Why we should continue with nuclear power

Nuclear power is complementary to thermal power. Thermal power alone cannot help us achieve 8% to 9% economic growth as our country needs to add 70,000 MW generation capacity for the 12th plan (by 2017) and another 75,000-80,000 MW (by 2022). In other words India needs to add about 15,000 MW every year in the next decade. At the same time, our coal reserves are being exhausted very fast.

So here are reasons why we need nuclear power:

-- The cost of nuclear power  — Rs12 crore/MW compared to Rs4 crore/MW for thermal power — is already reversing in trend since 1995 even as the price of coal has been rising due to rise in crude prices and the total coal reserve reducing. The energy generated by fission of uranium is about two million times more than what is obtained by burning coal of equal weight. So it is worth exploring the production of energy by fission and going for nuclear power.

-- Our country is already in a trajectory of fast breeder technology that will convert the huge reservoir of thorium to fissionable isotopes of uranium as a result of which the running cost of nuclear power plants will drop drastically.

-- Necessity is the mother of invention. Our nuclear power programme is one of the major alternative sources of power generation considering the huge requirement of power in future decades. And it is a totally environment-friendly industry compared to conventional thermal power plants.

-- The adversity of risk-benefit ratio also cannot be extrapolated based on what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima. First of all, in Chernobyl it was an accident. Lessons learnt from it need to be addressed by adopting proper safety and considering fail-safe design. In the context of Indian reactors, due consideration is being given to address both the issues.

Now with reference to the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, the location of our nuclear reactors does not have exposure to both simultaneously. In some cases, nuclear reactors (Narora-NAPP) are located in seismic zones 3 and 4; they are not located near the sea. In case of the fast breeder reactors in Kalpakkam, some protection in the form of high wall dykes can be planned.  

In engineering design, due consideration is given to seismic zone factor(location of site) along with other factors like basic seismic coefficient, importance factor, soil foundation factor and acceleration coefficient for occasional load — earthquake load.
So based on Fukushima, we cannot say our nuclear reactors are unsafe and based on a cost-benefit analysis our nuclear power programme cannot be stopped.

Skewed use of any natural resources including oil can create huge imbalance of equilibrium forces under the earth’s crust and in turn bring occasional load in unknown form in never-dreamt-of locations. So balance of energy extraction from different underground sources will generate less risk to the human population.

Economic growth, climatic change and energy security are three targets of global energy policies, and the challenge for everybody is to achieve a balance among these parameters. Achieving these goals sometimes requires trade-off among these three parameters and the energy sector would have to be decarbonised as much as possible in order to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has already shown that there is a scenario to achieve this — it is called the 450 ppm carbon dioxide emission stabilisation scenario, which aims to lead the global community to 50% reduction of carbon dioxide by 2050.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary for us to invest heavily in energy conservation and energy efficiency, deploying all possible options of power sources including renewable and nuclear energies.

The devastating Fukushima accident has raised questions about the role of nuclear power in meeting the world’s energy needs and since made deployment of nuclear power very difficult. It has raised concerns over nuclear power in the OCED countries, including Japan. The IAEA recently stated that 450 ppm CO2 emission stabilisation scenario is almost impossible after Fukushima, but we should still try to achieve that with our effort and invest in technology policies.

Thus, it goes without saying that we need nuclear power plants for long-term sustainability.

The writer is general manager, piping, Reliance