France ok with civil nuclear liability in India: Hollande

nrj

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If true, this is massive development. India can now use French example to make every other supplier country come to Indian terms in nuclear trade. I can't believe how Indian diplomacy pulled it off.

Does this mean Jaitapur Nuclear plant won't see the fate of Kundakulam?

Does this mean France is going to get bigger pie in Indian nuclear market?

Will this help India to rapidly meet domestic energy demands?

Is France going to replace Russia in bilateral ties with India from military co-operation to strategic partnership ?

NEW DELHI: France is the first nuclear equipment supplier country which has clarified that it does not have a problem with India's civil liability clause. In an exclusive interview to TOI, visiting French President Francois Hollande said: "Regarding civil nuclear liability, we obviously respect Indian law. It is the sovereign decision of a country that has witnessed catastrophes like the Bhopal gas tragedy. Civil nuclear energy is an answer, and it also helps cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen energy security."

Assuring the safety of French nuclear reactors for the Jaitapur nuclear plant, Hollande said, "The best guarantee for India is that, in France, we are building the same reactor as those planned in Jaitapur."
 
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Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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It shows the confidence of French in the technology they are exporting. Most of the nuclear plants in France are build with mutual consent of the local population after extensive security verification.

So, I think French understand safety concerns better than Russians(who would not care even for their own population). And it is definitely a signal for enhanced nuclear ties.
 

anoop_mig25

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Well russians were always ready just they want Indians to pay more for 3&4 reactors . Indians aren`t ready for it and they want , they want in less price.
 

Armand2REP

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If true, this is massive development. India can now use French example to make every other supplier country come to Indian terms in nuclear trade. I can't believe how Indian diplomacy pulled it off.

Does this mean Jaitapur Nuclear plant won't see the fate of Kundakulam?

Does this mean France is going to get bigger pie in Indian nuclear market?

Will this help India to rapidly meet domestic energy demands?

Is France going to replace Russia in bilateral ties with India from military co-operation to strategic partnership ?
It isn't anything special. The chance of meltdown is nill.
 

nishantgupta

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With French Nuclear Technology (I assume for Fast Breeder Reactors) and (hopefully) Uranium for use from Australia, the doubling time needed to introduce Thorium as a fuel will be greatly reduced from the current projection of 2050. That is when we start working on getting a huge chunk of our energy needs catered by Thorium based fuel for which India has the largest reservoirs.

Great news!

For anyone interested, the Three Stage Nuclear Power Program is a great read. It was first proposed by the great Dr.Homi Bhabha and has been sincerely researched with developments taking place primarily by BARC. This is basically to eventually start using Thorium to generate electricity which can theoretically power India's requirements for 20,000 to 50,000 years (yes...that has 4 zeroes) based on various estimates of Thorium availability. Will be great if someone in that field could throw some more light on this for the readers.
 

arya

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france want india , we welcome them
 

sob

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Very shortly these Reactors are going to be a obsolete technologies. Around the world there is a race for replacing the present fusion reactors with Accelerators for generating electricity. This would be much cheaper to construct and without the issues of safety and the waste disposal currently plaguing all reactors.

A New Accelerator to Study Steps on the Path to Fusion « Berkeley Lab News Center

The eventual goal of heavy-ion fusion is to produce electrical power with particle accelerators through a process called inertial confinement fusion. Heavy-ion fusion is a particularly promising method of accessing this inherently clean and virtually limitless source of energy, fueled by naturally occurring hydrogen isotopes. There's plenty of practical science to be done along the way to that goal, both in accelerator design and in the physics of the fusion-fuel targets.
An overview of the technology involved

Indian organisations under DAE are also working along with the other countries on this project. As far as my understanding goes the theory part is over and translating it into practical is the challenge ahead of the engineers.
 

trackwhack

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Very shortly these Reactors are going to be a obsolete technologies. Around the world there is a race for replacing the present fusion reactors with Accelerators for generating electricity. This would be much cheaper to construct and without the issues of safety and the waste disposal currently plaguing all reactors.

A New Accelerator to Study Steps on the Path to Fusion � Berkeley Lab News Center



An overview of the technology involved



Indian organisations under DAE are also working along with the other countries on this project. As far as my understanding goes the theory part is over and translating it into practical is the challenge ahead of the engineers.
@sob. Accelerator driven designs will talk at least 3 decades for the first working reactor to be built, not to mention they are likely to be no more that 200- 300 MW systems. A 1 gw system similar to epr1000 will take at least 50 more years to develop and build. By which time jaitapur will be ready to decommission the eprs which are expected to have a 40-50 year life.

However,accelerator driven tech may not be the answer. It is just one of several new directions that are being researched.
 
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ganesh177

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With this france has also unofficial grabbed there hand firmly on rafael deal. France is not letting that go anywhere now.
 

sob

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@sob. Accelerator driven designs will talk at least 3 decades for the first working reactor to be built, not to mention they are likely to be no more that 200- 300 MW systems. A 1 gw system similar to epr1000 will take at least 50 more years to develop and build. By which time jaitapur will be ready to decommission the eprs which are expected to have a 40-50 year life.

However,accelerator driven tech may not be the answer. It is just one of several new directions that are being researched.
I know a person involved with this project from the Indian side and as per him the breakthrough could happen in the next 2-3 years. There are sceptics who do not see any breakthrough for the next 2 decades, but we know how fast new technology can come up once a basic breakthrough is achieved.

In Europe they are building a prototype ADS for generating 600 MWe and the best part for India is that this will be using Thorium as the Nuclear fuel.

