomy of our being able to develop the three-stage nuclear power programme [remain]we cannot compromise that. Now you look at it from the other end. It can generate lot of energy in the future. If there are opportunities for international cooperation, civil-nuclear cooperation, we can get that as an additionality additionality is the important word. He did not, however, specify what was the additionality that the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) envisaged.

However, in his public lecture on July 4, 2008, at the midterm meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Bangalore, on Evolving Indian Programme: Rationale and Perspectives, he spelt this out for the first time: The gap between requirement and supply can be easily met if about 40 GWe [40,000 MWe] additional capacity LWRs [Light Water Reactors] are imported during the period 2012-2020[W]ith the use of spent fuel of these LWRs for launching a series of FBRs [Fast Breeder Reactors], the deficit is practically wiped out in the year 2050 (see graphs).

He added: [O]n account of [the] exponential nature of growth, in case import of these LWRs is delayed by a decade, the energy deficit would be 178 GWe. The latter is approximately twice the annual coal requirement in our country today. With this logic, it is obvious that with the import of LWRs (or PHWRs Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors or uranium) as an additionality in the nearer term, India can achieve full energy independence in a shorter time. Even much after the imported reactors reach the end of their life, the additional fuel inventory remaining in the country would help in satisfying our future energy requirements for a very long period in a sustainable manner (emphasis added throughout). He is also reported to have said that history would not forgive us if we did not grab this opportunity. For someone who first opposed the deal and then became a guarded supporter, Kakodkar has come a long way to turn into an overenthusiastic supporter.

While the English language dictionary does not define the word additionality, the connotation that it would seem to carry (as it is used, for example, in the context of Clean Development Mechanism projects to mitigate climate change) is that it is over and above the business-as-usual scenario; that is, it is some addition to the existing activity that does not overwhelmingly exceed it. Clearly, given that without this imported additionality of 40 GWe up to 2020, Indias nuclear power capacity (based on indigenous PHWRs and FBRs plus the 2 GWe at Kudankulam) would be only about 15 GWe, additionality would seem to have acquired a new meaning.

Until now, public statements with regard to the extent of nuclear power import were largely political. For instance, the Prime Minister, during his statement to the Lok Sabha on August 13, 2007, said: [O]ur target for the year 2020 is 20,000 MW. However, if international cooperation once again became available, we could hope to double this target. This arbitrary figure of an additional 20 GWe of nuclear capacity actually comes from the 10th Plan midterm appraisal document released in May 2005. It said: Given the limited indigenous uranium resources, India must seek at least 20,000 MWe of additional nuclear power capacity on a turnkey basis, based on a competitive power tariff, to be built over the next 10-12 years. Actually, if imports become possible, additional imports would actually be 26 GWe because the DAEs current target of 20 GWe by 2020 already includes an import component of 8 GWe (of which 2 1 GWe plants at Kudankulam are being implemented following the 1998 India-Russia agreement).

But the additionality that the DAE originally envisaged by the end of the 12th Plan (2017) was only 12 GWe, as stated in the Planning Commissions Integrated Energy Policy (IEP) of 2006 prepared by the Kirit Parikh Committee, of which Kakodkar was a member. However, R.B. Grover of the DAE, in his presentation in Tsuruga, Japan, as recently as June 6-7, did consider a scenario with a total import of 20 GWe by 2020. He concluded that this would lead to a nuclear capacity of about 300 GWe by 2050, compared with about 200 GWe with no imports beyond the 2 GWe at Kudankulam and 275 GWe with additional 6 MWe from Russia as envisaged under the 2020 target. For the first time, an envisaged import of 40 GWe by 2020 is now being publicly stated.

This new rationale of energy security to justify the deal appears to have been presented to the Samajwadi Party (S.P.) for its support even before Kakodkar presented it at the academy. The (five) graphs that formed part of his lecture on July 4 were already with journalists in Delhi the day before. These, which originated from the Prime Ministers Office, were handed out to select journalists by Amar Singhs office. Only, one did not know at that time what their original source was.

The important question of where the finances for importing 40 GWe (indeed, even 20 GWe) of LWRs in less than a decade, at nearly $2 million/MWe, and low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, at about $1,700/kg, will come from will not be addressed here. The pertinent question now is that the new premise has the potential to undermine the indigenous three-stage programme by seeking to postpone the utilisation of thorium of which India has vast resources (225,000 tonnes), even indefinitely.

This is what Kakodkar said in his lecture. The highest breeding ratio in FBRs is achieved with plutonium-uranium (Pu-U) based metallic fuel in the core and uranium in the blanket. The introduction of thorium in the blanket of a Pu-U-fuelled FBR, he said, obviously referring to the strategy advocated by DAE scientists who have developed the breeder technology, slightly increases the doubling time, that has an adverse impact on the rate of growth of the installed FBR capacity in the initial part of the second stage. DAE studies indicate that it would be most appropriate to introduce thorium in this manner in the third decade after the launch of metallic-fuel based FBRs.

