India's Thorium based nuclear power programme

[Daredevil]

Innovative reactor (Must Read)

Innovative reactor
Must Read Article
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN

The AHWR project enters a crucial phase with the regulatory board completing the pre-licensing appraisal of the reactor's design.

A model of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor at BARC.

THE construction of India's futuristic Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is expected to begin by the end of 2007, according to Ratan K. Sinha, Director, Reactor Design and Development Group (RD&DG), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The first pour of the concrete will take place in a few months. The reactor will be powered by thorium, described as "the fuel of the future". The 300-MWe AHWR will signal the beginning of the third stage of India's three-stage nuclear power programme. It will use the naturally available thorium and the fissile material, uranium-233, as fuel. Boiling water will be the coolant and heavy water, the moderator.

According to Sinha, although the reactor was initially designed to generate 235 MWe, its capacity has been stepped up "through certain additional innovations and experimentation which helped in optimising the margins". The reactor will also produce 6,00,000 litres of desalinated water a day, which will meet the process requirements of demineralised water of the plant and the drinking water requirements of the plant staff. "This has been a gain in terms of the additional capacity we could envisage through innovations," he said.

The AHWR project has entered a crucial phase with the regulatory body, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), completing the pre-licensing appraisal of the reactor's innovative design. There is a mood of expectation at Engineering Hall No.7 where the RD & DG is located. It was in this hall that several important elements of India's ambitious atomic energy programme took shape. Today, this cavernous hall houses huge engineering facilities, massive robots called refuelling machines, computerised and control rooms, among other things. Keeping a direct tab on the development of the AHWR is Anil Kakodkar.

Homi J. Bhabha envisaged a three-stage programme. The first stage is in commercial domain with 15 PHWRs that use natural uranium as fuel for generating electricity. The second stage, which envisages construction of FBRs, has begun with the construction of the 500-MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor pressing ahead at Kalpakkam. The FBRs will use plutonium-uranium mixed oxide as fuel. Four more FBRs with a capacity of 500 MWe will be built before 2020. In the third stage, reactors using thorium as fuel will be built.

Sinha, who is also the Director, Design, Manufacturing and Automation Group at BARC, argued that although the three-stage programme was conceived five decades ago, it was still valid. Only about 10,000 MWe of nuclear power can be generated with the limited quantity of natural uranium available in the country. Even at the current rate of electricity generation in the world, the known and reasonably assured resources of natural uranium in the world will not last more than 60 years. With a boom in population and the resultant increase in the country's energy requirements, "the bottom line is that we have to reach a thorium-utilisation programme fast", Sinha said.

Besides, "we have plenty of thorium available and that too of good quality," he said. India's three-stage programme with its step-by-step approach acquires relevance because thorium cannot be used straightaway in a reactor to generate electricity.

"We cannot use thorium alone as a fuel in a reactor like we do with natural uranium," explained Sinha. Unlike natural uranium, thorium does not have any fissionable isotopes. Unlike thorium, uranium-233 does not occur in nature as a constituent of natural uranium. Thorium has to be used in some other system (reactor) to convert it into uranium-233. The AHWR will use thorium as feed and convert it into fissile uranium-233, which will then undergo fission in situ to generate electricity. The AHWR will also use a small amount of plutonium.

But small quantities of plutonium reprocessed from the PHWRs alone will not be sufficient to support a big electricity-generation programme that will use large quantities of thorium. It is here that the relevance of the FBRs comes in. The breeder reactors will breed not only enough plutonium but can convert thorium into uranium-233.

"So we need the Fast Breeder Reactors... Since we cannot wait for the FBRs to produce uranium-233, we first want to use the plutonium produced from the PHWRs for the demonstration of new technologies relevant for the third stage. That is why we are going in for the AHWR," explained Sinha.

Its design has several innovative features. The AHWR will employ what are called passive safety features. According to a DAE note, these features will "achieve the conflicting goals of safety and economy".

The reactor will have no pumps and there will be no moving parts. "It neither depends on help from instrumentation nor relies on control mechanism," the note says. Passive safety depends on natural phenomena such as gravity, natural convection and stored energy.

The note says: "The AHWR will be one of the first-ever power reactors employing natural circulation, also known as thermo-siphoning, for cooling of the reactor core under all conditions."

Elimination of major equipment such as coolant pumps, driving motors and power equipment will cut down the plant cost. In the case of an accident, water stored in a huge overhead tank inside the reactor building will ensure core cooling for three full days, without any human intervention. Besides, the safety of the reactor will not depend on the operator's actions alone. The reactor will have three shut-down systems, including one to take care of postulated `insider threat' scenario.

Although the AHWR will be built in the near-term, the technologies in the reactor will be relevant for an entire era when thorium will be the fuel for a generation of reactors. Since the innovations will have a bearing on the safety of the reactor.

BARC felt it necessary to have the new safety features reviewed by the AERB under the pre-licensing safety reviews. Moreover, these safety features were not addressed by the existing system of regulatory documents, codes and guides that were prepared for the current generation of reactors.

Sinha said: "The design has many first-of-its-kind features. It has no pumps. The fuel itself is of a new kind. So we felt that our regulatory authorities should have a good look at some of these unique features and help us to know whether more validations are needed and whether we should do more R&D. For the past year and a half, the AERB has been having a good look at the design... Various safety features have been discussed. Deviations from the existing [safety] practices of the current generation of reactors have been examined in great detail."

The safety review committee concluded that the reactor's safety features were adequate for the reactor to go up for a formal licensing process.

The DAE is going ahead with further design validations of this reactor. A large experimental facility has been built in Engineering Hall No.7 so that RD & DG personnel could simulate, on a full scale, conditions that will prevail under various normal operations and postulated events of different kinds. This will help in validating the computer codes, which were originally used in designing such large-scale experiments. Such codes have been validated for small-scale experiments.


http://www.flonnet.com/fl2408/stories/20070504003210600.htm

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India committed to developing thorium reactors

http://www.domain-b.com/organisation/Nuclear_Power/20081203_npcil.html


India committed to developing thorium reactors: NPCIL chief news
03 December 2008





India is committed to the three-stage nuclear power development programme involving the use of pressurised heavy water reactors, the fast breeder reactors and the thoreum reactors, according to Nuclear Power Corporation chairman and managing director S K Jain.

While the recent nuclear power deals have opened up a plethora of opportunities for the Indian industry in the field of nuclear power, much will still remain in the state domain, Jain said in a paper released at the recently concluded annual conference of the Indian Nuclear Society.

He said while the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has identified some PHWRs to be put in civilian domain, some are not. These would feed the subsequent development, the fast reactors, the interconnecting fuel cycle, that means the reprocessing plants and then when you go to the third stage the thorium reactors and the related fuel cycle, he added.

The DAE has reaffirmed its commitment to thorium fuel cycle, proposing to construct a dozen indigenously-developed nuclear power reactors. These units will be supplemented by imported conventional reactors, he said.

''This is still a technology in evolution and because we want to evolve the technology to a level of commercial robustness of global competitive level, we want to be able to do this on our own and so we need to protect this development from external vulnerabilities and so it is outside the civilian domain,'' Jain said.

NPCIL will start site work next year for 12 indigenously-developed reactors, including eight pressurised heavy water reactors of 700 MWe each, three 500 MWe fast breeder reactors (FBRs) and one 300 MWe advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR), as part of the 11th plan (2007-12) programme, Jain said.

This will take forward India's long-standing commitment to the thorium fuel cycle, notwithstanding the opening up of trade in uranium and conventional nuclear technology, he said.

The eight PHWRs were supposed to have been in the last five year plan, but constraints on uranium mining in India delayed them and set back the overall schedule, Jain said.

