Opinion Rubbishing Nuclear Technology
The larger debate on compensation for a nuclear accident was another occasion for some to rubbish Indias nuclear industry.
The larger debate on compensation for a nuclear accident was another occasion for some to rubbish Indias nuclear industry. Growth and technology performance is abysmal; alternative fuels are better and more economic; and safety and pollution is a problem. So it went. The US and others wants to cement their partnerships with India,given its competence and potential markets. But to a certain kind of academic expert in the Anglo Saxon tradition,nothing that Indian technology can do is kosher.
The biases are very apparent. At the meetings of the Indian Econometric Society at Hyderabad,in an inaugural keynote on Energy Futures,I made the point that India had an experimental fast breeder reactor fuelled by thorium of which India has almost inexhaustible reserves – called Kamini working at Kalpakkam and that it was the only one of its kind in the world.
A member of the Planning Commission on energy contradicted me. When I protested since this was fact,he stuck to his ground. A senior official of the PMO who followed him said what I said on Kamini was true but I shouldnt get worked up on that,whatever that meant. At a later meeting in Goa,organized by a leading NGO energy think-tank,I mentioned Kamini again. The Advisor,Energy,in the Planning Commission said this was not true and Kamini was in mothballs. When I went back to the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Director of the IGCAR at Kalpakkam,they dryly informed me that not only was Kamini working but its capacity had been substantially increased from the time I had visited it and as a friend of the thorium technology,the only way of completing the fuel cycle for India,asked me to come again.
Regarding capacity use and profits,when we are able to arrange uranium supplies in a world which was not friendly to India,The Nuclear Power Corporation made handsome profits,as in the second half of the Nineties. Capacity use was better than carbon-fed fuel power plants. These were also the years when Indian scientists refurbished both RAPP at Kota and Tarapore because the original equipment suppliers refused to do so citing their obligations to the nuclear suppliers group. It was a blessing in disguise since our boys did it at very little cost as compared to the costs of refurbishment by the Canadians.
Regarding the costs of the Fast breeder reactors,I stick to my calculations that if we learn as at the same rate as in the current generation German conventional reactors of 220 MW when they were introduced in the eighties,nuclear power will be competitive with coal and gas-based power.
Safety cannot be compromised. I have always urged the nuclear establishment to be as transparent as the space establishment for example and to work with zero tolerance. Critics should be taken on board and convincingly replied to. But we cannot forget that according to the International Atomic Energy Authority,which tracks these things carefully,India has a near-flawless record.
But of course the critics will continue.
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