India to build four more nuclear power reactors

RPK

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India to build four more nuclear power reactors

CHENNAI: Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar here said that India would build four 700-megawatt nuclear power units shortly.


Talking to reporters here on Sunday, Kakodkar said, ""We are looking forward to launching new 700 megawatt power reactors. Government has already given in principal approval for four 700-megawatt units. So we want to quickly get the approval and start the construction."

Major nuclear powers -- including Russia, European states and the United Sates -- are expressing willingness to sell nuclear services to India, which is trying to build new generation capacity to cope with a projected increase in demand for energy.

Russia has signed more than 700 million dollars in deals to supply India's nuclear reactors with fuel pellets, since the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group last September lifted a ban on nuclear trade with India.

The ban was imposed after India's first nuclear test in 1974 and for its refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
 

Rage

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So where does this put us now? I figure this announcement for four additional 700 MW nuclear power reactors is in addition to and exclusive of the nine already announced for the interim term. I'm hypothesizing here, but our envisaged overall generation capacity is an increase to 9% of (projected) total power consumption by 2025, or 45,000 MW. That is a herculean task by any standards. If we are to be anywhere near as serious about achieving it, we will have to rigorously exploit our enormous thorium reserves, put our thorium-based fuel cycle development program on the fast track now that many of the NSG-imposed import restrictions have been abolished, and engage the resource-rich countries of central Asia like Kazkhstan and Australia in Oceania, and the high-grade deposits nations of Canada and South Africa to ensure fuel supplies. I suppose the 700 million USD deal signed recently with Russia for 2000 tonnes of nuclear fuel will ostensibly cater in part to these new reactors. Then again, 5 of our 17 nuclear reactors had to be temporarily shut down because of a shortage of nuclear fuel while we were still under sanctions.




Above all however, is the need to ensure that domestic mining companies get a piece of the pie (no sexual innuendo intended). Much has been made of India's limited uranium reserves. We have enough infact: some 80,000 to 112,000 metric tons of presently known, commercially viable Uranium reserves, to cater to both the needs of the Armed Forces' nuclear weapons' fissile material demands and commercial reactors. What we do not have is sufficient companies mining that ore (although this has been recently liberalized if I recall correctly). If we were to meet the very challenging target we've set ourselves of 45GWe by 2025, and assuming uranium requirements for India's nuclear arsenal were held in constant proportion of a fifteenth of total commercial demands, that would still leave us with enough uranium for a good 30 years at current technological levels. That supply could be augmented and/or extended with advancements in reprocessing and breeder technology. Infact, we are already experimenting on a prototype Uranium-Plutonium processing, thorium-irradiative reactor at Kalpakam.


I'm still curious however to get the lo-down on the type(s) of nuclear reactors being built. A quick perusal of news reports seems like all the news agencies picked up the same story ad verbatim from the same goddamn source! My andaaz would be a PHWTR like many of the others we're currently constructing. Well enough, but I'd like to see us get more independent on the extraction front (then again, with the irrevocable environmental damage from uranium extraction, it might not be such a bad idea to let massive territorial countries like Russia and Canada extract it 4 us after all!).
 

hit&run

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if will have money in future i will invest in power generation in India. Power generation is the biggest market. The very nuclear deal with US is nothing but an intelligent foreseen, US desire to earn fortune from the same.
 

IBM

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if will have money in future i will invest in power generation in India. Power generation is the biggest market. The very nuclear deal with US is nothing but an intelligent foreseen, US desire to earn fortune from the same.
I agree with u but we need energy and we can only get with nuclear tech not by coal or hydra.
 

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