India to add another 20,000 MW to nuclear power generation capacity
India plans to raise nuclear power generation capacity by another 20,000 Megawatt (MW) over the next decade, according to Atomic Energy Commission chairman K N Vyas.
Currently, the country has an installed capacity of 6,780 MW, generated by 22 reactors at seven nuclear power plants. They supply 35 Tetrawatt/hour (TWh) or 3.22 percent of India’s total power output.
As part of expansion five nuclear reactors of 6,700 MW capacity are under construction, and eleven with a combined capacity of 41,000 MW have been planned. Prime Minister Narendra Modi government is resolutely pursuing plans to exploit every available resource – solar, wind, hydro, biomass and nuclear – to build hefty portfolio of carbon-free energy for sustainable development. In the process it aims to reduce its oil and gas imports, which reached 90 percent in the case of oil and 50 percent for gas.
Speaking at an industry on 17 October Vyas said nuclear energy with its almost non-existent carbon footprint is one of the cleanest options for reduction of global warming and climate change mitigation. India has committed to cut it carbon footprint upto 35-40 percent by 2030 at the 2015 Paris Climate Summit.
Quoting a statement from an international energy agency Vyas said fission-based nuclear power has historically been a large contributor to carbon-free electricity globally. He said India has now started using higher capacity reactors to increase standardisation and is heading for fleet mode of construction, thereby reducing construction cost and speeding up construction time.
But India’s ambitious moves are handicapped by a lack of nuclear fuel. According to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, India has limited uranium reserves of approximately 54,636 tonnes of “reasonably assured resources”, 25,245 tonnes of “estimated additional resources”, 15,488 tonnes of “undiscovered conventional resources, and 17,000 tonnes of “speculative resources”. According to the state’s Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), these reserves are only sufficient to generate about 10 GW for about 40 years. In 2011, it was reported that a four-year-long mining survey done at Tummalapalle mine in Kadapa district near Hyderabad had yielded confirmed reserve figure of 49,000 tonnes with a potential that it could rise to 150,000 tonnes. This was 15,000 tonnes more than the from an earlier estimate of deposit in that area.
However, although India has only around 1–2 percent of the global uranium reserves, its thorium reserves are much bigger; around 12–33 percent of global reserves, according to the IAEA and US Geological Survey. Several in-depth independent studies have put Indian thorium reserves at 30 percent of the total world thorium reserves.