"India is now focusing on capacity addition through indigenisation" with progressively higher local content for imported designs, up to 80 per cent, he said.

NPCIL, Jain said, plans to construct 25-30 light water reactors of at least 1000 MWe by 2030, and is currently identifying coastal sites for the first of these, both 1000 and 1650 MWe types.

Long term, the AEC envisages its fast reactor programme being 30 to 40 times bigger than the present PHWR programme, which has some 4.4 GWe operating or under construction and 5.6 GWe planned. This 40 GWe of imported LWR multiplied to 400 GWe via FBR synergy would complement 200-250 GWe based on the indigenous programme of PHWR-FBR-AHWR. Thus, AEC expects developing reactors of about 500 to 600 GWe over the next 50 years.

''This programme which is not a part of the civilian domain and that programme is not going to be small. That programme is going to be large because the ultimate energy independence for the country would come about through the three stage nuclear power programme. This programme has to be autonomous since there is parallel elsewhere and there is no other solution either,'' he said.

We are talking about four more FBRs to follow immediately after PFBR. We are talking about a fast breeder programme which may well be 30-40 times larger than PHWR programme and a good part of that we would have to keep outside the civil domain till we are sure about a synchronised working of the reprocessing plant and the reactor plant with commercial efficiency and assurance, he added.

 

[Daredevil]

Third stage of Nuclear Power program - by Dept. Atomic Energy

Third stage of Nuclear Power program - by Dept. Atomic Energy

http://www.dae.gov.in/publ/3rdstage.pdf

Read everything.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India will decide size of nuke deterrent - The Financial Express

India will decide size of nuke deterrent


New Delhi, March 3: The size of India’s minimum nuclear deterrent will remain its prerogative under the landmark deal reached with the US. Hardboiled negotiations on the nuclear civilian agreement notwithstanding, New Delhi refused to engage with the US on the question of nuclear stockpile, making it clear that India alone would determine what constituted the minimum deterrent.

This means that there can neither be any cap on the number of nuclear weapons that India can hold nor any quantification of the minimum deterrent. It also means that India is a de facto, if not de jure, nuclear power. Under the deal clinched by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, India retains the right to classify its future reactors either as civilian or military.

The US has agreed to provide uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel to India’s civilian reactors that will be placed under international safeguards.

Fourteen of India’s 22 nuclear reactors will be open to international inspection which will, however, not cover the fast breeder reactors (FBR) programme as insisted by the the country’s nuclear establishment. Similarly, there will be no limits on the acquisition of additional facilities in civilian or military sector.

The tough negotiations between New Delhi and Washington were marked by a series of deadlocks and the deal was clinched only after the intervention by Mr Bush and Dr Singh.

The deal also contains unique elements including an assurance from a consortium of countries such as France, Russia and Britain, besides the US, on ensuring continuity of fuel supplies. India also retains its sovereign right to take remedial measures if disruption of fuel supplies occurs.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India's tritium program

India's tritium route to the hydrogen bomb

(informative article though highly biased)

India's tritium route to the hydrogen bomb

By Zafar Bangash

Of the five explosions carried out on May 11 and 13, India said one was a hydorgen bomb (thermonuclear explosion). Evidence had emerged months prior to the explosions that India had indeed embarked on the fusion route and made some progress. In an article in the Janes Intelligence Review in January 1998, T S Gopi Rethinaraj had discussed 'the importance of tritium as a strategic material in the creation of thermonuclear weaponary.' He then drew certain inferences about the manner in which Indian scientists had gone about extracting highly enriched tritium.

Rethinaraj wrote that scientists at India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) managed to extract highly enriched tritium from heavy water used in power reactors. The technology has two advantages: it assumes heavy water as the moderator in power reactors instead of light water used in most other reactors; and it has a short gestation period. The Indian tritium facility takes less than two years for completion and at a fraction of the estimated US$7 billion needed to produce the isotope at current costs using the accelerator process, as was done in the US.

Rethinaraj traced Indian plans to a paper written by two BARC scientists which appeared in a book titled, Heavy Water - Properties, Production and Analysis. Authored by Sharad M Dave and Himangshu K Sadhukhan, together with a Mexican scientist, Octavio A Novaro, the paper says on p. 461 of the book:

'The Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, India, also having developed a wetproof LPCE, catalyst for liquid phase catalytic exchange [the process that yields highly enriched tritium from heavy water], has employed it for detritiation. A pilot plant based on LPCE cryogenic distillation with about 90 percent tritium removal from heavy water has been commissioned and is under experimental evaluation. Reportedly, this facility seems to be the only operating LPCE-based detritiation facility in the world. A commercial detritiation plant based on this process is being set up at one of their nuclear power stations.' The BARC pilot plant was set up in 1992.

The author notes that Indian scientists insist on referring to this process as 'detritiation' instead of admitting to producing tritium because it avoids the charge of stockpiling a strategic raw material. Carried out under the cloak of lowering tritium content in heavy water circulating around the moderator circuit, the project allegedly was designed to prevent the many health hazards associated with leakage of tritium from reactors. Though commendable, the scientists' purpose was not entirely altruistic. Millions of Indians face equally threatening health hazards in other fields without anyone batting an eyelid for their well-being. Millions more die each year from preventable diseases and starvation.

A commercial version of the 'detritiation' plant at Kalpakkam near Madras is already operational. With eight operating Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) at Kalpakkam, Rawatbhatta, Narora and Kakrapar plus more to come in future, India will have enormous supply of tritium. According to technical estimates, 2400 curies of tritium could be produced for every MW of electricity produced in heavy water reactors.

Unlike fission (nuclear) bombs, fusion (thermonuclear) bombs have no critical size. Bombs of various intensities could be fabricated using tritium. Fusion bombs require an ambient temperature of 100 million degrees Celcius to overcome the Coulomb Repulsion Barrier (CRB) which prevents lighter atoms from coming together - meaning that fission bombs are a prerequisite for detonating fusion bombs. India first exploded a fission (nuclear) bomb on May 18, 1974 in the deserts of Pokhran in northwest India, the site of the latest explosions as well.

Though tritium is present naturally in the environment, its amount is too small for practical recovery. For strategic purposes it has to be produced artificially. There are two ways to do this, both involving nuclear reactions with neutrons. In the first method, neutrons are made to strike a target of lithium or aluminum metal, which gives tritium and other by-products; the second method involves a neutron reaction with helium-3 which gives tritium and hydrogen as by-products.

Tritium finds peripheral use in medical diagnostics, but it is mainly used in the manufacture of hydrogen bombs and to boost the yield of both fission and thermonuclear weapons.

One of the ironic twists to the Indian nuclear and weaponization programmes is that its top scientist is a Muslim - Avul Pakir Jainulabedeen Abdul Kalam. At a press conference in Delhi after the explosions, Abdul Kalam lamented the fact that India had never invaded any country in 2500 years but 'others have come here, so many others.' Among those whose arrival he lamented were Muslims. Had they not come, Abdul Kalam would probably still be a Hindu.

His bomb's most likely victims will be Muslims!

 

[LETHALFORCE]

cross posted

Tritium from Power Plants gives India an H-bomb capability

TRITIUM BREAKTHROUGH BRINGS INDIA CLOSER TO AN H-BOMB ARSENAL

Source: Janes Intelligence Review, January 1998

Nestled between the nuclear capabilities of China and the nuclear aspirations of Pakistan, India would seem to be in an unenviable strategic position. As T. S. Gopi Rethinaraj reports, however, a breakthrough by Indian scientists in the economical production of tritium may have tipped the strategic scales in New Delhi's Favour.


