India Nuclear News And Discussion

[Amber G.]

^ Sorry Guruprabhu saar, if you felt it that way. Really not interested in arguments just for the sake of it. Only interested in trying to understand the difficulty faced by nuclear lobby.

OTOH I am very interested in what you say Guru Prabhu sir. I too am not that interested in arguments just for the sake of it, and I am not really interested in worrying about difficulty faced by ignorance-worshiping-anti-science lobby.

[Amber G.]

Science has not lost to hysteria, science has lost to psuedo-science, practiced by immoral people with no conscience who have used the science tag to fool the laity, but thankfully, unlike the church, there are enough sci-tech outsiders who do not buy into incestuous relationship of self-intrests.

yes, Sanku Saar, whatever you say, Saar. You alone stand in judgment, Saar. .
Yes, Jwalamukhi Saar, it is all secret and corrupt and indefensible, Saar.

[I have no HOPE or interest in arguing in the court of Sanku-ji and Jwalamukhi-ji. I can think of a billion more interesting things to do, starting with watching the grass grow at Wankhede.]

Guru Prabhu - You are not alone sir, here is a quote from Prof Tripathi (Aug 2010)

... my bad ... I peeked into the nook-dhagaa to see what is up ... forget it ... its been sanku-fied

Link: The Parable of Munir Chacha

Seriously guys - Is it possible to have serious discussion here in this thread?

[JwalaMukhi]

OTOH I am very interested in what you say Guru Prabhu sir. I too am not that interested in arguments just for the sake of it, and I am not really interested in worrying about difficulty faced by ignorance-worshiping-anti-science lobby.

^ok smart alec, since you cannot desist sniping at someone who doesn't agree to your point of view and your propensity to dub others as anti-science, maybe if you spent less time sniping and appealing to authority your case and interest would be served better.
Arrogance coupled with ego to assume that no one else can appreciate science expect self will make one to label others wily-nily. Carry on..

[Amber G.]

^^^ Thank you sir, for proving my point.

[JwalaMukhi]

Read it all.. ensoi.
http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2 ... _of_nu.php

There are a lot of discussions of the future of nuclear power out there. Most of them don't assume declining other energy resources, however. The emerging assessment I see is that while modern nuclear plants are much safer, that won't matter in public estimation. I generally disagree - I think that when our emergent energy crisis becomes more evident, the public will get over its general fear of nuclear power, whether it should or should not. There will be a clamor for new nuclear power plants. The lessons of Fukushima will be forgotten - much as the lessons of Macondo are rapidly being forgotten. I wrote more about this in my essay about Baby Harp Seals last week.

More than any other kind of energy generation, nuclear frontloads its energy costs dramatically - reliable estimates vary from as low as 12 years before they produce more energy than went into building them to as high as 20. The upfront plant building costs are also vastly higher than for coal, natural gas or any other source.

At this stage (and this is the most critical point) just about EVERY SINGLE BIT of the upfront cost of nuclear power comes from fossil fuels. The energy that runs the economy to make the money to build them comes from fossil fuels. Uranium mining isn't done on solar electric. The transport of fuel and worker, the concrete and heavy materials, the containment systems - everything is built with a huge front load of fossil fuels and fossil fueled money.

It simply doesn't scale - yes, you get more out in the end but that doesn't matter - you can't afford it, not financially, not in energy terms. Rising costs of those fossil fuels increases the upfront costs of any plant, while simultaneously undermining the financial stability of both the public and private resources that might otherwise be building nuclear plants. Those upfront costs of building plants also got substantially higher when the Fukushima disaster proved the limits of arguing that the 100 or 1000 year event will never hit your plant. If nuclear plants didn't take 20 years to return net energy before, they almost certainly do now.

That said, the worst case scenario for a wind farm is pretty benign, and the cost of any given wind turbine or solar panel is pretty reasonable - and it meets the failure analysis too - if you can only build 1/2 your solar panels, that's ok - that's still some valuable electrical generation. A half-built nuclear plant is not an asset.

Financially and in energy terms any major build out will compete with other resources and needs. Now could a society collectively choose to put aside all other projects for the greater good? Sure - but remember, you don't get net energy out of those plants for two decades.

It is also possible that Fukushima has put the final nail in nuclear's coffin - not because people will never accept it, but because it won't matter when they do.

[GuruPrabhu]

^^^ a comment on that blog page:

To be fair, we should require the fossil fuel industry to obtain insurance against claims of global warming catastrophe. No insurance company is going to take that risk.

No comment, except for the bolded emphasis which is mine.

[JwalaMukhi]

^Straw man comments. For sure, if a particular fossil fuel industry is directly held responsible for global warming. When that happens, sure insurance would be hard to come by.
But in the case of nuclear catastrophe, the offending culprit is caught red handed. There can be no escape from that fact, the entity which bears direct responsibility for the outcome. Unless, someone claims magically, the radiation fallout after the catastrophe is proved to have happened due to lurking supernova.

[GuruPrabhu]

Of course. Insurance is about a "proven eventuality". So, why not require it? If coal industry is all above board with all their info and there is no secrecy (unlike nuke) then they should be upfront and take out that insurance. What is the downside?

I think it is a brilliant idea. Compare apples to apples with respect to cost.

[somnath]

Jwalamukhi-ji,

If I may, most of the comments in that blog are untenable from an economic perspective...Whats this rubbish about 1/2 solar panels? How many "1/2 solar panels" will constitute a viable base load power source? And while caviling over the fossil fel intensity of uranium mining, how about checking out the same for manufacturing PV cells for solar? And what sort of "payback" does that have?

In terms of pure "carbon footprint", there have been numerous studies on alternate sources, and most of the analytical studies find nuclear to be coming out on tops...Here is one..

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn268.pdf

The results are illustrative - most importantly, no source that is even close to matching nuclear in carbon footprint can be scaled up to a level that nuclear can be....

I had spearately posted some estimates on relative costs (in India)....

We should not downplay risks - but lets not go overboard and throw the baby out of the bathwater..

