The uranium shortage plaguing India’s nuclear reactors now has numbers to put the crisis in perspective even as hope that the India-US nuclear deal would mitigate it is fast running out.The financial results of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), the state-run firm which operates the 17 nuclear power reactors, have taken a beating during 2007-08, largely due to the inability of the plants to operate at optimum capacity because of the shortage.The results, finalised at the end of last week, are the worst for the Mumbai-headquartered firm in six years despite the number of reactors increasing from 14 to 17 in the same period. While revenues for 2007-08 fell to 3,334 crore from Rs 3,592 crore in the previous year, profits dipped by over 30 per cent to 1,078 crore.The numbers for the power produced and the average plant load factor (PLF), or the capacity at which reactors operate, during the year are even more stark. The 17 reactors produced about 16,900 million units in the year ending March 2008 with an average PLF of 54 percent, the lowest in years, NPCIL sources told The Indian Express. In comparison, 14 NPCIL reactors produced 19,200 million units in 2001-02 at an average PLF of 85 percent.A NPCIL spokesman said the reasons were “already known to most people”. “This year the plant performance was lower than last year mainly because of the temporary mismatch between the supply and demand of uranium fuel,” he said. “It has resulted in this kind of lower performance and also lower profits.”Other NPCIL officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, said they would like to call the uranium shortage a “temporary mismatch” as efforts were on to increase domestic uranium production, although the lone uranium processing mill in Jaduguda in Jharkhand was facing “teething troubles” and output was not meeting expectations.Besides, 2007-08 also saw an unusually high number of plants being shut down for various technical reasons and included units in Narora, Kaiga, Kalpakkam and Rawatbhata (Rajasthan), affecting power production, they said.Opening up of international uranium supplies, which the India-US nuclear deal would allow, would go a long way in dealing with the shortage but that needed “political will”, they said. Imported reactors would also reduce dependence on domestic units and enlarge the share of nuclear power in the overall power basket, they added.A close analysis of NPCIL’s performance this decade reveals that a dip in its financial fortunes was waiting to happen as India continued to remain a nuclear pariah for the world. On the one hand, NPCIL has regularly commissioned new reactors with seven of them becoming operational since 2000. Efficiencies at many plants also increased during this period, with some recording PLFs of 90 and even close to 100 percent. Fuel supply, obviously could not keep pace.Coupled with the fact that power tariffs have fallen from around Rs 2.70 per unit to Rs 2.28, efficiencies of scale were clearly missing, officials said.“With the number of reactors increasing everything was dependent on fuel situation,” one top NPCIL official said. “The increase in PLFs and the way in which new plants performed put a strain on fuel supply. Now we have to reduce PLFs intentionally and aim to generate maximum power from a given quantity of fuel. Ideally, we should not operate at a PLF higher than 70 percent.”
