This issue, as to why GoI had not thought of approaching non-NSG countries for import of Nat U well before J1805, has been highlighted in these pages several times now (20 May 2008 by NRao, 21 May 2008 by Neeshant, and 24 May 2008 by NRao)
Here, I attempt to place my "
samadhanam" (explanation) for the paradox based on a bit of web crawling.
1) I believe that GoI did not do then, what it is saying it is contemplating to do now (that is, look for Nat U from Non-NSG countries), because it did not see a shortage of Nat U for the PHWR and FBR programmes at all. It did not see a shortage, because there was (and is) no real shortage.
There have been many questions answered in the Parliament by concerned Ministers as to the indigenous availability of sufficient quantity of Nat U for the 3-stage programme.
See document titled "
Document 10: Strategy For Growth Of Electrical Energy In India" [
http://www.dae.gov.in/publ/doc10/index.htm] in
DAE's web site [
http://www.dae.gov.in]. (Unfortunately, the document does not seem to carry a dateline, but I believe it to be current.) In the chapter titled "
Primary Energy And Its Components " [
http://www.dae.gov.in/publ/doc10/pg50.htm], it says:
3.5 Nuclear Energy
As in case of coal, uranium reserves are also given certain categorisation. These are Reasonable Assured Resources (RAR), Estimated Additional Resources-I (EAR-I), Estimated Additional Resources-II (EAR-II) and Speculative Resources (SR). Uranium reserves in India pertaining to categories RAR, EAR-I and EAR-II are estimated to be about 95,000 tonnes of metal. Speculative reserves are over and above this quantity and with further exploration, could become available for nuclear power programme. After accounting for various losses including mining (15%), milling (20%) and fabrication (5%), the net uranium available for power generation is about 61,000 tonnes. Thorium reserves are present in a much larger quantity. Total estimated reserves of monazite in India are about 8 million tonnes (containing about 0.63 million tonnes of thorium metal) occurring in beach and river sands in association with other heavy minerals. Out of nearly 100 deposits of the heavy minerals, at present only 17 deposits containing about ~4 million tonnes of monazite have been identified as exploitable. Mineable reserves are ~70% of identified exploitable resources. Therefore, about 2,25,000 tonnes of thorium metal is available for nuclear power programme.
The present indigenous nuclear power plants are of Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) type, having heavy water as moderator and coolant, and working on the once-through-cycle of natural uranium fuel. Based on such reactors nearly 330 GWe-yr of electricity can be produced from domestic uranium resource. This is equivalent to about 10 GWe installed capacity of PHWRs running at a life-time capacity factor of 80% for 40 years. This uranium on multiple recycling through the route of Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) has the potential to provide about 42,200 GWe-yr assuming utilisation of 60% of heavy metal, percentage utilisation being an indicative number. Actual value will be have the potential of about 150,000 GWe-yr, which can satisfy our energy needs for a long time. {I have left-in the obvious typo - Sanatanan.}
A three-stage nuclear power programme has been chalked out in the Department of Atomic Energy to systematically exploit all these resources. It is planned to install a nuclear power capacity of about 20 GWe by the year 2020. The second stage of the nuclear power programme envisages building a chain of fast breeder reactors multiplying fissile material inventory along with power production. Approval of the Government for the construction of the first 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) was obtained in September 2003 and it is scheduled for completion in the year 2011. It is envisaged that four more such units will be constructed by the year 2020 as a part of the programme to set up about 20 GWe by the year 2020. Subsequently FBRs will be the mainstay of the nuclear power programme in India. The third stage consists of exploiting country’s vast resources of thorium through the route of fast or thermal critical reactors or the accelerator driven sub-critical reactors (ADS). A 300 MWe Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), designed to draw about two-third power from thorium fuel, is under development and will provide experience in all aspects of technologies related to thorium fuel cycle. A beginning is being made towards developing an accelerator needed for ADS.
Click on the last menu item captioned "Annex" in the above web page to reach this document titled "
Basis for Calculating Growth of Installed Nuclear Capacity". It gives the justification with facts and numbers (along with some math that seems to be beyond me), as to how there is adequate Nat U for our Nuclear Power Programme as envisaged.