[abhishek_sharma]

Should the U.S. More Tightly Control Nuclear Fuel It Makes?

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... ntrol.html

One unheralded aspect of the Fukushima crisis is the fact that some of the fuel burned at the Daiichi reactors is made by U.S. companies. In 2010, Japanese nuclear operators purchased $940 million worth of nuclear fuel from U.S. manufacturers, giving American exporters 73% of the Japanese nuclear fuel market, according to U.N. trade figures. (Fuel in reactor #5 at Fukushima Daiichi was made in the United States.)

Under the 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA), the United States has some control over the disposition of U.S.-made fuel after it is burned in reactors in foreign countries. But some say the U.S. government should reexamine its legal obligations under the law and add safety rules to the agreements countries sign when they buy U.S. fuel or reactors. Alongside the existing clout that the United States has to ensure spent fuel isn't reprocessed to make bombs, they suggest that the United States should push countries to improve safety.

Under the NNPA, the degree of control available to the United States varies from country to country.

The extent of U.S. control depends on "consent rights" agreements which are included in bilateral agreements on nuclear trade between the United States and other nations. According to Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, the law gives the United States limited "legal rights" to intervene in foreign nations' management of spent nuclear fuel. Under the law, in fact, the United States can intervene in the management of any fuel burned in a U.S.-made reactor. With 23 such agreements in place, the United States can play an active role in compelling countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan to carefully manage spent U.S.-made fuel. The U.S. agreement with Korea that governs nuclear materials including spent fuel, for example, stipulates that the United States will "consult with the Government of the Republic of Korea in the matter of health and safety." If the United States does not like the way U.S.-origin spent fuel is being recycled, it can veto that activity.

But under the NNPA, U.S. action can be triggered only by concerns that U.S.-origin spent fuel may be used for nuclear weapons production, or may be vulnerable to theft or terrorism. The law does not give the United States power to actively intervene over safety or environmental concerns. Amending the law would require Congress to tackle the thorny question of whether the United States has any right to encroach on foreign nations' sovereign control over spent nuclear fuel when issues unrelated to weapons proliferation arise. "It makes sense in the abstract," says Christopher Paine of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., about the idea of amending the law.

In a recent paper, Paine promoted the idea that nations would surrender spent nuclear fuel and it would be safely stored under international control. This idea dates to 1946, when it was first proposed in a report written by a scientific panel headed by, among others, Robert Oppenheimer. The concept is actually elaborated as a possible U.S. policy goal within the NNPA, notes Leonard Weiss, the U.S. Senate staffer who is credited as the chief architect of the act. Sixty-five years later, says Weiss, "no system of inspection and material accountancy can substitute for international monopoly ownership" of spent nuclear fuel.

Even without such sweeping reforms, Lawrence Scheinman at the Monterey Institute for International Studies in Washington, D.C., thinks the United States has a lot of latitude to use the existing NNPA to tighten up safe storage of U.S.-origin spent nuclear fuel abroad. Scheinman notes that the United States will renegotiate its 30-year-old bilateral "consent rights" nuclear agreement with South Korea in 2014. Korea is anxious to find new ways to deal with its U.S.-origin spent nuclear fuel, Scheinman says, because the Korean public is unwilling to accept long-term storage. He thinks the negotiations over a new nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea offers the United States the opportunity to engage with the Koreans on environmental safety issues. And he thinks this can be done using the NNPA as it stands: "I'm absolutely certain environment concerns will be raised," he says about the upcoming negotiations with South Korea. Scheinman says by engaging with the South Koreans on environmental safety, the United States would set a precedent for its approach to negotiating with other nations in the future, including Japan.

Sharon Squassoni of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., agrees that an amended NNPA to address safety is needed. But rather than selling nuclear fuel abroad and then attempting to police how its new owners manage it, she thinks the United States should consider leasing nuclear fuel supplies, which is what the Russians do. This might give the United States greater safety leverage, she argues, because as the owner of the fuel it would be better able to insist on safe storage.

But it would require the United States to finally decide on a long-term solution to spent nuclear fuel storage, which with the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain repository project remains a perennial political bugbear. Without a repository, she says, "it is very unlikely that the U.S. will ever take back U.S.-origin spent fuel." This assessment draws an echo from Michele Boyd, nuclear safety campaigner with Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C. Boyd agrees with Squassoni that the United States will be on thin ice advising its nuclear fuel customers on safety abroad until it cleans up its own backyard.

At NRDC, Paine says that discussions he has initiated on broadening the NNPA and other international nuclear energy mechanisms to include safety and environmental concerns have met with fierce resistance from industry and foreign governments. "We found that when we tried to extend the discussion from nonproliferation concerns to environment and safety, everybody got their backs up," he says.

Ted Jones of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, D.C., says the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is already deeply engrossed in international nuclear safety efforts. But the best way for the United States to engage with foreign nations on bolstering safe spent fuel management is through multilateral organizations such as the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, he argues. In recent decades, the U.S. share of the growing fuel market has declined from 30% to just 10%, he notes, so the United States no longer wields the power within international nuclear safety that it did when the NNPA was written. "The idea that U.S. regulations that aren't shared by other supplier countries could be an effective influence on fuel risk is probably not a very good idea," says Smith.

The disaster in Japan indicates that the time has come for bolstered action on both the domestic and the international front, Paine believes. "In the case of Japan, it seems there was a complete safety breakdown," he says. "It raises questions about whether there should be enforceable international standards."

*This item has been corrected 30 March to reflect that comments attributed to Ted Smith of the Nuclear Energy Institute are in fact from Ted Jones.

This item has been corrected 1 April: The original article stated that Henry Sokolski said that the law gave the U.S. "extensive" legal rights over spent fuel it sold to other countries and that it could ask for fuel back if it didn't like how the fuel was being handled. The story has been updated to reflect that Sokolski said those rights were limited to the recycling of fuel. Also, while the United States can ask for fuel back, Mr. Sokolski did not say this was in reference to activity the U.S. didn't like; rather, the NNPA nations must ask the United States before they recycle fuel.

