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He {S.K Jain, CMD, NPCIL} was in Hyderabad to attend a function where Fuelling Machine head for Advanced Heavy Water Reactor was handed over by Chief Minister K. Rosaiah to Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Srikumar Banerjee. It was manufactured by the city-based MTAR Technologies Private Ltd. . . .. . .
Marking a milestone in the development of sophisticated technology for India's ambitious nuclear power programme, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K. Rosaiah handed over a fuelling machine head for the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (300 MWe) to Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Srikumar Banerjee here on Thursday.
Receiving the gigantic equipment manufactured by Hyderabad-based MTAR Technologies Private Ltd. for Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mr. Banerjee described it as a “marvel of engineering, which is the first of its kind in the world.”
BARC conceptualised and carried out the detailed design of the fuelling machine head and subsequently entrusted the task of manufacturing the prototype to MTAR. The 65-foot machine weighs 40 tonnes and is a vital component of the AHWR.
Praising the engineers of MTAR, BARC and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) for completing the challenging task, Mr. Banerjee said this was the first time that such equipment was made for a thorium-based reactor anywhere in the world.
“It is also a symbol of India entering the third phase of the nuclear power programme…This kind of public-private partnership in terms of technology provides confidence that anything can be built without depending on foreign supplies,” Mr. Banerjee said.
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) officials are scrutinising the university’s as well as their own records to find out how many Cobalt-60 pencils were purchased by Delhi University in late 1968 when it procured the gamma irradiator machine.
Manoj Yadav is counting chickens before a single egg has been layedThe arguments of the Left parties are based on a faulty understanding of the US’s Price Anderson Act. In the US, all nuclear power plants are operated by the private sector, unlike in India, France and Russia where they are all operated by government companies. In the US, all the operators and equipment suppliers have pooled together to form a fund with a corpus of $10 billion. Compensation to the victims of a nuclear accident will be paid out of this fund according to a complex formula. The US government has no obligation whatsoever to compensate the victims of a nuclear accident. The Left parties are falsely claiming that the US has a liability cap of $10 billion. Payments out of this corpus for any one particular accident would be far far less than $10 billion.
Decades from now India might be able to use Thorium for widescale production of power. It is also possible that the technology doesn't work out. Or the Thorium may be off-limits to extraction due to concerns by fishing folk.Since India has developed its nuclear technology in using natural Uranium and Thorium as a nuclear fuel through indigenous efforts, the import of enriched Uranium reactors is considered to slow down the process of nuclear research and development in India.
Obama can say whatever he wants.Obama went on record saying that BP is legally responsible for paying the costs of response and cleanup.
Bill Nelson needs to read his constitution... specifically article 1 clause 3The company also came under fire after it emerged its total liability for damages to the fishing and tourism industry may be limited to $75 million (£50 million) under federal law.
The cap was introduced after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, with anything over that payable by a federal fund, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
BP said it would pay "all legitimate claims" but US Senators from coastal states unveiled a plan to lift the cap to $10 billion (£6 billion).
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "BP says it'll pay for this mess. Baloney. They're not going to want to pay any more than the law says they have to."
The US has a cap on damages because without such a cap, nobody would drill for oil in their waters.No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100505/j ... 413865.jspObama allows India more reprocessors
In a concession of historic proportions, almost similar to the nuclear deal announced in 2005 by Bush, Obama personally intervened against an intransigent state department and introduced a provision to quadruple the number of reprocessing facilities in India in a recently concluded agreement to alter “in form or content” US-supplied nuclear fuel to New Delhi.
Buried amidst pages of legalese in the agreement under an article on “right to reprocess”, the Obama administration and the UPA government “agree(d) to pursue the steps necessary, consistent with their national laws, to permit reprocessing or alteration in form or content of nuclear material... at one or more new additional national facilities in India, beyond the two facilities provided for in these Arrangements and Procedures, established by the Government of India and dedicated to the reprocessing and, as required, other alteration in form or content of safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards.”
Jones took the matter to Obama for a political directive and was surprised when the President directed that four — not one — reprocessing facilities should be provided for in the agreement, obviating the need for new negotiations under any unpredictable future US administration in case the Americans eventually sold more than two nuclear power plants to India which are now on the drawing board.
My personal thanks to you Gerard for a great post which sums up the situation (and bogeymen!) succinctly.Gerard wrote: Decades from now India might be able to use Thorium for widescale production of power. It is also possible that the technology doesn't work out. Or the Thorium may be off-limits to extraction due to concerns by fishing folk.
Where will the baseload electrical power that India needs now for economic growth come from? Where will the fissile material for Thorium conversion come from?
The critics of the nuclear deal have been raising bogeymen for years. By now, India was supposed to have signed the CTBT and NPT. The IAEA would be running all over India, pursuing every last milligram of Uranium. Now they latch onto liability. Even Grand Ayatollah Sokolski gets into the act.
