India’s nuke plants are safe and world-class, says Manmohan

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, August 24: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh declared here today that India’s nuclear facilities are "world-class," and all efforts are being made to maintain the best safety standards for both on-shore and off-shore nuclear power plants.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Parliament’s lower house, during the question hour, he said: "Safety concerns are paramount...You have my assurance that while expanding our nuclear facilities we will not compromise on nuclear safety. This is an on-going process. Our nuclear facilities are world-class."

After the recent tragedy in Fukushima, Japan, where a nuclear power plant was hit during a tsunami, Dr Singh said he had ordered nuclear agencies like the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) to re-look into the issue of safety of India’s nuclear installations.

The Prime Minister’s remarks came in response to a query from Jaswant Singh (BJP) about the steps being taken for ensuring safety of the nuclear power plants in Rajasthan.

The BJP leader said six nuclear plants were already active in Rawatbhatta in Rajasthan and the seventh plant was coming up. He insisted that the Fukushima tragedy was a lesson and consequences of such disasters are phenomenal.

Earlier, in reply to a question, minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) V Narayanasamy said that the prime minister has asked AERB to review the safety measures and has held meetings with the departments concerned and authorities to discuss the issue.

"Four committees have been formed to go into additional security measures after the Fukushima tragedy. AERB has constituted a committee," Narayanasamy said.

India’s operational nuclear plants are located in Uttar Pradesh (Narora, seismic zone IV), Rajasthan (Rawatbhata, seismic zone II), Gujarat (Kakrapar, seismic zone III), Maharashtra (Tarapur, seismic zone III), Karnataka (Kaiga, seismic zone III), and Tamil Nadu (Kalpakkam, seismic zone II). Two new plants are soon to be completed with Russian help in Tamil Nadu’s Kudankulum (seismic zone II).

Meanwhile, the nuclear energy being generated by India’s state-run NPCIL has increased to 24,100 million units (MUs) in the first 11 months of this financial year (1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011) from 18,831 MUs in 2009-2010. It is expected to touch 25,500 MUs by 31 March 2012—-an impressive increase of 35 per cent.

This became possible because India is now able to import uranium from several countries since the signing of the historic Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement in 2008, and an increase in domestic production of uranium.

India has signed bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreements with eight countries so far. They are: USA, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Mongolia, Argentina, and Canada. The country needs a hundred thousand tonnes of uranium to power its growing number of civil nuclear reactors to generate 30,000MW nuclear power by 2020.

NPCIL’s installed capacity from its 19 reactors is 4,680 Mw.

The nine Indian nuclear reactors under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards are: Tarapur 1 and 2, Rajasthan 2-6, and Kakrapar 1 and 2. Thanks to increased uranium imports, the average Plant Load Factor (PLF)—-a measure of average capacity utilisation—-of these nine reactors has increased to 90 per cent for reactors that run on imported uranium as compared to 50 per cent one year ago. Earlier, they were operating much below their installed capacity.

The PLF of the other ten nuclear reactors that are not under IAEA safeguards and run on domestic uranium too has gone up to 60 per cent from 45 per cent one year ago.

Thus, the improvement in uranium supply both from foreign and domestic sources has resulted in 1,500Mw of nuclear power.

Today, India gets barely 3% of its total energy of 4,100 megawatts from nuclear power. Until a year ago, its existing nuclear reactors have been running at less than half their capacity for want of adequate quantities of uranium. The government wants to quadruple total generating capacity to 700 gigawatts by 2032, with nuclear power accounting for 63,000 megawatts, to sustain an annual GDP growth of eight to ten per cent for the next two decades.

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