[GuruPrabhu]

OTOH I am very interested in what you say Guru Prabhu ...

I doubt that I have much interesting stuff to say. I do resent the label of "nuke lobby", but I have come to expect that sort of stuff on BRF. [I can assure folks that I am comfortable monetarily and it is not about money, but I doubt if that is enough].

However, I very much like the new theme that is emerging. If you can't beat them, join them. I will now start to write about evils of coal power, the *complete absence* of adequate liability law in this sector, how the corrupt coal mafia is hoodwinking the public, how the entire coal industry is keeping stuff secret, how there have been violations in coal power sector ityadi ityadi. Hysteria for the goose is hysteria for the gander.

Why would concerned citizens oppose imposition of liability insurance on coal power? Maybe, it does not pass the "priceless" criterion of Brihaspati. That calls for a study of how to quantify the damage caused by melting glaciers, loss of land and property due to an eventual rise in sea levels, ityadi. I will do some research into what has been done.

[somnath]

OTOH I am very interested in what you say Guru Prabhu ...

I doubt that I have much interesting stuff to say. I do resent the label of "nuke lobby", but I have come to expect that sort of stuff on BRF. [I can assure folks that I am comfortable monetarily and it is not about money, but I doubt if that is enough].
--------------------
Why would concerned citizens oppose imposition of liability insurance on coal power? Maybe, it does not pass the "priceless" criterion of Brihaspati. That calls for a study of how to quantify the damage caused by melting glaciers, loss of land and property due to an eventual rise in sea levels, ityadi. I will do some research into what has been done.

Guruprabhu-ji, for all the admonitions about the "nuke lobby", it would be interesting to ask those ranting about it to specify who they actually include in that "lobby" in India? Not the biggest, but the only elephant in the room currently is govt of India! In the future, there might be a few multinational vendors/OEMs, but as of now, it is only the GOI..

On liability insurance, well you dont necessarily need one...Carbon footprint calcs have gotten more and more sophisticated over time - and they represnet a reasonably good estimate of the monetary value of present degradation (of course, nothing can be done for impact 20 years from now of emmissions today)....Problem is, if you insisted on insurance, operators would need to take out the sort of (long term, 80 year ) insurance that is so much of a "redeeming issue" wiith our nuke liability act ...................We wont find insurance companies writing such protections...

BTW, I woldnt be all that fussed about "priceless" definitions - by similar definintions, economic logic is often turned on its head

[JwalaMukhi]

Without government handouts and involvement nuclear route plan is dead on arrival.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ower-japan

If the costs and benefits of nuclear power are so attractive, where are the investors? At least with wind and solar power, it is possible to see the cost curve dropping to the break-even point in the near future. Nuclear power, by contrast, may never be able to convince investors to put their money down without government guarantees.

The prospect of cost overruns, waste disposal and extended shutdowns are daunting enough. But mostly, it is the potential cost of catastrophic failure that scares away investors. Large-scale disasters, however rare, are colossally expensive, as well as dangerous. The first estimate of entombing the Fukushima plant is $12bn. And this doesn't include the other liabilities that could force the Japanese government to nationalise the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

Several years ago, I heard Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, say that commercial nuclear power won't be developed in the US without federal liability or financing guarantees. The risks, however remote, are so expensive that investors don't want to take them on, no matter what the return.

For the same reasons, the risk advocates who claim that it is one in a trillion chance would never willingly volunteer or unwillingly be drafted to be the clean up crew at a pay of even say $5000 per hour/per day, when situation which is unlikely to happen, happens. But will mouth platitudes that they would stay next to a plant, but when yellow matter hits the fan, in the case of India, they will generally be crying to the Indian Army to make the sacrifices to handle such things.

Monbiot, Brand and others rightly point to the heavy health and environmental costs of coal power. Researchers from Harvard recently published a study titled "Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal" (pdf) that calculates the full health and environmental costs of coal power in the US to be $175bn to $523bn annually. The costs in China, with its lax or nonexistent health and environmental protections, may well be much higher. Reducing the use of coal is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to reduce air pollution and protect our climate.

The total costs of coal may be high, but the total costs of nuclear power are, in any meaningful sense, incalculable. Investors face cost overruns that could burn through even the deepest pockets. The true cost of waste disposal still is not known. The cost of decommissioning, even decades away, is also a big unknown. And the cost of catastrophic failure is more than a company as large as GE is willing to face.

Looking at the bigger picture, I don't see why I or anyone should apologise for advocating developing energy resources that don't blow up and take their investors with them

[GuruPrabhu]

Problem is, if you insisted on insurance, operators would need to take out the sort of (long term, 80 year ) insurance that is so much of a "redeeming issue" wiith our nuke liability act

Time has come for coal power sector to start paying up for the damage they have caused. We need the right political champion for this cause. I think Arundhati-ji fits the bill. There is Medha-ji, Vandana-ji, Pandey-ji ityadi to be worshipped as well.

This may be OT here so we should move the activism to the power sector dhagaa in TEF.

[somnath]

Time has come for coal power sector to start paying up for the damage they have caused. We need the right political champion for this cause. I think Arundhati-ji fits the bill. There is Medha-ji, Vandana-ji, Pandey-ji ityadi to be worshipped as well.

Some of them will gladly take up the gauntlet (if there was a big enough media circus around it)....Problem is, once we are through with damning coal, hydro (it has already been dam(n)ed many times over) and nuclear - the only option left for mankind is well, to put it politically correctly , go back to "simple living, high thinking"...

[Ravi Karumanchiri]

^^^OT for this dhaaga, but relevant to the comments above:

Yes, nuclear energy has major drawbacks, and so does coal, and hydroelectric, and wind, and solar, and tidal.... but there is this...

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 32#p783232

[GuruPrabhu]

SBSP is far from being practical. I believe that transmission rates of some 10s of kW over a few km have been achieved. Scaling that up to GW over 100 km is still ways off.