Suddenly reactors are terribly dangerous things that explode every other Friday. They need untold billions in money from the US treasury in case of accident. Many of these same critics advocate huge arsenals. One wonders where the fissile material for thousands of bombs was supposed to come from. Are Indian plutonium production reactors magically safer than US civilian power reactors? Are the Russian reactors safer? Does anyone seriously think Russia will provide ten billion dollars from their treasury in case of an accident at an Indian owned and operated reactor?
Obama can say whatever he wants.Obama went on record saying that BP is legally responsible for paying the costs of response and cleanup.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... -leak.htmlBill Nelson needs to read his constitution... specifically article 1 clause 3The company also came under fire after it emerged its total liability for damages to the fishing and tourism industry may be limited to $75 million (£50 million) under federal law.
The cap was introduced after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, with anything over that payable by a federal fund, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
BP said it would pay "all legitimate claims" but US Senators from coastal states unveiled a plan to lift the cap to $10 billion (£6 billion).
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "BP says it'll pay for this mess. Baloney. They're not going to want to pay any more than the law says they have to."The US has a cap on damages because without such a cap, nobody would drill for oil in their waters.No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
There is a cap on nuclear accidents for the same reason.
If people started to sue the power companies for environmental and health damage due to coal fired plants, there would be caps on that as well.
In the end, it is the state that ends up as provider of compensation.
I think it's a good thing India was not there at this stupid conference which was reduced to a predictable slanging match between Iran and the US. Incidentally I loved the chutzpah displayed by Ahmadinejad. Really ruffled feathers of even the urbane Madam Hillary!Karan Dixit wrote:He said India would not be represented in the conference in any capacity not even as an "observer" country.The NPT review conference is held every five years to assess the progress in reaching the goal set out in the 1970 treaty to disarm and stop the spread of nuclear weapons. India, Pakistan and Israel have not signed the treaty and have been nudged by countries like US to sign it. North Korea withdrew from it in 2003. The 2005 conference for the treaty ended without any concrete result and was widely regarded as a failure.
http://news.rediff.com/interview/2010/m ... erence.htm
The first day of the conference was dominated by rhetorical crossfire between the United States and Iran, as Ahmadinejad rejected allegations his country was building nuclear weapons while the U.S. said sanctions were necessary to stop the Iranian programs.
In the spirit of Gerard's post, yet another bogeyman has been laid to rest.arnab wrote:http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100505/j ... 413865.jspObama allows India more reprocessors
In a concession of historic proportions, almost similar to the nuclear deal announced in 2005 by Bush, Obama personally intervened against an intransigent state department and introduced a provision to quadruple the number of reprocessing facilities in India in a recently concluded agreement to alter “in form or content” US-supplied nuclear fuel to New Delhi.
Absolutely. That is a proof in itself that the Indian babus are not asleep at the wheel.amit wrote: I think it's a good thing India was not there at this stupid conference which was reduced to a predictable slanging match between Iran and the US.
Couldn't agree with you more.Karan Dixit wrote:Absolutely. That is a proof in itself that the Indian babus are not asleep at the wheel.
A dedicated beam line for Indian researchers at the Photon factory, a synchrotron, at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Japan has become operational, according to authorities of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), the nodal institute for the project.
They told The Hindu here that the facility is available to Indian researchers as a result of an agreement signed between the Prime Ministers of the two countries in 2007 and the project is being conducted under the auspices of the Central Department of Science & Technology.
“The facility has been set up this month and scientists from several institutes across the country are currently in Japan to conduct their experiments. It will function at full capacity a year from now,” said Prof Milan K. Sanyal, Director of SINP.
Currently researchers can apply for beam time at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore but the access to the synchrotron at KEK will increase the number of students who can avail of the facility, he added.
No foreign state is going to provide India an unlimited tap into their treasury in event of an accident. They will cap liability as per international treaty norms. There will be claims of shoddy Indian maintenance practices. There will be claims of sabotage.Dealing directly with a State and a non-state entity are two completely different things. A State when entering into contract could amass resources that a non-state entity can never provide.
Assuming ex-post-facto and bill-of-attainder constitutional objections are cleared by US courts.US Government can pass laws that are retroactive
We have had the NPCIL model, where it builds and operates (with assistance sometimes).Gerard wrote: Note that BP is the lease operator. Its subcontractor Transocean was responsible for the rig itself.
The manufacturer and suppliers of the drilling rig and equipment are not liable.
The US origin reactors would be owned and operated by India. The operator has liability.
And President Obama wants new laws to lift the cap on how much firms are liable to pay for such disasters from millions to billions of dollars - and that would apply to this accident, our North America editor adds.
Thank you Amber G garu.WASHINGTON—The White House said Wednesday it is sending legislation to Congress to allow the federal government to collect more damages from companies responsible for oil spills as a sunken rig in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew thousands of gallons of oil along the Louisiana coast.
The legislation comes as President Barack Obama said he is deeply frustrated the leak hasn't been plugged and his administration continues to try to show it is aggressively responding to the disaster.
The Obama administration has stressed that BP will bear the costs of the vast spill despite a cap on damages written into law several decades ago.
There were small protests against BP in several U.S. cities. In Los Angeles, about 50 people protested at a busy street corner near a BP gas station. They waved signs that said "Spill Baby Spill" and "BP is not green, its deadly."