For many years there has been interest in utilising thorium-232 as a nuclear fuel since it is three to five times as abundant in the Earth's crust as uranium. A thorium reactor would work by having Th-232 capture a neutron to become Th-233 which decays to uranium-233, which fissions. (The process of converting fertile isotopes such as Th-232 to fissile ones is known as 'breeding'.) The problem is that insufficient neutrons are generated to keep the reaction going, and so driver fuel is needed – either plutonium or enriched uranium. Just as with uranium, if all of it and not a mere 0.7% of uranium is to be used as fuel, fast neutron reactors are required in the system. (A fast neutron spectrum enables maximum fission with minimum build-up of new actinides due to neutron capture.)

An alternative is provided by the use of accelerator-driven systems. The concept of using an ADS based on the thorium-U-233 fuel cycle was first proposed by Professor Carlo Rubbia, but at a national level, India is the country with most to gain, due to its very large thorium resources. India is actively researching ADSs as an alternative to its main fission program focused on thorium.

The core of an ADS is mainly thorium, located near the bottom of a 25 metre high tank. It is filled with some 8000 tonnes of molten lead or lead-bismuth at high temperature – the primary coolant, which circulates by convection around the core. Outside the main tank is an air gap to remove heat if needed. The accelerator supplies a beam of high-energy protons down a beam pipe to the spallation target inside the core, and the neutrons produced enter the fuel and transmute the thorium into protactinium, which soon decays to U-233 which is fissile. The neutrons also cause fission in uranium, plutonium and possibly transuranics present, releasing energy. A 10 MW proton beam might thus produce 1500 MW of heat (and thus 600 MWe of electricity, some 30 MWe of which drives the accelerator). With a different, more subcritical, core a 25 MW proton beam would be required for the same result. Today's accelerators are capable of only 1 MW beams.

There have been several proposals to develop a prototype reactor of this kind, sometimes popularly called an energy amplifier.

A UK-Swiss proposal for an accelerator-driven thorium reactor (ADTR) has gone to feasibility study stage, for a 600 MWe lead-cooled fast reactor. This envisages a ten-year self-sustained thorium fuel cycle, using plutonium as a fission starter. Molten lead is both the spallation target and the coolant. In contrast to other designs with neutron multiplication coefficients of 0.95 - 0.98 and requiring more powerful accelerators, this ADTR has a coefficient of 0.995 and requires only a 3-4 MW accelerator, with fast-acting shutdown rods, control rods, and precise measurement of neutron flux.
Accelerator-driven Nuclear Energy | Accelerator Driven Systems | Transmutation
 
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sob

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With this france has also unofficial grabbed there hand firmly on rafael deal. France is not letting that go anywhere now.
French are the leaders in the research for a fast breeder reactor. We have had a prototype Fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam near Chennai and it has been working for last 10-12 years and now the work is on to bring it up to a larger scale. During the early 2000s there was a lot of problem as key technology and components were denied to India by European/American firms as India was not part of the NSG and other conventions. Now this problem seems to be over and with France also going along with the Nuclear liability bill, we can expect some good news to be coming soon.
 

Godless-Kafir

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French are the leaders in the research for a fast breeder reactor. We have had a prototype Fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam near Chennai and it has been working for last 10-12 years and now the work is on to bring it up to a larger scale. During the early 2000s there was a lot of problem as key technology and components were denied to India by European/American firms as India was not part of the NSG and other conventions. Now this problem seems to be over and with France also going along with the Nuclear liability bill, we can expect some good news to be coming soon.
Wasn't that an experimental thorium reactor?
 

sob

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Yes it was an experimental reactor and the power output is beng used to run the Reverse Osmosis plant to filter the sea water. On the same design they are trying to upscale to a larger capacity reactor.
 

sob

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@Yusuf,

a very interesting comment from an American from the article that you just posted

Fast breeder reactors are about the safest reactors ever devoloped. They require NO ELECTRICITY to take care of decay heat. All residual heat is transfered to the air via natural circulation. Also, fast breeders make fuel as they burn it, which means that fuel costs are low. The reprocessing technology is proven, and works well. A fast breeder "in my backyard" ran for over 30 years with NO leaks or problems. They reprocessed the fuel many times to prove it was feasable . Everything ran like a champ .The only reason it shut down, is because its license expired. It is in safestor right now, and can be restarted if needed.
Now, for decom; not much different than decom'ing any other nuke. The sodium is processed and is sold; usually to companies that construct and run breeders. Contamination is not much of an issue; all of the radioactive sodium is kept in one large vessel "pot" that holds the whole primary system;reactor, primary pumps, heat exchangers, and fuel storage. A sodium to sodium heat exchanger transfers the heat out, where it is used to boil water. That is the beauty of these; VERY LITTLE PIPING ON THE RADIOACTIVE SIDE! Its all contained in one large "pot" at atm' pressure; and only requires air and gravity to keep cool when shut down.
India is smart to build these reactors. Downside? The reprocessing creates plutonium, which is part of the fuel. India CAN use that plutonium for nuclear weapons; or to fuel the reactor.
If India wants plutonium, it will make it, with or without commercial breeders. If they want to keep fuel costs down, they will use it for fuel.
Breeders are actually becoming more popular due to all the above. The USA is missing the boat on this one. We pioneered the tech; actually build some good ones; then Carter issued an order to shut them down.( fear of proliferation) The industry just gave up, didn't fight it.
 
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Bhadra

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So the opposition had done a good work on Nuclear Liability Bill ?
 
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