And then there will be all forms of liability insurance issue. What if some space debris hits this thing and then the beam is momentarily disturbed and gets focused on top of Arundhati's house? In whose backyard will the receiver be placed? People are freaked by grid power lines with attendant semi-hysteria about EMI causing cancer -- what will they think of a beam from the skies? Given time I can cook up more objections (similar to 100 year tsunami ones). What if an airplane that has lost communications flies straight into the beam?

I would guess that a $1 trillion liability insurance may be appropriate and move this technology forward.

[Sanku]

[
since you cannot desist sniping at someone who doesn't agree to your point of view and your propensity to dub others as anti-science, maybe if you spent less time sniping and appealing to authority your case and interest would be served better.

Actually Sir, if I were to present my real life credentials, some of these people would really worry a lot.


However I firmly believe that arguments are made on the basis of logic reason and each post must stand for itself. Something that I learnt here from folks like Arun_S, Shiv, Ramana and many others. I too in my real life did tend to use authority as argument in the past.

That is the beauty of BRF, that it provides a democratic platform of marketplace of ideas.

However some people are more distinguished and comfortable in publishing in peer reviewed journal with the "peer" sitting in the next office and depending on your vote in the next grant approval meeting.

[somnath]

One of the real issues with the Indian nuke setup is the struture of the regulatory body..AERB is technically and officially "under" DAE..So we have an anomalous scenario where the monopoly manufacturer/service provider/operator is also the regulator...

It is something that people have been complaining about for quite some time - maybe this is the right time to restructure and create a completely independent regulator that does not report to DAE...

[GuruPrabhu]

somnath-ji,

Separation is good, however, you are putting the cart before the horse. AERB, as a regulatory body, belongs with the GOI and hence whether it is part of DAE or not is not the issue. The real issue is that the power sector belongs outside DAE. But, the agit-prop that we witnessed made sure that there was a legislation that barred private companies from entering the nuke sector. As I recall, there was support for that legislation among some folks at BRF. The plan of the much maligned MMS was indeed to separate the two components.

Now it is messed up. In order to separate, you will need a private AERB. How do you see this body forming by some private players? Most likely, they will just hire ex-DAE folks. So, there will not be any clean separation

[somnath]

The real issue is that the power sector belongs outside DAE. But, the agit-prop that we witnessed made sure that there was a legislation that barred private companies from entering the nuke sector

Guruprabhu-ji, you are referring to the Nuclear Liability Act, which has preserved operator status only for the public sector..Yes, that was a singular piece of stupidity that knew no bounds - here was a legislation that was supposed to define "private sector" liabilities braodly, but ended up preserving operator liability for the govt and extending un-priceable insurance coverages on suppliers! And some "nationalists" argued that it was a great deal

Having said that, the question of an independent AERB isnt infructuous completely, even now...For many years, we had a banking sector that was pretty much all public sector, but had a regulator, perhaps the most effective regulator, in RBI that was independent...There is no problem if the personnel staffing the regulator is from DAE - its not the people but the structure tht is important...

A more "relevant" example is perhaps the power sector...In most parts, it is still a monopoly in all three areas - generation, transmission and distribution - but there are now power regulators in all states...How efective? Too soon to call - they were setup under the Electricity Act 2003...But really, the quality of a regulator is dependent on the person, or the initial set of people manning it......dont see why an independent AERB cannot be an effective regulator with someone like Gopalakrishnan at its helm

A regulator cannot be in the "pvt sector", by definition it has to be reporting to the President of India finally...But one that is separate from the DAE will have that much more uthority to rap DAE in the knuckles for indiscretions...Coming back to RBI, it always has at least one (if not 2) Dy Governers from the ranks of (public sector) bankers - but it has been a first class regulator..So staffing should not be an issue...

[Sanku]

Well CAG is a govt body which oversee another Govt body. There are 10000000000000000000000 more numerous examples. So the statement that that the watchdogs can not be independent if they are both in the same sector is ill-informed beyond belief.

However considering that numerous even more ill informed statements have been made, this is par for the course I guess.

[putnanja]

[OT, but just had to chip in]
It is not that coal gets a free ride. In Karnataka at least, there is a big struggle going on against the Udupi Thermal plant, because its emission is causing problems to the villages around it, and crops are getting killed. It is a grass roots struggle that is going on.

With 24/7 news coverage, every issue gets blown up.

I don't have anything against nuclear or coal, just that India is massively short of power. Summer is already here and power cuts, at least in Karnataka will make life miserable even more.

Whether it is coal, nuclear, hydro, solar power etc, we need an independent power and environment regulator(like SEBI/RBI), who can make informed decisions and take decision making out of the hands of politicians looking for narrow political gains

[somnath]

Putnanja-ji,
On pure environmental issues, there is already the Ministry of Environment, which is basically a regulatory body...Power regulators are also in place in most states now...

The requirement for a nuke regulator is more precisely because of the general level of concern around everything nuclear..

[GuruPrabhu]

It is not that coal gets a free ride. In Karnataka at least, there is a big struggle going on against the Udupi Thermal plant, because its emission is causing problems to the villages around it, and crops are getting killed.

It IS a free ride in the sense that this pollution and killing of crops is BY DESIGN. This is their standard operating procedure. This is NOT some freak accident caused by a tsunami. The coal power mafia is systematically polluting the country. It is probably an old-fashioned NJBPRIE (or, whatever) nexus that is screwing INDIA while the Indian media is focusing on events in JAPAN. There is quite a bit of diversionary tactics at play.

[GuruPrabhu]

somnath-ji,

Developing an institution like the RBI for nuke issues will take quite a bit of time. There is no way we can trust two branches of GOI to be independent (in the sense of an arm's length review). On top of them sits the much maligned MMS, so they will ultimately listen to his diktat. Also, unlike banking, nuke does not have the large body of trained experts from which to recruit members of a watchdog committee.

