Exclusive Technology
India’s forward-thinking attitude has established the country as the leader in thorium reactor development. The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) design is finished, taking our nuclear development one big step forward.
The reactor is equipped with passive shutdown systems, core heat removal through natural circulation, emergency core coolant system (ECCS) and gravity-driven water pool (GDWP), a large tank of borated water on top of the primary containment of vessel. It can operate for 120 days without an operator - that’s 4 months without anyone controlling it, and astonishingly this reactor will last some 100 years.
India has started the process of building the world’s newest thorium fueled prototype nuclear power plant. As prototypes go, this is a big one with a proposed rating at 300MW or about 30% of a customary 1GW uranium fueled station. This commitment deserves congratulations. Finally thorium has a toehold on the world power generation markets and its far less worrisome than a uranium solution and India is the leader in this technology.
In a rare interview to the Guardian UK, Ratan Kumar Sinha, the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, told that his team is finalizing the site for construction of the new large-scale experimental reactor, while at the same time conducting “confirmatory tests” on the design saying, “The basic physics and engineering of the thorium-fuelled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) are in place, and the design is ready.”
The reactor is the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. India plans to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.
For decades the development of workable and large-scale thorium reactors has been a dream for nuclear engineers, while for environmentalists it has become a major hope as an alternative to fossil fuels. The plan is to have a 300MW prototype in operation by 2016 and then expand thereafter. By 2050, thorium should meet 30% of India’s electricity demand.
Producing a workable thorium reactor would be a massive breakthrough in electric power generation. Using thorium – a naturally occurring moderately radioactive element named after the Norse god of thunder – as a source of atomic power is not new technology. The U.S. did promising early research in the 1950s to 1970s only to shelve the effort. It was shelved by the Nixon Administration. The Pentagon needed plutonium residue from uranium for nuclear bombs. The imperatives of the Cold War prevailed.
India has the among world’s largest thorium deposits, and with a world hungry for low-carbon energy, it has its eye on a potentially lucrative export market for the technology. For more than three decades, India’s nuclear research program had been subject to international sanctions since its controversial 1974 nuclear tests. But after losing its pariah status three years ago as a result of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, India is eager to export indigenous nuclear technology developed in research centers such as the BARC.
Its not all perfect, thorium reactors won’t start without a tiny bit of trigger fuel, like uranium or plutonium. But the thorium reactors spent fuel wouldn’t have any more trigger fuel than when started and that would be well burned through. India’s low-enriched uranium/thorium fuel combination design is currently at pilot stage and is at work setting up for testing the fuel combination.
This should be a wake up call to the rest of the nuclear power industry. There is a huge market out there and thorium fueled reactors offer nearly no weapons proliferation risk and the spend fuel risk is managed over decades instead of hundred of centuries.
The Race
Interestingly, the nuclear race is on. China is upping the ante dramatically on thorium nuclear energy. Scientists in Shanghai have been told to accelerate plans to build the first fully-functioning thorium reactor within ten years, instead of 25 years as originally planned.
“This is definitely a race (implying India). China faces fierce competition from overseas and to get there first will not be an easy task”,” says Professor Li Zhong, a leader of the program. He said researchers are working under “warlike” pressure to deliver.
Export Potential
The Indian effort is using low-enriched uranium – which India is permitted to import under the 2008 Indo-US deal. The new reactor has the design flexibility for using trigger fuel or either plutonium or low-enriched uranium. This approach sets a very highly marketable standard with many more potential customers.
India was in talks with other countries over the export of conventional nuclear plants. India is looking for buyers for its 220MW and 540MW advanced Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). Kazakhastan and the Gulf states are known to have expressed an interest, while one source said that negotiations are most advanced with Vietnam.
Many countries with small power grids of up to 5,000 MW are looking for 300MW reactors, India's reactors are smaller, cheaper, technologically advanced and very price competitive which can cater to this enormous market.
Conclusion
The technologically complex and arduous task of building a workable Fusion reactor is still not a reality and it will be several decades for the technology to mature as an alternative to uranium/plutonium based reactors. Failing dirt-cheap fusion in the future, thorium offers centuries of low risk low cost power for billions of people. It’s time for billions of them to wake up and take notice.
And the power could be very, very cheap for consumers.