The following is the essence of his proposal. Since the slow growth based on Pu-U breeders using plutonium derived from the small indigenous PHWR base of 10 GWe would leave an unmet demand of 412 GWe by 2050, the plutonium obtained by reprocessing the spent fuel of the imported 40 GWe LWRs should be used to launch another series of metallic Pu-U breeders whose exponential growth, starting as it does from a larger LWR capacity base, will be able to meet this energy deficit by 2050. Of course, since importing FBRs would be an unlikely proposition even after 2020, these Pu-U breeders have to be built indigenously. But since they would use plutonium generated from imported uranium, these breeders would come under safeguards.

More pertinently, reprocessing rights for the safeguarded spent fuels are not automatic if the source country is the U.S. since such transfers would be governed by the 123 Agreement, which does not grant automatic processing rights. Even assuming that such rights could be secured, separate safeguarded reprocessing capacity commensurate with the large quantities of spent fuel that the 40 GWe plants would spew out have to be built. And, not the least is the need to find within a decade the people, let alone the finances, to run plants of 40 GWe capacity.

But when is the indigenous breeder technology using metallic fuel expected to mature? According to the oft-cited 2004 document of Grover and S. Chandra, the DAE would introduce (indigenous) metallic fuel FBRs (of capacity 6 GWe) by 2022. Therefore, by Kakodkars contention, introduction of thorium will have to wait for three decades from there, that is, until 2050. But by this time, by Kakodkars new perspective, the gap between energy supply and demand would have nearly closed. This has the implication that the nominal growth of energy beyond 2050 from Pu-U breeders without the introduction of thorium would suffice to meet the growth of energy demand beyond 2050, not to mention energy from other non-nuclear sources. That is, this large-scale import-led nuclear power growth may well result in abandoning the third stage that uses thorium altogether. If this is the scenario that the DAE envisages if imports became possible, one can justifiably ask: What is the purpose of the 300 MWe Advanced Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) that is awaiting to be built and launched by 2020?

A hint of things to come was perhaps already there in Kakodkars Founders Day address last October, in which he said: One must, however, understand and appreciate the sequential nature of this technology deployment strategy. The nuclear properties of thorium, while would permit sustaining a given power generation capacity to make full use of energy from our vast thorium reserves, do not permit growth in power generation capacity. Large-scale deployment of thorium has thus to await enhancement of power generation capacity through fast breeder reactors to a requisite level. This is not a matter of reactor technology choice but of the inherent nuclear properties of thorium. Our efforts to look at international civil nuclear cooperation have to be seen in this background.

We advocate a departure from the sequential mindset to hybrid or symbiotic reactor systems, writes Placid Rodriguez, former Director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam, and one of the key scientists involved in the development of the Indian breeder programme, in his forthcoming paper in Atoms For Peace: An International Journal. The strategy advocated here, he says, combines fast growth in electricity generation capacity, with the early introduction of thorium cycle in India. The scenario envisaged by Rodriguez and others at IGCAR is of deploying both second-stage fuel cycle and third-stage fuel cycle involving thorium in parallel. That is, a symbiotic combination of Pu-U breeders (that breed only Pu-239) with Pu-U breeders having a thorium radial blanket in the second part of the second stage (that breed both Pu-239 and U-233) and of U-233-thorium breeders (that will breed U-233) with heavy water or other thermal reactors that use thorium (like AHWRs) towards a self-sustaining U-Th cycle in the third stage.

This ensures both good growth potential as well as energy security and independence without being tied to imported fuel for the lifetime of reactors with no clear assurances of fuel supply, says Rodriguez. The strategy advocated by Rodriguez to counter Kakodkars suggestion is based on breeder fuel cycles investigated by S.M. Lee of IGCAR, another important figure in the development of breeder technology, in the 1980s. He had looked at four (fissile/fertile) fuel combinations: Pu-239/U-238, Pu- 239/Th-232, U-233/Th-232 and U- 233/U-238 in the core and using either U-238 or Th-232 as blanket in each of those combinations. Lee showed that, on the basis of the 10 GWE PHWR base, launching thorium-based FBRs with advanced metallic fuels in parallel with thorium-less U-Pu breeders or with a little lag would achieve the requisite energy growth.

This new scenario of Kakodkars recalls a similar suggestion by V.S. Arunachalam, former Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, and Rahul Tongia, his research associate at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1998. Criticising the Indian breeder programme in the Indian journal Current Science, they wrote that the three-stage programme was unrealisable because the breeder route was unviable and the insufficient growth of breeder capacity could not meet the growing energy demands. They, however, suggested that instead, India should consider entering into long-term agreements with other countries, with appropriate policy innovations, for importing uranium. This was strongly rebutted by Rodriguez and Lee. The two also wrote, somewhat sarcastically: So their advice is very clear. The appropriate policy innovations should be those that satisfy the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The juncture at which Kakodkar has chosen to make these remarks can only make one wonder whether the compulsions were political or technical. Thorium science and technology developed within the DAE itself would suggest the former. As Rodriguez says, The statement that thorium, which has all along been hailed as the panacea for our energy security and independence, is suddenly discovered to have nuclear properties that do not allow fast growth in power generation capacity, and giving this as an alibi for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is surprising, coming as it does from Kakodkar, who is identified in the public mind with Indias thorium utilisation efforts.