[somnath]

Guruprabhu-ji,

No doubt it will take time - institutions dont get built in a day..And it is people who build instituions, including independence of the instituions...The RBI guv (and all dy guvs) are appointed by the Central Govt - but once in their resp. chairs, the guvs have all been zealously indepndent...The CEC and all ECs similarly are appointed by the Union Govt - but Seshan onwards, we have had a fiercely independent EC...

Structurally, we can even think of innovations like the appointment of the top AERB person being done not by the govt, but by a bipartisan committee (something like the CVC appointment process)...

I am not kidding myself into believing that it will happen quickly, but set the process in motion and maybe in 5-7 years time, we will have a valuable regulator...

[JwalaMukhi]

Coal is not going away any time soon. At most, nuclear fuel can only mitigate a very small percentage to displace coal. But touting nuclear is going to replace most of energy that is being and going to be delivered by coal, is setting up for misinformation.

Beyond that, people in poverty need to make wise choices and investments. Else, as senthil mulainathan's poverty study show that the poor people are most vulnerable and often make wrong choices. Heavy investment into nuclear route is going to short change investment in other sectors. Perpetual dependence on first world to deliver the next best thing to India will become the mantra.

Do not invest heavily in copper cables, when wireless technology is a possibility. Else, India would be looking for the first world to even provide wireless technology. Yes, the next trend of renewable energy technology has to come from elsewhere or India would be set to play catch up game, if heavy investment in nuclear route is done.

[putnanja]

Putnanja-ji,
On pure environmental issues, there is already the Ministry of Environment, which is basically a regulatory body...Power regulators are also in place in most states now...

The requirement for a nuke regulator is more precisely because of the general level of concern around everything nuclear..

It is a political regulatory body, not an independent institution which will take apolitical decisions based on the factual ground situation. Look at how Jairam Ramesh is manipulating the ministry to suit his agenda. Projects are being approved/denied based on political expediencies.

You cannot compare the power regulators in most states to the union environment ministry.

[chaanakya]

Coal is not going away any time soon. At most, nuclear fuel can only mitigate a very small percentage to displace coal. But touting nuclear is going to replace most of energy that is being and going to be delivered by coal, is setting up for misinformation.

Beyond that, people in poverty need to make wise choices and investments. Else, as senthil mulainathan's poverty study show that the poor people are most vulnerable and often make wrong choices. Heavy investment into nuclear route is going to short change investment in other sectors. Perpetual dependence on first world to deliver the next best thing to India will become the mantra.

Do not invest heavily in copper cables, when wireless technology is a possibility. Else, India would be looking for the first world to even provide wireless technology. Yes, the next trend of renewable energy technology has to come from elsewhere or India would be set to play catch up game, if heavy investment in nuclear route is done.

Here is the Breakup of Energy Mix for India

Thermal------------MW---------------- in %-------

Total Thermal-----111324.48-----------64.75----------
--1.Coal---------92,418.38-------------53.75--------
--2. Oil----------1,199.75----------------0.70--------
--3.Gas---------17,706.35----------------10.30-------

Hydro (Renewable)-37,367.40----------21.73------
Nuclear------------4,780.00------------2.78

RES** (MNRE)------18,454.52----------10.73

Total --------------1,71,926.40-----------100.00

**Renewable Energy Sources(RES) include SHP, BG, BP, U&I and Wind Energy

SHP= Small Hydro Project ,BG= Biomass Gasifier ,BP= Biomass Power,

U & I=Urban & Industrial Waste Power, RES=Renewable Energy Sources


Can someone tell me how much addition will be made by NPPs. The Ministry's objective of "Power for All by 2012" does not indicate NPP as such.

If we Achieve 5% Energy Efficiency and 5 % energy Conservation that itself surpassed all power generation by NPPs by 5 times and with much less investment and creating perhaps more employment.Total T&D losses are in the range of 30-35 % (national Avg) and it varies from State to state. So one can understand the problem and that NPP is not going to be any great answer. Yes it is there. Let it be. But to present it as panacea of all problems in power generation may not be the correct picture to portray.

Yes Renewables have its own set of problems , but as you wopuld have noticed it has a very higher component in the over all energy mix of India, far higher than NPP. It will grow and grow better than NPP.

[arnab]

Can someone tell me how much addition will be made by NPPs. The Ministry's objective of "Power for All by 2012" does not indicate NPP as such.

Yes Renewables have its own set of problems , but as you wopuld have noticed it has a very higher component in the over all energy mix of India, far higher than NPP. It will grow and grow better than NPP.

An oldie but a goodie. Please read pages 11-15 carefully (I mean very carefully).

http://www.dae.gov.in/lecture/paperiasc.pdf

Salient features from the paper above:

* By 2050 DAE has estimated that the energy deficit even after using all conventional, domestic coal and hydrocarbon and domestic nuclear, India's energy gap would be 412 GWe

* Beyond 2050 the exponential growth component of nuke power (because of 3 stage ) should eventually catch up with the energy gap a few decades later.

* If India were unable to import nuclear reactors / fuel, India would necessarily have to import 1.6 billion tonne of coal per annum by 2050.

* The energy gap can be met if India imports 40 GWe additional capacity LWR (or any other type) between 2012-20. The spent fuel from these LWRs would launch a series of FBRs thereby adding to the exponential nature of nuclear energy growth.

So assuming each of the EPRs / VVERs are about 1.5 GWe, we need about 26 imported reactors. A far cry from the sell-out brigade screaming that the nuke agreement is a license to bring in 1,000,00000 low quality LWRs (as opposed to one off decisions taken by nationalists)

[somnath]

It is a political regulatory body, not an independent institution which will take apolitical decisions based on the factual ground situation. Look at how Jairam Ramesh is manipulating the ministry to suit his agenda

Mandates are different..The Environment Ministry looks at purely the environmental impact of projects, not issues like design integrity, commercial and economic viability etc...Regulators do the latter...