The importance of tritium as a strategic material in the creation of thermonuclear weaponry, given the insignificance of its other uses, cannot be overstressed. Its importance becomes even more apparent when one considers the major leap from the ability to manufacture fission weaponry to the capacity to build a thermonuclear weapon like a hydrogen bomb. It is within this context that the pioneering work in extracting highly enriched tritium conducted by scientists at India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) assumes significance. In this area at least, Indian scientists have reason to cock a snook at the USA.

While the USA had stopped producing tritium by about 1988 due to safety reasons and ageing facilities, the Indian breakthrough underscores the fact that tritium can now be produced at a fraction of the estimated US$ 7 billion needed to produce the isotope at current costs using the accelerator process, as was done in the USA. The Indian scientists have managed to extract highly enriched tritium from heavy water used in power reactors.

The advantage of the technology developed by BARC is that it assumes heavy water as the moderator in power reactors when most of those in the West (including Russia) -- with the exception of Canada -- use light water. The other advantage is a short gestation period; the Indian tritium facility takes less than two years for completion. This is not to say that India has already secretly developed the H-Bomb, but the very fact that tritium, according to all available indications, is now being stockpiled puts India in a comfortable position in terms of nuclear deterrence, given the nuclear ambitions of Pakistan and the already-nuclear China.

On the trail of Indian Tritium

It was an innocuous paragraph at the end of a recently published paper on detritiation that let the cat out of the bag. The paper appeared in a book entitled Heavy Water- Properties, Production and Analysis, which was authored by two BARC scientists, Sharad M. Dave and Himangshu K. Sadhukhan, with a Mexican scientist, Octavio A. Novaro. On p. 461 of the work, it says the following:

The Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, India, also having developed a wetproof catalyst for LPCE liquid phase catalytic exchange, has employed it for detritiation. A pilot plant based on LPCE cryogenic distillation with about 90 per cent tritium removal from heavy water has been commissioned and is under experimental evaluation. Reportedly, this facility seems to be the only operating LPCE-based detritiation facility in the world. A commercial detritiation plant based on this process is being set up at one of their nuclear power stations.

According to BARC scientists, the new technology is aimed at lowering the tritium content in heavy water circulating around the moderator circuit. They argue that the project is being executed to prevent the many health hazards associated with the leakage of tritium from reactors. When asked what is exactly being done to the highly radioactive tritium so recovered, the scientists refuse to talk - even under conditions of anonymity. When pressed, some ventured to comment that a scenario in which the recovered tritium is being stockpiled for strategic purposes cannot be ruled out.

Curiously, there seems to exist some confusion regarding how classified the project is, but scientists at the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC), the government controlled organization that constructs and runs India's commercial power reactors, remain tight-lipped on the entire issue. Both A Sanatkumar and C Surendar, group directors at NPC, said the same thing: "We are unable to understand what you are talking about. There is no such project at Kalpakkam".

When the author contacted the managing director's officers said: "Please don't ask anything about the detritiation plant. We have been asked not to talk about it". However, there was no categorical denial of such a project being at the implementation stage.

Incidentally, some time ago, the NPC management announced that one of the power reactors at Kalpakkam near Madras in southern India would be opened to research activities. According to highly placed sources, the commercial version of the pilot plant is taking shape at Kalpakkam. Recently, labour trouble hit the plant with the workers striking for nearly a month because of alleged high levels of radioactivity. Employees working in the station are still puzzled as to why their dosimeter readings have increased in recent times.

Dr. Rajagopalan Chidambaram, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), evaded probing questions relating to the project. When asked persistently, he admitted: "Yes, there is a pilot plant for detritiation of heavy water in BARC" Asked whether the project is meant for stockpiling tritium, he replied: "No Comment". Also refusing to comment when asked about the project was former AEC chief P. K. lyengar, one of the pioneers of India's 1974 fission bomb experiment.

With eight operating Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) at Kalpakkam, Rawatbhatta, Narora and Kakrapar plus more to come in future, India has struck a gold mine in tritium production, as the BARC pilot plant can be implemented at all of these power stations. Scientists say that the size of the commercial plant would be just two or three times the size of the pilot plant. According to technical estimates, 2400 curies of tritium could be produced for every MW of electricity produced in heavy water reactors.

Since, unlike fission bombs, fusion bombs have no critical size, bombs of various intensities could be fabricated using tritium. Fusion bombs require an ambient temperature of 100 million oC to overcome the Coulomb Repulsion Barrier (CRB) which prevents lighter atoms from coming together -- meaning that fission bombs are a prerequisite for detonating fusion bombs.

India first demonstrated its capability to explode fission bombs in 1974 in the deserts of Pokhran in Northwest India. Under the circumstances, the inference is inescapable: that the breakthrough in BARC puts India on the road of self-sufficiency in terms of strategic materials for defence purposes. It is another matter that Indian scientists are loath to call it 'production' of tritium, but instead choose to talk of 'detritiation'.

"Look, our intention is not to produce tritium," said a senior scientist directly involved with the pilot detritiation plant at BARC. "Our aim is to lower the tritium content in the heavy water, which gets contaminated after fission and neutron capture by deuterium atoms. If tritium comes out as a by-product, what can we do about it?" Asked what was to be done with the tritium so obtained, the scientist just smiled.

Tritium

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of 12.3 years, meaning that 5.5 per cent of tritium will decay into helium-3 every year. Deuterium, another isotope of hydrogen, along with the elementary gas itself, is stable and non-radioactive. Tritium decays and is converted into a non-radioactive form of helium.

Although tritium is present naturally in the environment, this amount is too small for practical recovery. Therefore, tritium required for strategic purposes has to be produced artificially, and there are two ways to do this, both involving nuclear reactions with neutrons: in the first method, neutrons are made to strike a target of lithium or aluminum metal, which gives tritium and other by-products; the second method involves a neutron reaction with helium-3 which gives tritium and hydrogen as by-products.

The first method is widely used and was employed for several years at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in the USA before it was shut down in 1988. The production of tritium requires the generation of energetic neutrons, the source of which can be either power reactors or accelerators. In reactors, neutrons are produced as a result of fission, while in accelerators they occur as a result of spallation, where protons strike a metallic target and 'kick off' neutrons from the metal.

Tritium finds peripheral use in medical diagnostics, but it is mainly used in the construction of hydrogen bombs and to boost the yield of both fission and thermonuclear weapons. Contained in removable and refillable reservoirs in nuclear arsenals, it boosts the efficiency of the nuclear materials. Although no official data is available on inventory amounts of tritium, each thermonuclear warhead is said to contain 4 g of the isotope. However, neutron bombs designed to release more radiation will require 10-30 g of tritium, according to a status report prepared by the US Department of Energy's Science Policy Research Division and an assessment made by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) in Maryland, USA.

Authoritative US reports put the USA's total tritium production since 1955 at 225 kg. After decay, it is now left with 75 kg of tritium, which is sufficient to take the country through the first quarter of the next millennium.

Even in low levels, tritium has been linked to developmental problems, reproductive problems, genetic and neurological abnormalities and other health problems. Additionally, there is evidence of adverse health effects on populations living near tritium facilities. Tritium contamination has been reported at the Savannah River site in ground water soil from operational releases and accidents. No figures are available relating to the Indian stockpile of tritium, however. The pilot plant at BARC was set up, according to well-placed sources in the department, in 1992.

India's Breakthrough

India has now acquired a unique place in the annals of tritium production. Lacking the 'big money' to go in for capital-intensive methods, India's economic position - combined with the hostile attitude it faced from the West following the country's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Fissile Material cut-off Treaty - has taught Indian scientists to rely on economically viable indigenous methods. They therefore decided to extract tritium from moderator heavy water in power reactors, which is plentiful. This year India exported 100 tons of heavy water to South Korea.

