The Hindu Business Line : Scale up nuclear capacity to 50,000 MW by 2030: Kalam

THE PRESIDENT, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, along with the Minister for Non-Conventional Energy Sources, Mr Vilas Muttemwar (extreme left); Mr Anil K. Agarwal (extreme right), President, Assocham; and Mr D.S. Rawat, Acting Director General, Assocham (second from right), releasing the South Asia Renewable Energy Compendium at the South Asia Conference on `Renewable Energy 2006' the Capital on Tuesday. - Kamal Narang

New Delhi , April 18

The President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, on Tuesday said that the country's nuclear power generation capacity needed to be scaled up to around 50,000 MW by 2030. Referring to existing plans that expect nuclear generating capacity to be 24,000 MW by 2020, he said, "There is a need to plan right from now to increase this capacity to 50,000 MW by 2030."

Inaugurating the South Asian Conference on Renewable Energy here, Mr Kalam said that in order to meet the increased needs of nuclear power generation; technology development has to be accelerated for thorium-based reactor raw materials. The country's present nuclear generation capacity stands at 2,720 MW.

"To maximise thorium utilisation, the development of the fast breeder reactor has been rightly taken up," he said. He also said that India would have to step up its power generating capacities to 400,000 MW by 2030, more than three times the present capacity of 130,000 MW. This can be achieved through three different sources — including hydel capacity, nuclear power and non-conventional energy sources primarily through solar energy, he said.

He also said power generation from renewable sources of energy has to be stepped up to 25 per cent of the total energy requirement from the present 5 per cent.

"India has nearly 60 million hectares of wasteland, of which 30 million hectares can be made available for energy plantations like Jatropha or any other bio-fuel plant through which the country can produce nearly 60 million tonnes of bio-fuel annually," he said.

Six-point strategy

Mr Kalam also suggested a six-point strategy for South Asian countries to increase their energy access and supply to achieve energy security. He advocated the creation of a Web site on Renewable Energy that could provide information on the progress made by South Asian countries in various renewable energy projects. The experiences of all the scientists and engineers should be combined to encourage people to use non-conventional energy, he said.

The President said that different multinational technical task teams can be set up in areas of renewable energy programmes such as solar, wind, bio-fuel, geo-thermal and tidal energy. He said that countries should collaborate and share their technical expertise in this area and further, a roadmap plan should be formalised to meet energy consumption by renewable energy at global and national levels. He asked the South Asian countries to explore the possibility of a commercial joint venture for creation of a large-scale renewable project.

The Union Minister of State for Non-Conventional Energy Sources, Mr Vilas Muttemwar, said, "The grid-interactive renewable power with an installed capacity of over 8,000 MW by March-end (2006) corresponds to over 6 per cent of installed power generation capacity in the country." He said by 2012 around 20,000 MW, equivalent to 10 per cent of the then installed capacity, would be contributed by renewables and is likely to reach 1 lakh MW by 2030.