It will still not be sufficient to meet India's needs: Banerjee
Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh could have one of the largest uranium reserves in the world. Recent studies have indicated that it could have a reserve of 1.5 lakh tonnes of the scarce material.
Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Srikumar Banerjee said: “Studies have already shown that the area had a confirmed reserve of 49,000 tonnes and recent surveys indicated that this figure could go up even three folds.”
He was here to inaugurate the construction work on two more units of 700 MW each at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS), by making “the first pour of concrete.”
Exploration under way
He said uranium deposits in Tummalapalle appeared to be spread over 35 km. Exploratory works are under way. At present, the country is estimated to have a total reserve of about 1,75,000 tonnes of uranium, apart from this.
Terming the new findings a major development, Dr. Banerjee, however, pointed out that the indigenous reserves would still not be sufficient to meet the entire demand of the country's nuclear programme. “The new findings would only augment the indigenous supply of uranium. There would still be a significant gap. We would still have to import.”
Dr. Banerjee sought to allay any misapprehension that the government was keener on importing nuclear technology than promoting indigenously developed technology and said the Centre was seeking to import nuclear technology only to ensure faster development of nuclear power. He asserted that setting up of plants based on indigenous and imported technologies would proceed alongside.
“Nuclear power is absolutely essential to meet the growing energy needs of the country. If the economy has to grow by 9 per cent per annum, we need a 10 per cent growth in electricity production. We cannot do without nuclear power.”
To be ready in five years
The two new units at Rawatbhata are being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 12,000 crore and are scheduled to be ready in five years from “the first pour of concrete.”
The reactors are on the lines of the two 700 MW reactors under construction at Kakrapar in Gujarat. They have been designed by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited by scaling up the 540 MW reactors operating at Tarapur in Maharashtra since 2005.
The reactors have advanced safety features, including passive safety systems that work on natural principles such as gravity, and natural convection and do not need operator intervention or motive power to ensure reactor safety under any state of operations.
According to a NPCIL note, there would be two independent and diverse systems to shut down the reactor, a passive decay heat removal system to ensure cooling of the reactor core even in case of total loss of power and steel-lined containment to contain the entire radioactivity within the reactor building even in a severe accident scenario.
Noting that the country already had 20 nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 4,780 MW in operation and seven more with a capacity of 5,300 MW were under construction, NPCIL Chairman and Managing Director S.K. Jain said more reactors were being planned to take the total installed capacity to at least 20,000 MW by 2020.
Among other things, NPCIL is working towards setting up two more reactors of 1,000 MW each at Kudankulam, and two each in Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh of 700 MW each, apart from two units of 1,650 MW each at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.
Keywords: Tummalapalle, uranium reserves
Comments:
Nuclear Power is NOT essential,as 'planted' leaders cannot decide on the country's interest, and it is a mere myth.
Availability of Uranium in Indian soil (AP state) is a boon to Atomic power projects. Govt. should be attentive in the project without delay.
Accidents and their serious implications in Chernobil or Japan have failed to influence our government. The so called Nuclear plants are totally dependent on foreign countries for their run. Already trouble has started in terms of supply of Uranium in the absence of India's signature in Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Any project that depends on external countries supply should not be counted upon as developmental project.
It is a very welcome news about the Uranium reserves in A.P. The government should try to find more in other parts of the country. The uranium should be used for generating Nuclear Power and not for any other evil activities.
Even developed countries,like Germany n Japan, have decided to shut all its nuclear reactors though they produce more current than what we aim to achieve by 2020. But our stupid politicians are so keen in minting money by allowing the west to dump all its nuclear waste in our country. Most stupidest thing is that, we are not learning even after seeing what happened in Japan.whatever catastrophic event take place, our PM and Congress chief will not be affected by it and it's only the common people who are going to suffer again. Great nation!
Kudos to our Nuclear Technology Scientists for the progress on their efforts for:
1)augmenting the uranium national stock, 2)increasing the nuclear power generation capacity, 3)increasing the safety aspects of the nuclear reactors
Has India a fully developed and implemented environment safety system in place? I doubt given the conditions and the environmental issues surrounding the existing uranium mines is questionable.
