Re: China Promotes Another Boom: Nuclear Power

From: habshi (habshi_at_anony.com)
Date: 01/22/05 

Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:07:01 GMT

        Can India really generate 500,000 MW ( half of US total
generating capacity ) with fast breeders ? India graduates 250,000
engineers a year compared to US 50,000 so it might

excerpts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1396163,00.html
Wipro, he says, can chose from 280,000 engineering graduates every
year, with another 200,000 college diploma-holders who are "easily
trainable".

"In the United States annually there are just 50,000 engineering
graduates. In fact, colleges produce more sports therapists than
engineers. Perhaps because America is a sporty country; a lot of

Net electricity generation in the United States reached 3883 billion
KWh in 2003, 0.6% higher than in 2002, according to Electric Power
Annual 2003, released Friday by the Energy Information Administration
(EIA). This growth rate is significantly below the average annual
growth rate of 2.4% between 1992 and 2003, due mainly to a cooler
summer than the previous year.
freontlineonnet.com
How important are the fast breeder reactors in ensuring India's energy
security?

Fast breeder reactors are more important to India than other countries
that have capabilities in nuclear power technology. This is because of
the nuclear resource profile we have in the country. Our uranium
reserves, as per the present state of exploration, will be able to
support 10,000 MWe generating capacity, which is not large. But it is
the starting point for setting up fast reactors. When the same
uranium, which will support 10,000 MWe generating capacity in the
PHWRs, comes out as spent fuel and we process that spent fuel into
plutonium and residual uranium, and use it in the fast reactors, we
will be able to go to an electricity generation capacity that will be
as large as 5,00,000 MWe. This is due to the breeding potential of the
fast reactors, using the plutonium-uranium cycle. That is the
importance of the fast breeder reactors under Indian conditions,
compared to other countries.

The world is watching with interest our entry into the breeder reactor
programme. Countries such as France, the United States and the United
Kingdom have not persisted with their breeder reactor programme.
France has closed its Superphoenix fast breeder reactor. There are
allegations that the Japanese have falsified their data with regard to
their breeder reactor programme. Japan's Monju breeder reactor is now
shut down. Are we entering an area from where others have backed out?

That is not true. There is a programme called Generation Four
Initiative Forum, GIF for short. This is led by the U.S. in which 10
other countries are participating. They have nuclear power reactor
configurations that are important for the future. They have identified
a total of six configurations, six reactors. Out of that, three or
four are fast reactors. So the importance of fast reactors in future
energy requirements is recognised worldwide. In fact, in Russia, an
800 MWe fast reactor is under construction. The ground reality now is
that uranium is available at a much cheaper price internationally. In
this situation of plenty of uranium availability, there is no urgency
for these countries to move on to fast breeder reactor technology.
This, however, is not the case with us.

How many breeder reactors will we build in the near future? The IGCAR
is designing a 1,000 MWe fast breeder reactor.

It is like this. We are making a beginning with the first 500 MWe and
we will complete it by 2010. After that, we will build more such
units. We have planned four in the programme up to 2020. The
development of the fast breeder technology will go on at the IGCAR. In
this development, we will proceed in two directions.

One will be based on metallic fuel?

I will come to that. One direction is to go for higher capacity
reactors, maybe developing 1,000 MWe reactors. The other direction is
to use the reactor design and its associated fuel cycle, which will
have a shorter doubling time because we get into a higher and higher
generating capacity through the breeding process. The faster the
breeding, the quicker will be the rise in the fast breeder reactor's
capacity. So we should pursue both the directions: one is the higher
reactor unit size, and the other, the fuel cycle, which has a shorter
doubling time. In this we have drawn the entire road map, including
R&D activities, the development that should be done and, the new
energy systems to be built.

The Prime Minister promised full support to the third stage of the
country's nuclear electricity programme, which will use thorium as
fuel. The 300 MWe Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), which will use
thorium as fuel, is your pet project. Its construction was to begin
before the end of last April. Why is the delay?

The fast breeder reactors constitute the second stage of our
programme. While we have scarcity in terms of uranium, our thorium
resources are abundant. [The third stage of our programme using]
thorium-uranium 233 fuel can run in a sustained mode for a long time.
So we have made this our third stage after we have sufficient capacity
through breeder reactors. For if you irradiate thorium at a higher
capacity level, then you will have a very long programme at a higher
capacity level. We are also working on the development [of reactors]
that will allow growth with the thorium fuel cycle. Besides, we have
programmes on other applications of thorium, such as the high
temperature energy generation. All this constitutes the third stage of
our nuclear power programme, that is, demonstrating large-scale
electricity generation using thorium.

A second part of this programme is to demonstrate our ability to build
systems where thorium-based electricity generation can grow. The third
part is to build advanced energy systems where we can get energy from
fission at high temperature. This will be done by primarily using
thorium. We have prepared plans for this as well. We have published
this as a DAE document called "Shaping the Third Stage of Our Nuclear
Power Programme". This will be essentially an R&D and technology
development programme. There is a lot of work to be done on this. As
we commercialise the second stage, we have to complete the entire R&D,
and technology, and be ready with it when it is time for
commercialisation of the third stage. We are very happy with the
support promised by the Prime Minister.