About Jairam Ramesh, I think he is the smartest guy in the cabinet - he is smart, engages with the public, makes his policy choices transparent with a rationale, and generally thinks aloud..Far cry from the doddering cynical oldies that think the public is too irrelevant to discuss policies with..

Yes Renewables have its own set of problems , but as you wopuld have noticed it has a very higher component in the over all energy mix of India, far higher than NPP. It will grow and grow better than NPP.

Chanakaya-ji, the share of renewables has gone up recently mainly on account of wind and solar - on a pure carbon footprint impact, both are far inferior to nuclear...the reason why they have taken off are 1) pvt sector has been allowed and 2) tax breaks, huge tax breaks...If the government had allowed pvt sector operators in nuclear power, there would have been at least 10 projects nearing financial closure by now - everyone, from L&T to Reliance to Areva was interested...

Nuke power is no panacea, but it is the most viable long term alternative for base load power - to throw it away in a fit of panicky pique would be as stupid as not progressing manned space exploration because space shuttles keep blowing up...

[abhishek_sharma]

Fukushima shadow on Jaitapur project

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Fukushima ... 81356.aspx

North India shaken by quake; N-plant safe

http://www.hindu.com/2011/04/05/stories ... 060100.htm

[Sanatanan]

Abandon the import of nuclear reactors: Dr A GopalakrishnanPublished: Monday, Apr 4, 2011, 3:55 IST

[quote]The decision taken by the government to import about 40,000 MWe of Light Water Reactors (LWRs) within the next two decades, has no justifiable technical or economic basis. In spite of repeated demands from various quarters, including Parliament, no document on India’s nuclear power policy has ever been presented by the government for debate.

The prime minister stated on March 29, 2011, “Today India has fully demonstrated its capabilities in all the scientific and technological aspects associated with the design, development, construction, operation and maintenance of nuclear reactors and associated fuel cycle facilities. We owe this to the success of the indigenous three-stage programme whose foundation was laid by Dr Homi Bhabha.” Here, he is referring to India’s present capability to design and build up to 700 MWe capacity Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). With the demonstrated indigenous expertise of having designed, built and operated 17 PHWRs on our own up to 540 MWe capacity, and with four 700 MWe PHWR construction projects in hand, there is no reason why India has to diversify its nuclear fleet to include several new types of foreign reactors, of which neither Indians nor foreigners have any experience so far.

The reason for bringing in imported reactors is neither technology driven nor is it for the economic benefit of the country. In the context of the need to maximise plutonium production from the first stage reactors to rapidly advance along the three-stage Bhabha Plan, it should be noted that the Indian PHWRs are the most efficient plutonium producers, far superior to the high burn-up LWRs which DAE is planning to import. We have complete mastery of PHWR technology, with three generations of engineers and scientists who have been trained in all facets of related activities, with existing full capabilities for its manufacture and fabrication within Indian industries. These capabilities are already demonstrated and today we have the inherent indigenous ability to further extend the PHWR designs to 1000 MWe rating.

The natural uranium to fuel the PHWRs and the production and availability of most of the critical components for these reactors are indigenously assured to a great extent and, if necessary, these can be supplemented with item-wise imports, which are now permissible under the NSG clearance. As for costs, a 700 MWe PHWR can be built within a capital cost of Rs8 crore/MWe, whereas a 1650 MWe French EPR at Jaitapur will cost the tax-payer more than Rs21 crore/MWe.

The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had framed a nuclear power plan prior to 2004, a copy of which is available at the DAE website [“A Strategy for Growth of Electrical Energy in India”, http://www.dae.gov.in/publ/doc10/index.htm]. According to Table-11 of this document, the DAE had confirmed that 208,000 MWe of nuclear power can be generated in India by 2052 using Indian uranium resources, without having to import even a single reactor beyond the two Russian VVERs at Kudankulam, which were by then under construction. This itself would mean a string of 208 nuclear reactors, each of 1000 MWe capacity, to be set up along our ecologically fragile coastal regions by 2050!

With Manmohan Singh coming in as prime minister in 2004, the US administration sensed a new-found opportunity to push hard for a strategic alliance with India. Among the US objectives were the desire to bring several of our PHWR installations under IAEA safeguards, to revive the moribund US nuclear industry by selling US-design nuclear reactors to India, slow down and eventually stop India’s indigenous nuclear programme based on the Bhabha Plan which successive prime ministers had been nurturing for decades, and to get India diverted away from the plan to utilise its thorium resources through building fast-breeder reactors. The prime minister’s office (PMO), for the first time in our history, spearheaded an informal alliance of few key politicians, the US and Indian corporate sectors and their federations interested in profiteering from the Indian nuclear power business, along with a small group of top-level officials in the PMO, the DAE, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), etc, who collectively helped the PM all along to make a baseless case for import of reactors, without any qualms about ignoring the ethical and professional norms which they were expected to uphold.

Throughout the years of deliberations on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) was also kept out of the loop and not even consulted on the safety and reliability of reactors to be imported. This collective also successfully kept Parliament and the people of India deliberately in the dark throughout this decision-making process. And all this is still continuing under cover of the Official Secrets Act, which is unnecessarily being applied to this civilian nuclear power sector, mainly to hush up the irrational policy decisions and the questionable financial deals between the government and corporate business houses.

By 2007-2008, the PM had taken a unilateral decision to import at least 10,000 MWe LWRs from the US and he asked the then foreign secretary to make this promise in writing to the US state department. It would now appear that the PM had most likely made a firm commitment to the French president as well, to similarly import six of their still un-built & untested Evolutionary Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) at an exorbitant cost. Both these actions were taken without informing Parliament and without seeking any detailed techno-economic or safety analysis to justify this approach. The present secretary DAE and his two predecessors, the CMD of NPCIL, the then foreign secretary & national security adviser and a few of the top corporate business leaders appear to have been privy to these decisions, which were developed and taken in close liaison with the PM. The top echelons in the PMO, DAE, NPCIL etc. went along with these illogical decisions, taken mostly out of political compulsions and as a quid pro quo to the foreign governments, who helped India in getting the IAEA & NSG clearances, and as a reward to the nuclear industries in India and abroad.