Germans can afford to import the electricity, which they are not going to produce in their nuclear plants in future. They have a huge export plus and elections are nearing. India can not import electricity, for example from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangla Desh or Nepal! India must reduce dependance on imported oil and natural gas!
With health and safety record of India, I would be very sceptical about expanding nuclear facility in India. But, on the contrary I sincerely think there is an urgent need for more nuclear facilities to sustain growth and prospects of the nation. All the fancy terms 'two independent and diverse systems to shut down the reactor, a passive decay heat removal system to ensure cooling of the reactor core even in case of total loss of power and steel-lined containment to contain the entire radioactivity within the reactor building even in a severe accident scenario.' should be independantly verified by the expert panel and given a report for people read and understand their implication. Potrayal of zero risk cannot be true and how the mitigating circumstances will be takencare should be clearly spelt out. Exploting our resource in our own country is better than importing in my view.
Can India afford to have the country strewn with nuclesr power plants which are several times costlier than conventional coal based plants, both in regard to capital cost and operating cost. The price at which power from these plants have to be sold to make these plants economically viable will be so high that the government will have to heavily subsidise the power generation in order to make power available to industries, public services and the public at affordable prices. Besides all this there will be the ever present threat of a nuclear disaster. This is a matter which is several times more serious than corruption in the government which is at present engaging the attention of the media and the people.
The technological know-how to safely and sustainably harness the energy from nuclear fission is not yet available anywhere in the world. That nuclear industry, with all its accululated experience, could do very little to even remove decay-heat in Fukushima, let alone manage an exponentially larger crisis that could arise should crisis strike during 'full power' operation, clearly shows how large the uncertainities in this field are. Germany and Japan are candid in this admission, but here in Asia there is something of a learning curve and the Indian nuclear establishment with all due respects is unaware of the reality. They are following an wishful proposition. India would be wise to stay away till nuclear power becomes more sure-footed.
A paper published by BARC in Dec 2010 states that, "detailed exploration carried out over a stretch of about 9.5 km so far in Tummalapalle - Rachakuntapalle tract has established a resource of 29000 tonnes of U3O8 in about 61 million tonnes ore of 0.05% eU3O8."
Compare this to the average ore grade of 15 - 20% U3O8 in Saskatchewan, Canada. You can imagine the cost of production of uranium from such a low quality ore in India. Is it really worthwhile the efforts?
Hope these don't get into hands of Reddy Brothers. I would assume these are in Federal Govt Safe Guards.
As as Nuclear Energy is concerned,Safety matters is very important. A world nuclear energy safety organisation to be set up.Their duties is to monitor saftey aspects and providing or tranining man power to overcome the problems.
Uranium? Please, please leave it in the ground. Even if there is no disaster, we still don't know what to do with the waste.
So many nuclear accident happened not due to technology insufficiency or mistakes. Due to human errors the Chernobyl and 3 mile island accidents were happened. Fukushima accident happened due to highly unexpected natural play. We should understand that the fukushima was safe for earthquake and 9 meter tsunami but unfortunately tsunami came above 12 meter. All battery backup and diesel generators were washed away due to tsunami. If tsunami would not come we may not know about the word Fukushima. Nuclear energy is highly pure and abundant. we have to go for nuclear energy. There is no more way after fossil fuels extinction. We have to build high safety standard to reactors.
Fossil fuel pollution is slow and certain poison due to its global warming effects and it must be avoided for the safety of coming generations. Nuclear energy with many safety upgradations incorporated in latest reactor designs is the only solution to compliment other green energies like wind, solar,hydel etc. The Three Mile Island incident was human error due to misinterpretation of faulty instrumentation and Chernobyl was due to useless experiments done after bypassing reactor safety systems. Fukushima was due to a natural disaster which went beyond the design expected Tsunami conditions. All current issues regarding nuclear plant safety are being addressed by world nuclear scientists and design engineers.