The depleted uranium discharged from the PHWRs will be used in the FBRs as initial inventory and as makeup requirements i.e. the difference between the feeds and the discharges. The total cycle inventory would be approximately 130 T per GWe and the annual makeup requirement would be about 1.1 T per GWe. It strictly applies for the INFCE reference oxide design only but has been taken to be applicable for the metal design as well. It may have little effect on the present estimates based on the metal design. Accordingly about 35,750 T of the depleted uranium would be tied up in FBRs. The annual makeup requirement after 2052 would be about 300 T per year, whereas nearly 24,000 T would be the inventory in hand. It would be sufficient for the life time of the FBRs.
2) Mr. Kakodkar has articulated many times that it is
only a temporary mismatch between supply and demand that we are facing. If so why constrain our programmes to safeguards in perpetuity? As we have seen many times in the past, pawars that be, tend to create artificial shortage so as to be able to benefit later from it (eg. fairly frequent and sudden disappearance of
kanda-batata from the market; manipulated import of wheat even if it is unfit for human consumption; "educated" import of gas-fired power station even if it is known that it cannot be run economically in India etc). Similarly, in the case of Nat U also, the so-called "shortage" was contrived by the political class by starving DAE of funds and by their inability / willingness to counter the arguments / agitations of interested persons and organisations who make a living out of placing unreasonable obstacles in India's technology development efforts.
3) Suddenly protagonists of the deal have decided to use the issue of temporary mismatch in fuel supply to our PHWRs as a strong argument in favour of the deal through obfuscation. For instance Dr M. R Srinivasan, writing in this article titled "
Nuclear ground realities" [
http://www.indianexpress.com/printerFri ... 89768.html], in the Indian Express, while admitting that:
. . .some complacency seems to have set in, during the early 1990s, on the urgency of opening up new uranium mines. The leadership of DAE may have taken an accountant’s view of the uranium inventory that was continuing to be held.
. . . .
In the post-1990 situation, when India faced a severe economic crisis and public investments in many areas were curtailed, work on the new uranium mines was actually stopped. The improvement in operations of our PHWRs and the resulting increase in demand for uranium appear to have been overlooked. .... . India has about 100,000 tonnes of uranium in the ground. This will be adequate to support 10,000 MW of PHWR capacity over its lifetime {namely 40 years at 80% lifetime average capacity factor at about 29% steam-cycle thermal efficiency - Sanatanan}
also says:
"But the Fast Breeder Reactor capacity of the second stage that can be supported by 10,000 MW of PHWR will still be too small to permit a large-scale use of thorium even after two or three decades. We must have some 30,000 to 50,000 MW of the first stage programme (using natural and enriched uranium) to allow us to exploit the thorium resources in a significant manner.
Quite characteristically he has failed to define (or even indicate by means of a clue) what he means by "in a significant manner"! Even then, he is only pointing out to a scenario in the implementation of transition from 2nd Stage to the 3rd Stage which is quite a few years away at the moment. If I recall correctly, Dr Srinivasan's view was commented upon by Arun_S in these threads some time back (07 Apr 2008) to say that it was not correct.
Now, all and sundry analysts [including the Hawk-Neocon(vert)-Dove], have caught on to Dr Srinivasan's article and are misquoting it to imply that we just do not have Nat U for our PHWRs and the only way out is to sign the sellout and import - period. (Dr. Srinivasan does not stop with just import of fuel, but wants to import LWRs too, lock stock and barrel!)
4) The so-called non-NSG countries who can sell Nat U to India are signatories to the NPT (besides other Treaties between African nations, as has been pointed out in these threads). So they cannot sell Nat U unless India places its reactors under Safeguards. In the pre J1805 time-frame that we are currently talking about, there was no proposal to place any of its India-built PHWRs under the intrusive safeguards inspection. If I recall correctly, to be allowed to export Nat U to India, India would have had to, by the NPT rules, place
all of its nuclear facilities under safeguards -- clearly a no-no.
5) I think at best what we can do now is to import Nat U for Rajasthan 2 (RAPP-2), which is already under safeguards (assuming RAPP-1 is a write-off and hence should be tagged for decommissioning to gain valuable experience in that aspect of nuclear power plant operations). I see no merit in irradiating precious atoms of Nat U mined in India, in RAPP-2. By all means re-negotiate the existing RAPP-2 safeguards agreement with IAEA to permit import of Nat U but without having to go through this charade of "civil" vs. "military" separation. Also, renegotiate the 123 Agreement of Tarapur 1&2 to permit India to reprocess the Pu and use it in Tarapur 1&2 or RAPP-2 (in which case some design modifications and fresh AERB approvals might be required). This may also help in establishing bonafides of USA - Trust but Verfy first! And dump this sellout deal.