India's three-stage nuclear planning has come in handy for the project:

* in the first stage Indian power reactors use natural uranium;

* the second stage employs fast breeder reactors that will use plutonium from the first stage;

* finally, the third phase aims at using thorium, since India has abundant thorium reserves in the beach sands of Kerala and Orrisa.

The first stage uses reactors moderated by heavy water, and it is in these reactors that Indian scientists have struck a gold mine in tritium production.

The tritium build-up in these reactors increases with the number of years of plant operation. The pilot plant is called the detritiation plant because the process involves lowering tritium levels in heavy water, but the fact remains that the by-product is highly enriched tritium. The reason why BARC developed new technology was to reduce radioactive levels by lowering the tritium content in heavy water. The department set up a pilot plant to achieve this and struck pay dirt: enriched tritium at low cost which needed only additional detritiation plants to be added to the country's already-available nuclear infrastructure.

The BARC technology is all the more laudable in that it is 100 per cent indigenous and the first of its kind anywhere in the world, according to experts preferring to remain anonymous. Scientists at BARC's Chemical Engineering Group recently developed a wet-proof catalyst for LPCE (the process that yields highly enriched tritium from heavy water), but they refrained from talking about the defence implications of the project. They have called the facility a detritiation plant to avoid charges of stockpiling a strategic raw material crucial in the production of thermonuclear weapons.

The process

The presence of tritium in heavy water has been a major concern of reactor engineers in India for a long time. During the operation of a PHWR, tritium is produced as a result of fission and irradiation of reactor components with neutrons. This tritium remains in the fuel and later passes into the effluents in the fuel reprocessing plants. The BARC pilot plant produces tritium using moderator heavy water, where tritium is produced due to the capture of neutrons by deuterium atoms in the water. This reaction, as reported in scientific literature, is known to yield maximum tritium.

Although any method employed in the production and enrichment of isotopes can also be used in the case of tritium, the BARC scientists' choice of process was governed by safe handling and economic reasons. BARC scientists first worked with the water distillation and electrolytic method, which proved to be risky and inefficient. This produces tritium in its most hazardous form: liquid. They instead settled for the method of chemical exchange followed by cryogenic distillation. In this method the tritium is in a liquid phase only for a short time during the chemical exchange process, with the final product collected in gaseous form and kept in double containment to ensure safety. This method yields 90 per cent enriched tritium. It is worth noting that weapons also use tritium in its gaseous phase.

The Catalyst

The most important hurdle in producing tritium by this method is finding a suitable catalyst for the process because heavy water from the moderator and pure deuterium gas have to pass through the column containing the catalyst. Besides, the exchange reactions of deuterium between hydrogen and water require a slow and suitable catalyst, taking into account the slow nature of these reactions. Nickel coated by chromium, platinum or other noble metals supported on silica or activated charcoal have been found effective for vapour phase exchange reactions, but BARC's exchange reactions occur in the liquid phase and require some other species of catalyst. All the catalysts mentioned above lose their activity in contact with liquid water and prevent hydrogen from reaching them.

Indian scientists have overcome this problem by imparting hydrophobicity to the catalysts. Since water in the liquid form wets and contaminates the catalyst, the suitable solution was a wet proof catalyst, which is what the BARC scientists opted for. A number of technical snags associated with the proper choice of catalyst have been eliminated, and experiments conducted to check the performance of the catalyst have shown positive results. Although the department undertook this work in the early 1970s, it was only recently that they perfected the technology.

Design

The pilot plant's equipment is indigenously designed. Scientists, have taken into consideration various aspects of handling inflammable gases like hydrogen, deuterium and the radioactive tritium. Pipelines, fitting-valves and other equipment are made of special steel, all suitable for cryogenic conditions. The entire cryogenic part of the plants is housed inside a vacuum-insulated enclosure, which provides thermal insulation for its components. The column sections have been insulated with mylar to prevent any cold leak.

Being a multi-component distillation system, it is not simple to operate. The difficulties encountered include the decay heat of tritium (associated with the decay of tritium into helium-3), which would evaporate all the liquid. The pressure drop is minimized, however, and temperature variations are kept to a minimum.

Scientists from the group say the philosophy of the plant's operation is based on fail-safe conditions. The operation of the entire distillation column takes place at atmospheric pressure and an ambulant temperature of -268 oC . The whole plant has two sections: a low tritium activity section and a high tritium activity section (see graphic). The scientists involved say that nearly 240 stages are involved in the tritium enrichment process, and so it has to be carried out in three-stage cascade distillation units.

The deuterium-tritium gas which emerges from the second stage is 100 per cent enriched. After this the tritium is separated using an equilibrator, with the condensed product serving as the reflux for the third stage. The highly concentrated tritium is drawn off periodically from the bottom of the cryogenic column and immobilized in a matrix of metal tritride, which would be compact, safe and stable at normal temperature. The gas can be recovered at any time by heating the metal tritride. At this stage the pure tritium is ready for stockpiling.

 

[p2prada]

LF: I guess we had discussed about this in IDF. The residue(left over junk) from PHWRs was tritium. Free hydro bombs.

"Left over junk" from FBRs is Plutonium and Uranium.

 

[p2prada]

"Look, our intention is not to produce tritium," said a senior scientist directly involved with the pilot detritiation plant at BARC. "Our aim is to lower the tritium content in the heavy water, which gets contaminated after fission and neutron capture by deuterium atoms. If tritium comes out as a by-product, what can we do about it?" Asked what was to be done with the tritium so obtained, the scientist just smiled.

There

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Heavy water - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

India

India is the world's second largest producer of heavy water through its Heavy Water Board.

 

[SATISH]

Well there was a talk of a failed fusion bomb experiment during the Pokhran tests. If anyone has the article about it kindly post it. The fourth and final one was supposed to be a fusion bomb technology.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India's fast breeder reactor to run by 2010
India's fast breeder reactor to run by 2010

April 27, 2007 15:16 IST

India's indigenous prototype Fast Breeder Reactor that can produce 500 megawatts of power at rates cheaper than existing atomic reactors will begin functioning by 2010.

The PFBR, which will remain outside the purview of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors under the proposed civilian nuclear deal with the US, is being built at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu and the construction work is progressing as per schedule.

"Work on the PFBR is on schedule and we expect it to be completed by 2010," Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar told reporters in Delhi on Thursday evening.

The PFBR will produce electricity through the recycling of plutonium and depleted uranium recovered from spent fuel of pressurised heavy water reactors.

The technology will allow the nuclear power generation capacity to grow to around 350,000-mw, independent of any additional uranium availability.

The right to reprocessing of the spent fuel from future reactors is one of the contentious issues in the negotiations on the 123 Agreement to operationalise the civilian nuclear deal with the US.

"The unique feature of this reactor is that it produces more fuel than it consumes, thus reducing power generation costs," Kakodkar said.

The reactor is expected to supply electricity to the state grid at Rs. 3.22 a kilowatt hour or 'unit'.

Advanced reactors can produce electricity at Rs 2 a kwhr.

India plans to establish four more nuclear fast breeder reactors to cater to the increasing energy needs.

The prototype is being built with an investment of Rs 3,500 crore approximately. Of the other four reactors in the pipeline, two would be built at Kalpakkam and two elsewhere.

The future reactors are expected to deliver electricity at even lesser cost. Construction work on the first two of the future FBRs will begin in 2011 and will be completed in 2017.

Kakodkar said the pre-licensing review of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor has been completed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and preparation of the project report was being done.

The construction on the indigenously developed AHWR is expected to begin this year.

A brain child of Kakodkar, the thorium-based AHWR will be a technology demonstrator reactor and take about five to six years to complete.

The reactor, which will cost between Rs 5 and 6 crore per mega watt, has a life span of 100 years and has several innovative safety measures.