By early 2008, at the height of the opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, the PM felt it would be safer to have a scientific fig leaf for his unilateral and illogical decisions. The then secretary DAE, along with his close associates in NPCIL and the PMO, severely and irrationally modified the 2004 DAE nuclear plan and came up with a statement that the country needs to urgently import 40,000 MWe of LWRs in the 2012-2020 period to avoid a 412,000 MWe electricity generation gap which would otherwise occur by 2052 ! This revised policy is also now available at the DAE website [“Evolving Indian Nuclear Programme – Rationale and Perspective, Public Lecture by Dr Anil Kakodkar, Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore, July 04, 2008, http://www.dae.gov.in/lecture/paperiasc.pdf]. The projection of the DAE is that India will then be able to use the additional plutonium from these imported LWRs to augment the power generation through fast breeder reactors by approximately an additional 340,000 MWe. With this addition, the DAE projects India will have a total of about 655,000 MWe nuclear power generation by the year 2050. That will be 655 nuclear power reactors each of 1000 MWe capacity, strung along a total coastline of about 6000 kilometres the country has – about 109 six-reactor nuclear parks, spaced along the coast every 55 kilometres apart!

What a mad programme! Even without Fukushima happening, should we be subjecting our future generations to such a crazy, high-density nuclear programme in 2050, just so that this PM can justify importing 40,000 MWe foreign nuclear plants? The prime minister and his PMO, DAE & NPCIL officials of the present and past must be held culpable, if this is indeed the thoughtless nuclear power path they have been charting for us.

Under the above circumstances, the government must immediately and permanently cancel all plans to import foreign nuclear reactors, irrespective of the unauthorised promises given by the prime minister to foreign governments and any preliminary agreements which NPCIL may have signed with foreign companies. The entire subject of the Nuclear Power Policy under the Manmohan Singh governments needs a thorough debate in Parliament and should be openly discussed with energy specialists in the country. It should be preceded by a re-look at the overall energy policy of our country to assess whether all viable non-nuclear electricity generation schemes have been given their due priority, before we jump-start an extensive nuclear power programme, even if it is based on the Bhabha Plan. Plans for conservation of electricity, loss minimisation, use of renewables, and the preparation of a clearly aggregated minimum electricity demand projection are also to be emphasised simultaneously. [/quote]

[abhishek_sharma]

Meltdowns and Fallouts

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... n1/English

The metaphors used during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 – earthquake, tsunami, meltdown, black swan, and fallout – are back with a vengeance, but now they are being recycled literally. In fact, the financial crisis and the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear-power plant in Japan share at least four similarities:

· The “black swan” metaphor suggests that these events reflect difficulty in correctly assessing risks in complex systems.

· Regulators proved unable to forecast and prevent the crisis.

· The “fallout” is potentially cross-border in nature.

· The costs incurred by the imprudent companies will be partly socialized.

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan is, of course, a highly exceptional event – an event so rare that its probability cannot be well assessed with models based on limited historic data. Events with very low probability but high impact – so-called “tail risks” – have also been at the heart of the financial crisis.

One cause of the financial crisis was financial institutions’ appetite for selecting (and in some cases, creating) products with above-average returns in normal times but excessive losses in exceptional cases. Old nuclear-power plants in seismic zones have a similar payoff structure. Moreover, both the financial and nuclear risk models seem to not have correctly appreciated the correlations between different risks.

While financial institutions tried to mitigate risks by bundling subprime mortgages, Fukushima’s cooling system was able to cope with either a blackout and an earthquake or a tsunami. But, in both cases, the failure probabilities were correlated, and their joint occurrence led to catastrophe.

Both nuclear and financial “meltdowns” tend to leave behind “fallout.” In the Japanese case, only wind and the lack of a land border prevented a major impact on neighboring countries. In continental Europe, many reactors are within 100 miles (161 kilometers) of another country’s territory. So a nuclear accident in Europe would likely have cross-border consequences.

But, like financial regulation, nuclear regulation in the EU, even with its Euratom treaty, is still essentially national. And, given the deep disparities in nuclear power’s importance for European economies, consensus on regulatory harmonization is hard to reach.

France, for example, will remain dependent on its nuclear-generating capacity, which will continue to account for the largest share of its electricity. Italy, on the other hand, might wish for a zero-nuclear risk environment, as it does not produce electricity from nuclear power but is surrounded (within about 100 miles) by one Slovene, one Swiss, and six French nuclear-power plants. French reluctance to subject its nuclear plants to European regulation determined by its nuclear-skeptical neighbors is comparable to British efforts to prevent major European harmonization of financial-market rules, owing to the importance of its financial sector.

Another similarity between Japan’s current crisis and the recent financial crisis is that the false risk assessment was largely due to the asymmetric distribution of social welfare and individual cost implied by more effective risk mitigation. Both Lehman Brothers and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) were able to increase their profits as long as the risk they were willing to accept did not materialize. Their management certainly benefited as long as everything went well. When crisis hit, however, the cost of the meltdown exceeded the companies’ equity and thus had to be socialized.

So there is a structural failure in coping with complex private activities that risk leading to large societal damage. In fact, this is well understood – and is the reason why we have regulators for most such systems.

But, prior to both Japan’s nuclear crisis and the financial crisis, regulators were unable to prevent the risk. America’s SEC did not require more capital or halt risky practices at the big investment banks. Japan’s nuclear regulator did not enforce stricter security rules.

There are several reasons for this regulatory failure, including the inability to acquire and process all relevant data, the political difficulty of enforcing strict judgments, and the difficulty of modeling tail risks. Consequently, relying on low failure probabilities, national policies, the caution of private actors, and monitoring by regulators seems to be insufficient to prevent catastrophe. So what should be done?

As in finance, ensuring that the originator of a risk pays the cost seems to be the most sensible approach. If each nuclear-power plant was obliged to insure against the risk that it imposes on society (within and outside the country of its location), it would face the true economic cost of its activities.

