Why nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar bats for US based thorium fuel tech for India?  

India cannot achieve the target of 100GW nuclear capacity by 2047 by following the three-stage nuclear programme and the country must look for different nuclear technologies, including by the US based Clean Core Thorium Energy (CCTE), under various stages of development, said Anil Kakodkar, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman.

“You don’t have to go through in that sequence… as stage one, stage two. It happened well and good, but if not [completed], I think nothing is lost. Now, we should move to thorium, accumulate that and accelerate stage three,” he tells Business Today.

His idea is to take a slightly altered path to a three-stage programme which can advance the thorium usage for India. The Kalpakkam FBR’s achievement has put the spotlight on utilising the vast thorium resources in India.

India has been working on technology for thorium-based reactors for decades and it remains a work in progress.

Why to use US start-up tech as a bridge?

Now, a US-based private start-up, Clean Core Thorium Energy (CCTE), has created a new type of fuel that blends thorium with a more concentrated type of uranium called HALEU (high-assay low enriched uranium).

This blended fuel can be used in India’s Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs), which make up the bulk of the country’s existing nuclear power capacity and many of the new units under development now. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) has tied up with CCTE for indigenisation of fuel manufacturing.

Kakodkar says that CCTE’s technology can be used as an interim measure, where we generate power from thorium-uranium and generate fuel for stage 3, where we use thorium. Stage 3 reactors require an initial loading of Uranium 233, a material that does not occur in nature and must be bred from thorium by bombarding it with neutrons.

“Introduce the thorium uranium-based fuel in stage one of the new capacity of the operational PHWRs. By irradiating thorium, you start building Uranium 233, not found naturally. It comes out as spent fuel inventory and is needed as fuel for Stage 3 of the nuclear programme. We can use this route also for energy independence as a bridge. So, this is a good method to lift to stage three, while stage two development can continue,” he says

Why India missed the technology?

On why India could not test a thorium-uranium fuel in existing reactors, as done by CCTE, Kakodkar says there were some experiments, but they lacked the Advanced Heavy Water Reactors to increase the fuel burn-up.

“These are technology developments, and we should be strong in technology development for self-reliance. But if we cannot do that within the time frame, the best way is to collaborate. For Kudankulam, we are importing enriched uranium because we cannot make it today; maybe tomorrow we will be able to make it. The effort will be to continuously improve value addition in the country,” he says.