India has a four-phased roadmap for utilisation of thorium resources which includes development of AHWRs, Compact High Temperature Reactor and an accelarator driven fast breeder reactors.

India has thorium reserves to the tune of 2.25 lakh tonnes, which have an electricity potential of 1.55 lakh Giga Watt Year.

 

[Dark Sorrow]

Are we investing in molten salt reactor? It is going to be the next big thing.

The advantages cited by Weinberg and his associates at Oak Ridge National Laboratory include:
It's safe to operate and maintain: Molten fluoride salts are mechanically and chemically stable at sea-level pressures at intense heats and radioactivity. Fluoride combines ionically with almost any transmutation product, keeping it out of circulation. Even radioactive noble gases — notably xenon-135, an important nuclear poison — come out in a predictable, containable place, where the fuel is coolest and most dispersed, the pump bowl. Even given an accident, dispersion into a biome is unlikely. The salts do not burn in air or water, and the fluoride salts of the actinides and radioactive fission products are generally not soluble in water.
There's no high pressure steam in the core, just low-pressure molten salt. This means that the MSR's core cannot have a steam explosion, and does not need the most expensive item in a light water reactor, a high-pressure steam vessel for the core. Instead, there is a vat and low-pressure pipes (for molten salt) constructed of thick sheet metal. The metal is an exotic nickel alloy that resists heat and corrosion, Hastelloy-N, but there is much less of it, and the thin metal is less expensive to form and weld.
The thorium breeder reactor uses low-energy thermal neutrons, similarly to light water reactors. It is therefore much safer than the touchy fast-neutron breeder reactors that the uranium-to-plutonium fuel cycle requires. The thorium fuel cycle therefore combines safe reactors, a long-term source of abundant fuel, and no need for expensive fuel-enrichment facilities.
The molten-salt-fueled reactor operates much hotter than LWR reactors, from 650 °C in the tested MSRE (See above) and related designs, to as hot as 950 °C in untested designs. So, very efficient Brayton cycle (gas turbine) generators are possible. The MSRE already demonstrated operation at 650C, making the MSR the most advanced of the "generation IV reactors." The efficiency from high temperatures reduces fuel use, waste emission and the cost of auxiliary equipment (major capital expenses) by 50% or more.
MSRs work in small sizes, as well as large, so a utility could easily build several small reactors (say 100 MWe) from income, reducing interest expense and business risks.
Molten salt fuel reactors are not experimental. Several have been constructed and operated at 650 °C temperatures for extended times, with simple, practical validated designs. There's no need for new science at all, and very little risk in engineering new, larger or modular designs.
The reactor, like all nuclear plants, has little effect on biomes. In particular, it uses only small amounts of land, relatively small amounts of construction, and the waste is separated from the biome, unlike both fossil and renewable energy projects.


In-line reprocessing advantages
A molten salt reactor's fuel can be continuously reprocessed with a small adjacent chemical plant. Weinberg's groups at Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that a very small reprocessing facility can service a large 1 GW power plant: All the salt has to be reprocessed, but only every ten days. The reactor's total inventory of expensive, poisonous radioactives is therefore much less than in a conventional light-water-reactor's fuel cycle, which have to store spent fuel rod assemblies. Also, everything except fuel and waste stays inside the plant. The reprocessing cycle is:
A sparge of fluorine to remove U233 fuel from the salt. This has to be done before the next step.
A 4-meter-tall molten bismuth column separates protactinium from the fuel salt.
A small storage facility to let the protactinium from the bismuth column decay to U233. With a half-life of 27 days, ten months of storage assures that 99.9% decays to U233 fuel.
A small vapor-phase fluoride-salt distillation system distills the salts. Each salt has a distinct temperature of vaporization. The light carrier salts evaporate at low temperatures, and form the bulk of the salt. The thorium salts must be separated from the fission wastes at higher temperatures. The amounts involved are about 800 kg of waste per year per GW generated, so the equipment is very small. Salts of long-lived transuranic metals go back into the reactor as fuel.

With salt distillation, an MSFR can burn plutonium, or even fluorinated nuclear waste from light water reactors.


Thorium cycle advantages
With fuel reprocessing, the Thorium fuel cycle, so impractical in other types of reactors, produces 0.1%[citation needed] of the long-term high-level radioactive waste of a light-water reactor without reprocessing (all modern reactors in the U.S.).


Technological advantages
Control of the salt's corrosivity is easy. The uranium buffers the salt, forming more UF4 from UF3 as more fluorine is present. UF3 can be regenerated by adding small amounts of metallic beryllium to absorb F. In the MSRE, a beryllium rod was inserted into the salt until the UF3 was the correct concentration.
Extensive validation (fuel rod design validation normally takes years and prevents effective deployment of new nuclear technologies) is not needed. The fuel is molten, chemical reprocessing eliminates reaction products, and there are tested fuel mixtures, notably FLi7BeU.
Molten-fuel reactors can be made inherently safe: Tested fuel-salt mixtures have negative reactivity coefficients, so that they decrease power generation as they get too hot. Most fuel-salt reactor vessels also have a freeze plug at the bottom that has to be actively cooled. If the cooling fails, the fuel drains to a subcritical storage facility.
Continuous reprocessing simplifies numerous reactor design and operating issues. For example, the poisoning effects from xenon-135 are not present. Neutron poisoning from fission products is continuously mitigated. Transuranics, the frighteningly long-lived "wastes" of light water reactors, are burned as fuel.
A fuel-salt reactor is mechanically and neutronically simpler than light-water reactors. There are only two items in the core: fuel salts and moderators. This reduces concerns with moderating interactions with positive void coefficients as water boils, chemical interactions, etc. (In fact since water is a moderator, boiling produces a stabilizing negative void coefficient in a thermal reactor)
Coolant and piping need never enter the high-neutron-flux zone, because the fuel is used to cool the core. The fuel is cooled in low-neutron-flux heat-exchangers outside the core. This reduces worries about neutron effects on pipes, testing, development issues, etc.
The salt distillation process means that chemical separation and recycling of fission products, say for nuclear batteries, is actually cheap. Xenon and other valuable transmuted noble gases separate out of the molten fuel in the pump-bowl. Any transuranics go right back into the fuel for burn-up.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India's tritium program 2

The Hindu : India has hydrogen bomb: Kalam

India has hydrogen bomb: Kalam


NEW DELHI, NOV. 11. India possesses a hydrogen bomb and its nuclear weapons are ``absolutely safe'', noted scientist, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who demits office tomorrow as Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government, said today.

``Scientists and technicians who conducted the Pokhran II tests in 1999 are all satisfied with the results and we have a thermo- nuclear device,'' Dr. Kalam said here.

Asked about the safety of nuclear assets, 70-year-old Dr. Kalam, who holds a Cabinet rank, said ``safety standards are in-built in our country. We possibly have much better safety standards than many others''.

On whether India should develop missiles with strike ranges longer than `Agni-II', which can reach a target at a distance of over 2,200 km, he said ``it depends on what kind of enemy the country faces and its strategy for the next 10 or more years. India is capable of manufacturing (a longer range missile) if the necessity arises''.

Dr. Kalam, who will be succeeded in the key post by Dr. R. Chidambaram, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said he was quitting his job as he wanted to work with younger people and high school students to create a scientific culture and push India to a developed-nation status.

``Change, I believe, is very important in a man's life. Change allows a person to contribute very effectively,'' Dr. Kalam, who worked in key defence and space centres for the last 43 years, said

 

[Daredevil]

Looking beyond the nuclear deal

India needs to quickly hand over to the IAEA a separation plan of its nuclear facilities and enact enabling legislation if it is to deal with private nuclear suppliers and achieve a real leap in nuclear power generation, says G. PARTHASARATHY.

