Why Nuclear and need for choosing the best possible option for India?

Public acceptance, opinion and diligence of policy makers and planners as well as political consensus are vital for deciding on issues like Energy mix for India, its nuclear policy and its nuclear contribution to the energy mix. These need to be arrived at on a country specific manner.

Only Nuclear Energy that does not cause any harm to public and environment will be acceptable to public. Safety, security and environmental protection of Nuclear Industry are brought about by multi-organizational, multi- disciplinary and multilayered approach. In addition these need to be taken cafe of at all stages from cradle to grave i.e. from sitting to decommissioning of each nuclear facility.

The debate on whether to have Nuclear Power for India or not is going on for the last thirty years. With twenty Nuclear Power Plants operating and Six under construction, it is too late to ask this question. Constructive criticism and debate should now be on what additional safety and commercial up gradation should be done to further enhance the safety, security, reliability, viability and acceptability of the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), what type of Nuclear Power Plants should be built, what are specific needs of our culture and for our country, which technology, in addition to Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors and Fast Breeders, should India absorb for domestic use and tap huge export potential, what additional steps should be taken to speed up putting Thorium usage into commercial domain and further accelerated Dr. Bhabha’s three stage program, road map to make India an important global nuclear player similar to IT now etc.

For balanced energy mix, energy independence and security, climate change and avoiding green house gases, sustainable development, tapping 25 per cent of World Thorium being in India capable of producing three lakh Mega Watts for three hundred years and the huge potential of India being a major global Nuclear Player in a decade (like IT, auto industries etc now) and many other reasons, Nuclear is inevitable for India.

For India, energy planning should be on four pillars namely, majority being Thermal including Gas with second and third pillars consisting of Renewable including hydro as well as Nuclear and fourthly demand side controls like better energy conservation, efficiency, energy intensity lower T&D losses etc.

Each of these pillars should be developed independently and simultaneously and not instead of any one pillar. In the Nuclear pillar Government has announced acceleration of Dr. Bhabha’s three stage program of indigenous PHWRs and Fast Breeder Reactors with additionality from imported reactors.

This in my view is the right decision. However constructive debate can be encouraged. Some of the technologies planned by India for Import are likely to witness the most widespread usage globally. Nuclear Industry will change but need for nuclear will not change and global Nuclear Renaissance will continue though perhaps at reduced pace.

These plants will be imported by many more countries. Just like India has absorbed PHWR technology (Incidentally India is one of the best countries on technology absorption), indigenized it & is now making cheapest NPPs in the world (which have demonstrated safe, secure, reliable & viable operations for more than 330 reactor years), India could absorb technology of some of the plants planned to be imported,, localize it and become a global exporter of the same in a decade. This Global Export from India could be much higher in volume than IT presently.

The safety performance of the 20 NPPs run by NPCIL has been satisfactory. This has been demonstrated by 3000 annual samples of grass, fish, milk, goat thyroids etc taken around each NPP and analyzed by independent MOEF accredited Environmental Survey Laboratories.