India Building Risky Fast-Breeder Nuclear Reactors

by Ranjit Devraj

"There have been setbacks globally but we expect fast-breeder reactor technology to improve and stage a comeback by 2050, by which time India will be in a position to sell the technology to other countries," Placid Rodriguez, one of India's top nuclear scientists told IPS.

In anticipation of better days ahead for FBRs, Rodriguez said the government would be setting up the Nuclear Power Corp of India Ltd (NPCIL) at Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, with a capital outlay of around $800 million and raise another $200 million from the public.

Rodriguez said a 500-megawatt FBR would be producing power in Tamil Nadu by 2010 and justified it by saying it had the potential to produce power cheaply at less than six cents per kilowatt hour.

But the move has alarmed anti-nuclear activists in Tamil Nadu, many of them banded under the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), based in Nagercoil city close to the Indian peninsula's southernmost tip.

The convenor of PMANE, S.P. Udayakumar, said in an interview that the FBR project was being pursued "against the public will" and vowed that his group would oppose it "through every means possible including demonstrations, strikes and a special seminar at the World Social Forum (WSF) to be held in the western port city of Mumbai in January.

"Fast-breeder technology is being promoted in this country by a dangerous combination of career-minded scientists and private players and is helped along by a total lack of transparency which is facilitated by secrecy laws that shroud the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)," Udayakumar said.

FBRs have been built and operated in the United States, France and Japan. They were phased out for a variety of reasons, but most especially because of accidents such as the one at Monju in Japan in 1995 and the European reactor Super Phenix in France in 1987.

Germany built an experimental reactor at Kalkar in 1991 but never actually put it into operation because of safety concerns.

FBRs use liquid sodium coolant but the metal reacts explosively when it comes into with water, as what happened at Monju.

One of the attractions of FBRs is that it can limit the need to import uranium since it uses mixed plutonium-uranium oxide fuels. But the technology is controversial mainly because it actually produces more plutonium that is initially fed into the reactor -- and plutonium is used in making nuclear warheads.

Tamil Nadu is already host to a 2,000-watt nuclear power project at Koodankulam that is being built with Soviet light water reactor (LWR) nuclear technology of the type discredited by the Chernobyl accident.

Under a deal signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he visited India two years ago, a pair of seawater cooled and moderated reactors are to be built at Koodankulam, which faces the Sri Lankan coast across the Palk Straits and has drawn protests from activists in the island country.

Udayakumar and other opponents of the Koodankulam project have contended that it sidelined democratic norms and, as with other nuclear weapon and energy programs in this country, was being pursued in secrecy in spite of the fact that it endangered the lives and future of millions of ordinary people.

"Even while we have been opposing the installation of the massive Russian reactors, the government is now additionally planning to site in Tamil Nadu a fast-breeder reactor without bothering to consult the public in this state," Udayakumar said.

But Rodriguez said fast-breeder reactors were not only safe but in fact represented the future of nuclear power technology. "China and South Korea are currently experimental FBRs," he said.

Besides safety issues, there is broad agreement among nuclear power experts that FBRs posed a greater risk of nuclear proliferation than other types of nuclear-energy technology. That is because it can readily be used to produce weapons grade material.

India, which exploded a 'peaceful' nuclear device in 1973, went on to 'weaponize' its capability in 1998. This was matched within days by its rival on the subcontinent, Pakistan. The two countries have since threatened to use them on each other.

FBRs are of special importance in India's fiercely independent nuclear energy program, because they are designed to use Thorium as fuel -- an element which the country happens to have deposits estimated at 500,000 tons -- or a third of the world's known reserves.

According to India's strategy, plutonium 239 recycled from its already functional pressured heavy water reactors (PHWR)s can be used in FBRs to 'breed' uranium 233.

This would make up for a shortage of naturally occurring uranium and lead on, at a later stage, to safer reactors. India plans to produce 20,000 megawatts of energy through nuclear reactors by the year 2020 and thus significantly meet its energy needs.

Already, the country is faced with a 40,000-megawatt shortfall of electricity, considered the single biggest stumbling block to economic development.

But according to Udayakumar, the way to address that shortage does not lie in risky nuclear technology but in exploring the potential of safer and more viable options like wind and solar power or even harnessing tidal energy from India's vast coastline.