— A. Shaikmohideen

There are indications that nuclear power generation can reach 20,000 MW by 2020.
No international issue in India’s post-Independence history evoked as much domestic and international controversy as the Indo-US Nuclear Deal concluded on July 18, 2005 between the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the then US President, Mr George Bush. Paradoxically, the heated debates generated in Parliament worked to India’s advantage, as New Delhi was able to secure assurances from Washington on such issues as guarantees of uninterrupted fuel supplies and reprocessing of spent fuel, which would have otherwise not been forthcoming.

Most analysts agree that while the Opposition BJP made valid points and expressed genuine concerns on the impact of the agreement on India’s strategic nuclear programme and its ability to conduct nuclear weapons tests in future, the arguments put forward by the Communist parties, alleging that the agreement would undermine the pursuit of an “independent” foreign policy, then and even now, remain specious.

The opposition of the Left parties, which led to their withdrawal of support for the UPA Government, strengthened the perception that their actions only complemented the opposition being mounted internationally by China, against the termination of international nuclear sanctions on India.

The UPA Government, in turn, failed to cogently explain to people in India that what was being undertaken through the Indo-US Nuclear Deal was an effort supported strongly by the Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, and the then French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, to end global nuclear sanctions on India. Even today, few people realise that with global demand for oil set to outstrip supplies, oil prices in the long term are likely to rise significantly and become increasingly unaffordable.

Non-traditional options
Moreover, with rising concerns about global warming and environmental pollution, India has to look for non-traditional and non-hydrocarbon options to meet its energy needs.

With India unable to import uranium ore because of global nuclear sanctions, existing nuclear power plants with a capacity of 4,100 MW are generating barely 1,500-1,600 MW.

Following the nuclear deal, imports of uranium from sources ranging from France and Russia to Kazakhstan and Australia are now possible. There are now indications that nuclear power generation can reach 20,000 MW by 2020.

Moreover, Indian industry has now reached a stage of sophistication that would enable us to minimise costs by extensive indigenisation, even for power plants built with foreign collaboration.

Energy security for the country can be enhanced significantly only by stepping up indigenous energy production. This process will be accelerated if we tap the country’s virtually unlimited reserves of thorium. But, utilising thorium reserves in significant quantities is a complex and time-consuming process that could span two decades.

This process would involve, first running nuclear reactors based on imported uranium ore and then using the reprocessed spent fuel for plutonium-based fast breeder reactors, the first of which is to become operational shortly.

With Indian scientists, according to Dr Anil Kakodkar, having “mastered” the use of thorium-based fast breeder technology, the third stage will be the serial production of thorium-based indigenous fast-breeder reactors.

Thorium advantage

The crucial advantage of this route is that recycled fuel can produce 60-90 times the energy derived from current processes of fuelling reactors exclusively with uranium ore. It is important to remember that if we maintain present rates of economic growth, we will have to import three times the total electrical energy we produce today, by the year 2050, unless we devise and adopt alternative energy options. The real leap in nuclear power generation will come about once we are able to move to indigenous thorium-based fast-breeder reactors.

Contrary to the fears expressed when the nuclear deal was signed, India is not moving in any great hurry to conclude agreements with the US, till its concerns on guarantees of fuel supplies and reprocessing of spent fuel are credibly addressed. What has happened, instead, is that Russia has taken the lead, with agreements to build two more rectors of 1,000 MW each in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, with arrangements in place to build eight such reactors in the coming years. Moreover, sites have been identified in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, which can each accommodate nuclear power reactors producing around 12,000 MW of electrical power.

But India needs to act quickly on issues such as formally handing over a separation plan of its nuclear facilities to the IAEA and enacting legislation consistent with the provisions of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, if it is to co-operate on nuclear power generation with such countries as France, Canada and the US, where nuclear power companies, unlike in Russia, are privately owned.

While there were initial doubts on whether the Obama Administration would abide by the letter and spirit of the “123 Agreement” concluded on July 22, 2008, the US Secretary of State, Ms Hillary Clinton, has clarified; “The Civil Nuclear Agreement helped us get over our defining disagreement, and I believe it can and should also serve as the foundation of a productive partnership on non-proliferation.”

There are indications that the Obama Administration is working to address the issue of reprocessing of spent fuel, which has to be unambiguously clarified, before India can sign any agreement with American companies, which are now largely Japanese-owned and operate out of countries ranging from the UK to South Korea.

Discussion point
Despite this, it has to be admitted that those who believed that the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal would clear the way for India to access dual-use high-tech items from the US have yet to be proven right. There is nothing to suggest that there has been any easing of such restrictions since the Obama Administration assumed office. This has to be an item of high priority for discussions when Ms Clinton visits India.

Speaking in Washington on March 23, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy, Mr Shyam Saran, made it clear that while India remained committed to its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, there were serious reservations about the CTBT, because the Treaty was not “explicitly linked to nuclear disarmament” and the manner in which it was adopted was obviously meant to circumscribe India’s nuclear options.

Moreover, he added that while “we cannot be part of a discriminatory regime where only certain states are allowed to possess reprocessing or enrichment facilities”, we would be willing to work with the US to curb nuclear proliferation. Another crucial issue Mr Saran alluded to was India’s readiness to accede to a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, provided it was a “multilateral, universally applicable and effectively verifiable” treaty.

India has to insist on the treaty being non-discriminatory and internationally verifiable, given China’s readiness to transfer fissile material and nuclear weapons know-how to Pakistan.

Finally, India could take the moral high ground internationally by calling for the outlawing of the use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons and for de-alerting nuclear arsenals worldwide. Given the opinion of the World Court, which declared the use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons inadmissible under international law, such moves by India will enjoy widespread international support.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. [email protected])

 

[Daredevil]

India need not import LWR after 2050: Kakodkar

Mumbai (PTI): India need not import Light Water Reactors (LWRs) after 2050 as it would by then have a matured fast breeder technology and ready to use Thorium technology, said Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar.

Indian nuclear community should not have any confusion regarding this as there are talks going around about using Thorium even before the fast breeder technology is matured, Mr. Kakodkar said delivering Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Foundation day lecture.

Although country has large amount of Thorium and will be a priority for long time in the future, India has to follow the well thought out plan of three-stage programme of Homi J Bhabha as Thorium does not provide fast growth.

India needs fast growth and such growth can be sustained by fast breeder reactors (FBRs)--- with a multiplier effect.

"If you deploy thorium out of turn (before stage II maturity), which does not support growth out of turn, then you will not get large generating capacity," he said talking on .

"Developing Nuclear Technology for our energy independence: the grand challenge," here on Monday.

If India wants to generate large quantity of electricity in near future, the sequence should be correct -- Stage I - Pressurised heavy water reactor using natural uranium, Stage II-Fast breeder using Uranium-Plutonium and stage III-using thorium (converted into fissile material Uranium- 233,), Mr. Kakodkar said adding that do not bypass this at any cost.

Clarifying that generation of electricity from thorium based plants can beder technology, he said if we bypass the FBRs stage of deveneration as envisaged in the three-stage programme, by 2050, we need not import LWRs after 2050, he said.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Nuclear Fission and the future for Fast Breeder Reactors | (We) can do better

Nuclear Fission and the future for Fast Breeder Reactors

Breeder-reactors:
Most reactors round the world use uranium. A breeder reactor must be started with enriched uranium or some fissile substitute.