In this ideal world, insurance for individual plants would be linked to factors that can and cannot be influenced, such as location in a densely populated area and the local population’s risk-averseness. Furthermore, risk assessment should be linked to individual plants’ risk factors, such as location in a seismic zone, secondary containment, safety redundancies, etc. Plants in densely populated areas with lower safety standards, for example, would face higher insurance costs, which could lead to a self-selected phase-out of the riskiest plants.

Implementation of such a scheme is unlikely, however. First, it is virtually impossible to assess individual plants’ risk profiles correctly. Second, such a scheme would impose large costs on only a few companies in a few countries. Their governments would fight hard to protect these companies from being required to pay for the societal risks that they represent.

This likely outcome mirrors the initiative for a European or global banking fund to insure against the next financial crisis. In both cases, however, perfect insurance could nonetheless serve as a valid benchmark to guide the choice of policies to implement.

Moving towards this benchmark could be aided by two measures: first, a phase-out of nuclear power plants not according to their age, but to their risk profile, however schematically this is calculated; and, second, introduction of mandatory cross-national insurance for nuclear accidents. Under such a scheme, the Soviet Union in 1986, for example, would have been required to pay for the costs that the Chernobyl accident imposed on European farmers and health-care systems.

Implementing these improvements will be difficult, to be sure. As with the financial sector, however, crisis can be the mother of reform.

Georg Zachmann is a Research Fellow at Bruegel.

[abhishek_sharma]

Brookings Podcast: Japan's Fukushima Disaster Slows Plans for Nuclear Renaissance

http://www.brookings.edu/multimedia/vid ... dcast.aspx

[somnath]

Santanan-ji,

Interesting article by Dr Gopalakrishnan...Some relevant points, but some not so..

With the demonstrated indigenous expertise of having designed, built and operated 17 PHWRs on our own up to 540 MWe capacity, and with four 700 MWe PHWR construction projects in hand, there is no reason why India has to diversify its nuclear fleet to include several new types of foreign reactors, of which neither Indians nor foreigners have any experience so far

This is a new bugbear, and I am really surprised that Dr Gopalakrishnan falls for it too...Did Indians have experience in CANDU reactors before we imported them? Or BWRs? And Areva does not have "experience" in EPR is like saying we dont have experience in FBRs - maybe we should put on hold the FBR programme as well?

These capabilities are already demonstrated and today we have the inherent indigenous ability to further extend the PHWR designs to 1000 MWe rating

another paper tiger? Is the 700 MW design executed on the ground? How long will it take for the 1000MW design to come on board?

But more interestingly, he makes an amazing, if Freudian confession..

most of the critical components for these reactors are indigenously assured to a great extent and, if necessary, these can be supplemented with item-wise imports, which are now permissible under the NSG clearance.

So the nuclear deal was worth it, wasnt it Dr Gopalakrishnan?

As for costs, a 700 MWe PHWR can be built within a capital cost of Rs8 crore/MWe, whereas a 1650 MWe French EPR at Jaitapur will cost the tax-payer more than Rs21 crore/MWe.

A bit of a red herring..One, it does not include the R&D costs for our PHWR design..Two, it does not include things like PLF and plant uptimes of our PHWRs versus what is par for LWRs in Europe - historical data is very very poor, documeted in many places, including some of Dr Gopalakrishnan's own critiques! Last, it does not take into account the marginal cost at which power can be sold - according to sources avaialble (I posted some before), LWRs are quite competitive, even against a "stripped down cost" of PHWRs..

About the rest, there are simply sweeping insinuations on the integrity of certain key principals, allusions to yet-unsigned "commitments"..But above all..

Dr Gopalakrishnan thinks this is kosher.

his itself would mean a string of 208 nuclear reactors, each of 1000 MWe capacity, to be set up along our ecologically fragile coastal regions by 2050

But this isnt..

With this addition, the DAE projects India will have a total of about 655,000 MWe nuclear power generation by the year 2050. That will be 655 nuclear power reactors each of 1000 MWe capacity, strung along a total coastline of about 6000 kilometres the country has – about 109 six-reactor nuclear parks, spaced along the coast every 55 kilometres apart!

[arnab]

Santanan-ji,

Interesting article by Dr Gopalakrishnan...Some relevant points, but some not so..

completely agree with somnath's points. Interestingly, the article is headlined as 'Stop the LWR imports', but what Dr. Gopalkrishnan calls a 'mad' idea is the fact that India will build 655 Fast Breeder reactors as part of the 2nd stage of the cycle. So, is he against imports or is he against the 3 stage cycle policy?

second, he does not offer an alternative. He does not dispute the 412 GW energy gap. So what should we do? import 1.6 billion tonnes of coal per annum beyond 2050?

[Sanatanan]

Recently there have been a few posts in this thread, regarding independence of the Indian Nuclear Regulatory Authority. In this connection it would be nice to know:

(1) Indian Railways is a massive organisation impacting the lives of a very large number of people every day. Is there a Regulatory Authority to oversee the design, manufacture, construction, operation and maintenance work of Indian Railways?

(2) If yes (as I feel, might be the case), is it independent of the Railways Organisation? (A genuine and non-rhetorical question is whether employees of the Railway Regulatory Authority are entitled to railway passes for themselves and their family?)

(3) Have they been able to prevent collisions, derailments, bridge collapse and other (non-terrorist) railway accidents?

(4) In Japan, has any one so far questioned why their Railway system was apparently not designed to withstand the tsunami that actually arrived (never mind the past 1000-year history), with the result that three whole trains were washed away without leaving a trace?

[somnath]

Sanatnan-ji,

Absolutely on dot...Safety is the respnsibility of the Railway Board, which is also the operator! And yes, members of the board do get railway passes for life

Railways is also an anachronism of sorts - it needs an independent safety regulator now, in fact it needed one many years back...But its too much of a milch cow for "cow belt" politicians (and wannabe bengal CMs)...