The AHWR will be one of the first elements in the third stage. Its
design is complete. We have prepared the project report. We have
completed a peer review by knowledgeable people other than those who
designed it. A fairly large amount of R&D work has been completed.
There is more R&D work to be done. It is true that we should have
started the AHWR construction this year. But we felt that since the
reactor will be ultimately implemented in the public domain, it is
important that its design is also reviewed by the Atomic Energy
Regulatory Board [which keeps a tab on safety in nuclear power
facilities in the country]. So we have now created an arrangement
wherein for such developments [reactors], which will ultimately go out
of the BARC for use by society or industry, the safety aspects should
be entrusted with the AERB. We are in the process of making that
arrangement now.

Is that the reason for the delay?

This took a little time. We will go through the AERB review. We have
deliberately withheld [the construction] because we have safety in our
mind. The AHWR has an innovative concept. It should be looked at by
all the safety people. I cannot predict the time [when its
construction will start]. I am sure the safety review will be
completed soon enough for us to decide on further steps.

We have launched R&D activity on accelerator driven systems, which
will enable the growth of higher capacity thorium reactors. We have
made a beginning with the third part of the third stage with a compact
high temperature reactor (CHTR). We are at this moment going through
material development, which will allow us to construct such reactors.
The idea is that if we are able to generate fission energy, say at
1,000°C, you can make splitting of water by thermo-chemical means an
economic reality.

What is its use?

Once you get hydrogen, you get a fluid fuel substitute. Hydrogen

On October 23, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated the
construction of the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at
Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu. It marked the start of the second stage of
the country's nuclear electricity programme, which involves the
building of a series of breeder reactors to ensure India's energy
security. The same day, the Prime Minister took part in the
commemoration function of the Department of Atomic Energy's (DAE)
golden jubilee celebrations at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic
Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam.

In a recent interview to T.S. Subramanian, the Chairman, Atomic Energy
Commission and Secretary, DAE, Anil Kakodkar listed not only the
achievements of the DAE in the last 50 years but the challenges it
faced. Excerpts:

What are the achievements and failures of the DAE in the last 50
years?

In the last 50 years, one important thing is that we have a large,
capable human resource pool of scientists and technologists. This is a
formidable force, which can deliver the goods. This, I think, is a
very important achievement.

The second important achievement is that our programme on the basis of
self-reliance has demonstrated that we can take our R&D [research and
development] efforts, carried out in our laboratories, to a commercial
scale of excellence in the market place. So there is the confidence
that this can be done.

The third achievement is that the first stage of India's nuclear power
programme, currently consisting of 12 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors
(PHWRs), is completely in the industrial domain. It will grow on its
own steam.

Lastly, as a result of the consolidation of the entire work done in
the last 50 years, we now have a clearly defined road map for future
R&D, and its commercialisation.

In terms of "failures" - I will not call them failures, but we did see
several challenges. For example, embargoes have been a major
challenge. Embargoes have not deterred us from making progress; in
fact, they have made our self-reliance that much more robust.
Obviously, the dimensions of our programme would have been bigger if
we had been able to do things at a much faster pace

At the end of 2003, total net summer generating capacity was 948
gigawatts, an increase of 4.8% from 2002. The industry added 48
gigawatts of new capacity, the second largest amount of capacity added
in any single year behind 2002 when 58 gigawatts were added. Following
the recent trend in large natural gas-fired capacity additions, 80% of
the new unit capacity added in 2003 was natural gas-fired. Natural gas
and dual-fired (units that can use either natural gas or petroleum)
capacity together now account for 40% of the total generating
capacity. Hydroelectric and nuclear each has a 10% share of the total.
Although coal-fired plants in 2003 maintained the largest share of
U.S. electric generating capacity, their share of capacity continued
its long decline and now accounts for 33% of the total U.S. capacity
(down from 41% in 1992).

Although coal’s share of capacity continued to decline, coal plants
still accounted for 51% of generation. Nuclear plants accounted for
20% of generation in 2003, nearly unchanged from 2002. Usage of other
fossil fuels accounted for another 20% share of total generation (3%
from petroleum and 17% from natural gas).

In 2003, the weighted On 22 Jan 2005 12:34:43 -0800, ano457@yahoo.com
(ano457) wrote:

China Promotes Another Boom: Nuclear Power
 
THE NEW YORK TIMES January 15, 2005 By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Current plans - conservative ones, in the estimation of some people
involved in China's nuclear energy program - call for new reactors to
be commissioned at a rate of nearly two a year between now and 2020, a
pace that experts say is comparable to the peak of the United States'
nuclear energy push in the 1970's.

"We will certainly build more than one reactor per year," said Zhou
Dadi, director of the central government's Energy Research Institute,
which has strongly supported the country's nuclear program. "The
challenge is not the technology. The barriers for China are mostly
institutional arrangements, because reactors are big projects. What we
need most is better operation, financing and management."

By 2010, planners predict a quadrupling of nuclear output to 16
billion kilowatt-hours and a doubling of that figure by 2015. And with
commercial nuclear energy programs dead or stagnant in the United
States and most of Europe, Western and other developers of nuclear
plant technology are lining up to sell reactors and other equipment to
the Chinese, whose purchasing decisions alone will determine in many
instances who survives in the business.

France, which derives about a third of its energy from nuclear power,
is the only Western country committed to a large-scale nuclear energy
program. It is in a building lull now, but will need to begin
replacing aging reactors within a decade or so.

Japan derives about 10 percent of its energy from nuclear sources and
was once among the most favorably disposed toward nuclear energy. But
a string of scandals involving comically shoddy practices, like mixing
radioactive materials in a bucket, and near accidents have turned
public opinion in many areas strongly antinuclear.

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