During the operation of a conventional nuclear power station, some of the neutrons in the atomic pile are captured by its U238, converting it into fissionable material. This includes plutonium and other dangerously radioactive products. These products are increased in a breeder reactor. In conventional reactors, moderators slow the neutrons. By thus reducing each one's likelihood of becoming part of a converted U238 nucleus and increasing its chance of finding one of the already-fissionable U235 nuclei, moderators allow a natural uranium pile to support a slowly increasing chain reaction.[a]

The Fast Breeder reactor (FBR)
Without the moderator, the neutrons slow down less and the reactor becomes a ‘fast neutron reactor', often abbreviated to just ‘fast reactor', with a bias towards the U238 being converted. In a fast breeder the nuclear waste products which present such a problem in conventional reactors become more fuel. The aim is to make this a closed and remote controlled process.

The first Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) or Fast Neutron Reactor was built in the US in 1951 with a tiny output of 0.2MW (electricity) and operated until 1963, when it was succeeded by a 20MW (electricity) one, a 66 MW one, a 20MW one and “Fast Flux TF” which had a thermal output of 400 MW, from 1980-93. The UK had a 15MW(el) from 1959-1977 and then a 270MW one from 1974-94. France built her first in 1966 with an output of 40 MW (thermal), followed by Phenix in 1973 (250 MWe) (still in operation) and Superphenix 1in 1985-98 with an output of 1240MWe. Germany had one very small one with an output of 21MWe from 77- 91, India has one with an output of 40 MW (thermal), built in 1985; Japan’s Joyu with 140MW (thermal) was built in 1978. Monju (280 MWe) went from 1994-1996 and is currently closed. Kazakstan’s BN350 has been going since 1972 with an output of 135 MWe, half of which desalinates about 80,000 tons of water each year for the city of Aktau. Russia has had 3 FBRs: the first in 1959-1971 reopened in 1973; the second from 1979 produces 12 MWe, and the third, built in 1981, with an output of 600 MWe is the largest still running (with assistance from a US supervisory crew), but it has had a lot of problems with liquid sodium coolant and other leaks, involving long periods out of action. France’s Super Phoenix was the biggest in the world, but it was closed down due to safety problems associated with sodium leaks. Monju Fast Breeder in Japan was also closed due to safety concerns.

Significant commercial success seems to have been elusive so far but there are international ambitious plans for “Generation IV” FBRs of various designs, including thorium based ones. The low cost of uranium is often offered as an explanation for the failure of this technology to find the necessary finance to take it past the experimental stage. Design and research are materially and financially costly. [1]

Reasons that thorium breeder reactors are not being built:
Potentially thorium breeder-reactors would enable a process of converting all the 98.3 per cent of the natural uranium into radioactive substances which can maintain a sustained fission process in a chain reaction.

No-one is doing this yet.

One experimental thorium breeder reactor [2] exists in Kalpakkam in India, which is also the only place, where all three fissile types: U235, Pu 239 and Th 233 are burned.

You can read a lot about the bright future of plutonium seeded thorium breeder-reactors on the internet, for instance, Michael Anissimov’s “A Nuclear Reactor in Every Home” [3]. Conventional nuclear power stations now only use about 0.75 per cent of U235 and increase the radioactivity of what is left in the form of terrifyingly lethal contaminants known generally as the actinides. The problem of safe transport of fuels and waste that is presented in conventional nuclear power stations is likely to remain for as long as these power stations are productive. Breeder reactors would generate similar poisonous substances but they would also burn them up in a closed and remotely controlled cycle, in continuous production of lower grade materials which burn usefully for nuclear energy production. The waste problem would be considerably reduced even though some less long-lived wastes would still pose a storage problem.

So why aren’t they being built all over the place?
The potential of thorium breeder reactors is still unproven beyond the small experimental facility in India. There is concern that proving and building them would be very expensive. There are still fears that they may never work properly as units.

There is however growing support for a new paradigm of quasi-continuous self-renewing fission energy which would ‘eliminate’ dangerous wastes. Against this ideal is the contention that breeder reactors could still be used to create weapons grade plutonium. The rebuttal of this is that weapons plutonium requires enormously more expensive Separation Work Hours and is not useful or necessary for generating power and that fast-breeder reactors designed for power production would not lend themselves easily to this use. If weapons plutonium were wanted then weapons plutonium specific reactors much more suited to the task would be built.

Another reason you will read is that there is a looming shortage of plutonium. [4] Although when Russia and the US agreed to eliminate a lot of their nuclear weapons this made a lot of enriched uranium and plutonium available, much of it was snapped up by conventional reactors and nuclear submarines. Warheads became fuel for US atomic power stations. The weapons-grade plutonium is diluted to become non-explosive. Recycling it saves time and energy normally used for the enrichment process.

Another school says that no-one influential is likely to want to disturb the uranium investment market because it is so profitable, particularly in the light of impending petroleum and other fossil-fuel depletion. This factor, coupled with the legal and other set-up costs of fast breeder-reactors, makes sticking to conventional reactors and mixing weapons plutonium with yellowcake more economically viable in the short to medium term – pending running out of uranium and recycled waste, and possibly pending a perfected thorium breeder reactor.

Importantly, the reliability of conventional reactors with their established safety and legal frameworks and the comparative low cost of building new ones according to ‘tried and true’ models discourages investment in new designs of which the setting up would entail complex and fraught negotiation of new safety and legal frameworks.

The chief beneficiaries have a vested interest in maintaining an industry that reprocesses and sells spent uranium to countries which have conventional reactors but which do not have global approval to reprocess their own waste.

Uranium supply
If uranium-fueled nuclear were to expand from the 16 per cent of world electricity [5] it currently supplies, then diverse projections see uranium failing to meet demand by around 2040. With no nuclear expansion, at current use it might last into the beginning of the 22nd century. [6]

Still others have argued that there is too much uranium around to worry about thorium or other stuff.

Some more technical problems with thorium and fast breeder reactors:

The costs of developing nuclear power using thorium as fuel are increased by the engineering problems associated with the production, recycling, and containment of extremely radioactive isotopes. Far more shielding would be required than for plants currently operating, including ‘MOX’ plants, which use recycled uranium mixed with plutonium.

The thorium cycle includes the need to come to terms with exotic old and new artificial substances of extreme radioactivity. The substances include U-233, which is chemically separated from the irradiated thorium fuel, and always contains traces of U-232. U-232 itself has a 69 year half life but strong gamma emitting daughter products, including thallium-208 which has a very short half life. Recycled thorium itself contains alpha emitter Th-228, with a 2 year half life.

The weapons proliferation risk associated with thorium FBRs is partly based on fears that U-233 might be separated on its own. The reprocessing of thorium itself is still highly experimental. [7]

The technical problems associated with the commercial development of thorium breeder-reactors are so formidable, even on the scale of research possible in a country as large as India, that India could just drop its pursuit of thorium FBRs if it could obtain ready access to traded uranium.

Some political and commercial complications: India as the new FBR lab
There are currently delicate international negotiations proceeding with India, which offers a huge commercial market for uranium but has an interest in developing nuclear self-sufficiency based on its huge thorium reserves. India’s nuclear technology has developed independently due to being isolated through India’s having developed nuclear weapons too late (1974) for inclusion as an official Nuclear Weapons State under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The NPT of 1970 accorded five countries: France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States the exclusive official status of Nuclear Weapons States based on their having reached that status prior to 1970. Of those five countries, all but the USA reprocess spent nuclear fuel. As well as having been excluded from this club, India has enduring differences with the NPT’s strategies for lowering risk. Historically it has preferred to support a global policy of universal disarmament initiatives. It claims to be very uneasy about China’s capabilities and not to be reassured by Pakistan’s expressions of potential support for the NPT.

India has thus proceeded in comparative isolation with a civil nuclear power program, planned from the 1950s, receiving little or no fuel or technological assistance from other countries.

Up through the late 1990s India’s nuclear power plants performed poorly with only 60 per cent capacity.