In San Francisco, about 30 people marched in a circle and chanted slogans while in Chicago two dozen protesters passed out flyers at a downtown street corner near BP's Chicago offices, chanting "seize BP, make them pay".
Nearly 100 lawsuits have already been filed across the Gulf region and the disaster, which lawyers see becoming one of the biggest class actions in U.S. history, involves billions of dollars in potential liabilities.So far, 87 sea turtles, 18 birds and six dolphins have been found dead, officials said.
This can be discussed here only so far as 'principles' go, not 'specifics' wrt oil spill.Satya_anveshi wrote:Admins, not sure by tracking this story here is OK with you, as this story having parallel with our nuke liability, it may be relevent here and provide food for thought to some folks debating this bill.
SSridhar wrote:This can be discussed here only so far as 'principles' go, not 'specifics' wrt oil spill.Satya_anveshi wrote:Admins, not sure by tracking this story here is OK with you, as this story having parallel with our nuke liability, it may be relevent here and provide food for thought to some folks debating this bill.
Liability issues, sure. But birds/fish/etc killed stats, top hat/whatever, pollution, etc should go in the right thread.pandyan wrote:Satya ji, NRao ji - BP incident is still relevant for this thread. It gives insight into how the liability cap is irrelevant for the US. However, when India agrees to it, it will be set in stone...(scorpene deal is an example...or the corollary is even if the contract is properly drawn out in good faith, the contracting parties can still screw the other one on fine prints).
Satya_anveshi wrote:The Obama administration has stressed that BP will bear the costs of the vast spill despite a cap on damages written into law several decades ago.
As a very tall crane ever so slowly winched up the circular contraption weighing 78 tonnes with “a spider” gripping it from top on Thursday, the contraption called thermal baffle sometimes stayed still in midair. At times, it swayed slowly as it rose in the air and hundreds of eyes were riveted on it. “Roger,” “roger” went the commands on walkie-talkies to those manning the crane. As the thermal baffle reached a height of about 80 metres, it was gingerly lowered to a height of 54 metres from the ground and then placed deftly inside the main vessel of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) under construction at Kalpakkam, near Chennai.
Applause rang out as the baffle fitted flush inside the main vessel, with just 90 mm of space separating the two contraptions. With that, the tension that had gripped the engineers of Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), which is building the PFBR, was gone. The entire operation took about an hour.
The Centre has sanctioned a pre-project funding of Rs. 250 crore to Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI) for the construction of two more fast breeder reactors of 500 MWe capacity each at Kalpakkam, near Chennai, according to Prabhat Kumar, Project Director, BHAVINI. The money would be used for land acquisition and site-levelling. These two breeder reactors would come up in addition to the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) already under construction at Kalpakkam.
The PFBR had the largest and the deepest excavated pit for any nuclear power project in India. It measured 225 metres by 225 metres and was 20 metres deep.
S.C. Chetal, Director, Reactor Engineering Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, said the construction of the two additional breeder reactors at Kalpakkam would commence by the beginning of 2014. They would generate electricity by 2020. Four more breeder reactors of 500 MWe capacity each would come up at coastal sites, perhaps in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa or West Bengal, Mr. Chetal said.
About 2.25 lakh cubic metres of concrete had so far been used in the construction of the PFBR, said S.S. Dhere, Chief Engineer (Civil), BHAVINI. A record was created when 5,800 cubic metres of concrete was poured into the raft (foundation) continuously for six days. Totally 35,000 cubic metres of concrete went into the raft.
According to B.S. Goel, Director (Finance), BHAVINI, the PFBR project cost had gone up from Rs. 3,500 crore to Rs. 5,600 crore.
In a surprise development, the government has decided to refer the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests instead of the one on Energy as was widely expected.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy is headed by SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav while the one on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests is chaired by Congress member in Rajya Sabha T Subbarami Reddy. Yadav was a vocal critic of the Bill till some time back though he was apparently won over by the government at the time of the Bill’s introduction in Lok Sabha on the last day of the Budget session.
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http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/may/ ... rector.htmRatan Kumar Sinha appointed new BARC director
Dr Ratan Kumar Sinha, closely associated with the design and development of India's [ Images ] first thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, will be the new Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).Sources in the Department of Atomic Energy said Sinha's appointment has been cleared by the Union Government. A formal announcement is expected this week.
inha will take over from Dr S Banerjee, who had been holding the post of BARC director and Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).Born on October 23, 1950, Sinha, a mechanical engineer of the 16th batch of BARC training school, is currently the director of Reactor Design Development Group of BARC, the country's premier nuclear research centre.He has been working on the country's design and development of India's first thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor for the last 15 years, the sources said.
http://telegraphindia.com/1100518/jsp/n ... 458963.jspIt is also believed that because of the presence of radioactive elements like thorium and uranium, red sanders might be used as a coolant in nuclear reactors which could be one of the reasons for the Southeast Asian nations becoming a preferred destination for the logs.
because of the presence of radioactive elements like thorium and uranium, red sanders might be used as a coolant in nuclear reactors