INDIA'S first breeder reactor, called Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR), with a capacity of 13Mwe, was built at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam near Chennai. The FBTR has been operating for the past 21 years, ever since it attained criticality on January 21, 1985. The IGCAR designed and developed the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), which is now under construction at Kalpakkam.
Fast Breeder Reactors are important to India because the programme is capable of yielding about 2,00,000 MWe by 2050. As V.K. Chaturvedi, former Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, put it, the FBRs would be "the bread and butter" of India's electricity generation programme. India's ever-increasing energy requirements cannot be met by its reserves of oil, gas and coal, which are limited. The FBRs are also important from a strategic point of view. Plutonium-239 obtained from the breeders is used to make nuclear bombs. When the spent natural uranium fuel in the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRS) is reprocessed, plutonium-239, 241 and 242 are obtained. These three are then put in the FBRs to remove plutonium-241 and 242.
Why are the reactors called Fast Breeder Reactors? Fast means fast neutrons, or high-energy neutrons. Breeder means a reactor that produces more fuel than it consumes, for generating electricity. "This is not magic," said Dr. Baldev Raj, Director, IGCAR. The reactor physics of FBRs is such that it can convert uranium-238 into plutonium-239. They can be designed in such a way that the breeding is marginal or high. If one kilogram of fuel is put in an FBR and it breeds 1.06 kg of fuel, the breeding is marginal; if it breeds 1.4 kg of fuel then it is high. Dr. Baldev Raj said, "This has a direct reflection on how fast you can multiply the (building of) FBRs." If the breeding is low, it will take 40 years to build another FBR of the same capacity. If it is high, every 10 to 12 years another reactor of the same capacity can be built with the bred fuel. "We want to expand our energy capacity fast. That is why India's emphasis is on high-breeding reactors with metallic fuel," he observed. With oxide fuel, the maximum breeding can be designed for 1.1 but with metallic fuel it can be 1.4.
So then why should India now build the 500 MWe PFBR, which will use oxide fuel to generate electricity? Dr. Baldev Raj said, "Oxide fuel is a proven fuel all over the world. It can be fabricated, reprocessed, plutonium can be separated, and the reactor can run at a high capacity factor with sodium as coolant and with no release of radioactivity."
In metallic fuel, the international experience is limited and technology is different from that of oxide fuel. The Department of Atomic Energy has started work on metallic fuel in all earnestness. Once it obtains maturity in this technology, India can multiply energy fast.
According to the IGCAR Director, most of India's FBRs will start contributing energy in a big way after 2020. "By 2020, we would have gone from research & development to prototype to full maturity in the FBRs. Since the FBR technology is under R & D, and only a prototype reactor is being built now, it should be allowed to develop unhindered. The FBRs' potential is so huge that the spirit of creating breakthroughs has to be respected at this juncture," he said.
This explains India's insistence that FBRs should not come under safeguards now.
T.S. SubramanianCOMMents
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