Dot-com revolution and Indian diaspora

The dot-com revolution of the 1990s saw a huge flow of Indian students and scientists into US universities, institutions and firms. With the dot-com crash many of them returned to India, bringing substantial technical knowledge with them. The scientific and technical community in India became very attractive for the global outsourcing of new scientific and technical developments. It is perhaps partly because of these social changes that capacity of its nuclear power plants improved markedly by 2001-02 to 85 per cent. [8]

As early as the 1950s India planned for a three-stage nuclear development program. Stage One was for U238 to be used in pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). In Stage Two the plutonium generated by these PHWRs was to be deployed to run FBRs. This has so far only been done in a 13 Megawatt experimental small FBR at Kalpakkam. The planned FBRs were to use the plutonium mixed in a 70 per cent oxide (MOX-fuel) in its core within a fertile ‘blanket’ [9] of U233 and thorium232 which would be there to make the fuel in the core sustain fission. In Stage Three it was intended that the FBRs use thorium232 to produce U233 as fuel for the third stage reactors. [10] India currently has 12 nuclear power plants. The Department of Atomic Energy has government clearance to set up a 500 MW prototype of the ‘next-generation’ FBW at Kalpakkam, with the intention of commercially exploiting thorium for its major fuel supply.

Thorium supply
After Australia, India possesses the world’s largest reserves of thorium. Use of Indian thorium would make India independent of imported uranium including reprocessed spent uranium.

Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation negotiations

On 9 December 2006 US Congress passed the United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act, allowing shipments of nuclear fuel and technology to India for use in its civilian nuclear power program. [11] India had not yet ratified this agreement. A major point of difference was US insistence that used fuel from any US-supplied reactor must not be reprocessed.” [12] This would inhibit practices in India’s energy and weapons system, for both kinds of facility were, at the time of writing this article (May 2007), still producing plutonium for reuse. The agreement would require complete separation of power facilities from weapons facilities, which were still exchanging reprocessed materials.

“The opposition to accepting safeguards on the grounds that it is difficult to separate civilian and military facilities, and that it compromises on national security, is, however, ill-founded. Demarcation of facilities as military should not be difficult but a detailed exercise of identifying these has to be carried out. The manner in which the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) declared the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and a few other facilities out of bounds for AERB inspections with a single bureaucratic order in 2000, would suggest that the process should not pose any administrative problems either. In any case, the agreement is for a phased declaration. But there will be a substantial cost involved and that is the price one has to pay for failing to plan for long-term fuel needs properly.

Since the research reactors Dhruva and Cirus are the chief sources of weapons-grade plutonium, and it makes no sense to use reactor-grade plutonium for weapons, one can easily demarcate all the power plants as civilian. It would seem that the main costs would pertain to replicating reprocessing plants specifically for weapon purposes because one cannot declare the existing plants - which currently reprocess spent fuel from power reactors as well as research reactors to yield plutonium for the breeder programme and weapons respectively - as military.

It is obvious that one-way traffic of nuclear material from military to civilian reactors does not pose any problem; it is only when there is a two-way traffic, as in a reprocessing plant, a dedicated facility for each objective becomes necessary because of safeguards on the material that comes in and goes out. There could be other costs involved in duplicating personnel and equipment required in this as well as other operations where people and equipment double up for the twin objectives at present.” [13]

Since the UK and France, both countries which reprocess fuel, have also shown interest in the huge commercial market which India could represent, it seems likely that the pressure on the USA to relent on its anti-reprocessing stance will grow. Given the profit issues and that the corporate forces have an interest in this stance changing, resistance will be difficult.

In addition, however, to purchase uranium from the 45 member Nuclear Suppliers Group would require India to sign the NPT, which India does not want to sign. It may be that the very factors which proponents of FBRs cite as discouraging their research and production in countries like the US are positives for FBR research and production in India. In this case, India is probably the place where FBR technology and production may break through first if it is going to.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

The Hindu News Update Service

India's fast breeder reactor nears second milestone

Chennai (IANS): India's first indigenously designed fast breeder reactor, which is expected to start functioning at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu by 2010 and generate 500 MW of electricity, is headed for another milestone.

The breeder reactor - which breeds more material for a nuclear fission reaction than it consumes - is being built by the Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (Bhavini) at the Kalpakkam nuclear enclave, 80 km from here. The prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) will see a major achievement when its main vessel is lowered into the safety vessel. This is expected shortly.

"We are confident of getting the regulatory clearances for lowering the main vessel soon. We will lower the main vessel into the already erected safety vessel," Prabhat Kumar, project director of Bhavini said.

Tasked to build fast breeder reactors in India, Bhavini is awaiting clearance from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). Mr. Kumar said around 46 percent of the PFBR project work is complete and by the end of the year it will be 60 percent.

The sodium cooled fast reactor designed by the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) has three vessels - a safety vessel, a main vessel and an inner vessel.

Outermost is the stainless steel safety vessel, which was lowered into the reactor vault last June - the first milestone.

The main vessel made of stainless steel measures 13 metres in diameter, 13 metres in height, weighs 200 tonnes and will go inside the safety vessel to hold the coolant liquid sodium, reactor fuel, grid plates and others.

The third and smaller of the three vessels is the inner vessel - 11 metres tall - and supports equipments like pumps, heat exchangers and others.

According to Kumar, a sum of Rs.1,719 crores has been spent on the project and the company may go in for the placement of bonds to raise funds for the Rs.3,400 crore ($717 million) project.

He said: "The PFBR will be funded 76 percent by the central government, four percent by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited and the balance through loans. Instead of institutional loans, a decision is expected to be taken for issue of bonds."

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has accorded its sanction for Rs.250 crore to carry out pre-project activities for setting up two more fast reactors at the Kalpakkam nuclear enclave.

"Now the union cabinet will have to accord its sanction," Mr. Kumar said.

According to him, pre-project activities include site inspection, ground levelling, soil survey, laying of roads, setting up site assembly shops, water channels and others.

"It will take around one-and-a-half years to complete the pre-project activities," he said.

While the reactor uses fission plutonium for power production it breeds more plutonium than what it uses from the natural uranium. The surplus plutonium from each fast reactor can be used to set up more such reactors and grow the nuclear capacity in tune with India's needs.

The Indian fast reactors will be fuelled by a blend of plutonium and uranium oxide. The surplus plutonium from each fast reactor can be used to set up more such reactors and grow the nuclear capacity in tune with India's needs.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India can be largest supplier of tritium: Kakodkar


India can be largest supplier of tritium:

Posted: Tuesday , Feb 17, 2009 at 1702 hrs
Mumbai:

India can be the largest supplier of tritium for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar said on Tuesday.



"Although we suffered a shortage of uranium, we are surplus in heavy water production and thus we can be the world supplier in tritium, which is crucial for the world's first fusion experimental reactor (ITER), in which India has an important role," Kakodkar said, on the occasion of 'Heavy Water Day' at Anushakti Nagar in Mumbai.



He also asked the Heavy Water Board, an arm of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to be prepared for marketing one of its new ventures on Enriched Boron that will be used in Fast Breeder Reactors.



The Heavy Water Board has diversified into a variety of products and some of these are at the Research and Development stage while some are in the production stage including that of enriched Boron, sodium metal, oxygen 18 and several specialised solvents.

 

[SATISH]

If we become a Tritium supplier or the Enriched Boron dupplier then we will be earning a lot of money. that sounds really good. But what about our strategic reserves of Tritium and how will it affect us?

 

[LETHALFORCE]

If we become a Tritium supplier or the Enriched Boron dupplier then we will be earning a lot of money. that sounds really good. But what about our strategic reserves of Tritium and how will it affect us?

I am guessing we have more than enough in reserves to be an exporter.