Bengaluru: Within the atomic and nuclear power community, there is much excitement over India’s plans to deploy small indigenous reactors, which will help the country transition away from fossil fuels, in partnership with the private sector. They will replace captive thermal power facilities in order to reach net-zero emissions by the current target year of 2070.
The government plans to deploy 40-50 of these nuclear reactors over the next decade in partnership with the private sector. This is part of the 220-megawatt Bharat Small Reactor (BSR) that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman had unveiled in her budget speech in July. The announcement officially changed India’s nuclear policy because the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 did not allow private companies to participate in generating nuclear power.
The BSRs will play an important role in steadily shifting India’s nuclear strategy to generate large amounts of power to reduce emissions, meet net-zero climate targets, and provide power for hard-to-decarbonise industries like steel and cement.
The BSR reactor technology and scale are modelled along the small modular reactors (SMR) that are gaining popularity worldwide but with significant differences. Policy discussions and regulations that have commenced are expected to lead to changes that will eventually see reactors modelled after the Kalpakkam reactor in Tamil Nadu over the next few decades.
India currently has 23 reactors operating in eight nuclear plants across the country. However, the Kalpakkam observatory, located about 75 km from Chennai, is India’s first focus for the new Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor programme, which will contribute to BSRs.
As of today, nuclear energy provides less than 3.5 percent of the country’s total power, despite being the fifth largest source of electricity for the country.
“Forty-five or so BSRs will have an installed electricity generation capacity of 10 gigawatts, which is much higher than the current capacity of 8.18GW. This will make India a part of the global supply chain for SMRs when the demand for SMRs is expected to multiply to reach net-zero before 2050 in the US and Europe, which have contributed most of the CO2 emissions responsible for global warming today,” said R. Srikanth, dean at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, who heads the energy, environment, and climate change programme.
ThePrint explains what the BSR programme will do and how it will differ from the initiatives of other nations that are using smaller nuclear reactors to transition towards greener energy.
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What are small reactors
Small modular reactors (SMR) refers to a newly developed and upcoming class of small land-based nuclear fission reactors, which can be built and fabricated in specialised factories but can be assembled on site. These can provide an electrical output anywhere from 5 megawatts to 300 megawatts per day, approximately a third of the power generated by conventional nuclear plants. The city of Mumbai, for context, uses up to 3,500 megawatts (MW) per day on average and touched a peak of 4,300MW in May of this year.
SMRs are becoming increasingly popular in many countries in Europe, the US, and South Asia. China and Russia today have operational reactors. These take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to become functional.
How Bharat Small Reactors differ from Small Modular Reactors
Small reactors that will be a part of the BSR programme are different from SMRs. While they are indeed small in size compared to traditional fission reactors associated with ones like Fukushima and Chernobyl, they do not come pre-fabricated.
The Indian programme will base its design on the existing plant at Kalpakkam, the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS). This was India’s first fully domestically built nuclear plant with two functioning units. Each generates 200 megawatts of electricity and has been operational since the 1980s.
Future reactors will be built based on Kalpakkam’s design, explained Srikanth.
“Because of the huge land requirements, vagaries of the weather, the intermittency of solar & wind power generation, and the social & environmental implications of large dams for hydropower, renewables like solar, wind, and water alone cannot provide the 24×7 electricity required to meet the rapidly growing baseload and peak demand of the country” he explained. “To replace coal, another form of baseload power is required.”
Advantages of smaller reactors
Having single, large projects is a major capital risk, explained Srikanth, and when private players come into the picture, smaller and quicker reactors are more economical and start functioning quicker.
Another advantage of smaller reactors when compared to traditional ones is the smaller exclusion zone—that is, the radius of distance to be maintained from the plant in case of an accident. While for reactors like Chernobyl, this was 30km, newer, smaller reactors including those that will be built in India will have exclusion zones of 2.5km, 1km, or even half a kilometre.
The technology has been well established with a functioning reactor in India for at least 30-40 years, thus increasing the country’s experience with the design and its features.
There are other “passive” safety features as well: there is no need for backup electricity to pour in water as the reactors will automatically flood in case of overheating.
However, renewables continue to have the cost advantage.
Hybrid renewable energy systems today combine solar, wind, biomass, and lithium storage, explained Upendra Tripathy, Former Secretary of MNRE and Founder-Director of International Solar Alliance. “The cost of solar energy has come down drastically due to increasing volumes, more efficient technology, and policy support from goverments. Fission-based atomic energy has a long way to go to be as ubiquitous and affordable as solar is today.”
He added that at the moment, according to India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC), the operating capacity currently is about 6 gigawatts, with 4 GW in the pipeline. India is currently targeting 63 gigawatts by 2032.
Tech behind Bharat Small Reactors
The reactor at Kalpakkam is a pressurised heavy-water reactor (PHWR). It uses heavy water—oxygen with the hydrogen isotope deuterium instead of hydrogen—as a coolant, and typically uranium for fuel. The heavy water prevents boiling and also enables more economical use of uranium.
The smaller size of the reactor also results in comparatively less nuclear waste generation.
“While private companies will come in and construct the reactors as per the NPCIL design approved by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), they are not involved in the design of it or in the disposal of nuclear waste, which the government will continue to be responsible for,” explained Srikanth.
Where & when will these BSR reactors be built
Small reactors are expected to replace coal power, ultimately, and are thus planned to be built where today’s coal power plants are. Srikanth, who has been involved in policy proposal discussions for reactors, explained that they have proposed building reactors by repurposing land so that the transition to nuclear can continue alongside coal briefly to prevent loss of base power.
Former Union Power Secretary Alok Kumar explained that India has a lot of “captive” power plants that run on coal and the existing reactor design will be made safer to be built on these plots of land. This will enable the reactors to use the same electrical grid connections and water supply as well.
“The larger legal challenge will be the regulatory framework now,” explained Kumar. “With a lot of difficulties, the government has now permitted the joint venture between NPCIL and NTPC to set up a plant in Rajasthan, and even for a government project it took a long time.” Unit 7 at Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant was approved in 2009, with construction beginning in 2010, finally reaching criticality (sustained nuclear fission chain reaction that produces power) just last week.
The Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant’s United 7 reactor does not fall under BSR, as it is a larger reactor that provides 700 megawatts.
The very first reactors might become operational by the end of the decade, explained the experts, as the next steps since budget allocation would be for regulation and policies to come into place before private industries start building nuclear reactors.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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