The Hindu Business Line : Uranium crunch hits nuclear power plant operations

New Delhi, Aug. 21 While the prospect of uranium imports to fuel India’s nuclear ambitions hangs in the balance, operations at the country’s indigenously-built nuclear stations are taking a hit on account of an ongoing natural uranium crunch.

Several of the country’s nuclear stations have been forced to operate at extremely low plant load factor (PLF), with the shortage of uranium emerging as the most critical bottleneck.

The overall PLF of the nuclear stations, which cumulatively add up to 4,120 MWe, have been consistently slipping over the last few years, from levels close to 90 per cent in 2002-03. During the first four months of the current fiscal, the PLF was down at 53.1 per cent (see table).

Reactor operations

Out of the existing 17 reactors in operations, except for the oldest two boiled water reactors (BWR) at Tarapur, the rest are pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) fuelled by indigenously sourced uranium.

The 15 PHWRs need about 540 tonnes of natural uranium annually, while the production till end-June was only about 280 tonnes, resulting in scaled-down operations, officials said.

The situation is, however, expected to ease in the coming months with the commissioning of the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd’s (UCIL) new mill in Turamdih in Jharkhand for processing natural uranium ore and the opening of an open-case mine in Banduhurang for the production of natural uranium.

While the existing Jaduguda mill, also in Jharkhand, can process about 2,190 tonnes a day, the Turamdih mill would enable processing of another 3,000 tonnes a day, taking up the total capacity to 5,200 tonnes a day.

“The future of India’s nuclear power expansion plans hinge on the availability of fuel.

“While the current estimated uranium reserves in the country can sustain 10,000 MWe of nuclear capacity, the pace of uranium mining has not kept up with capacity addition, resulting in a growing mismatch in the demand and supply of uranium despite only around 4,000 MWe of nuclear capacity in operations,” a Government official involved in the exercise said.

Besides, being poorly endowed with uranium, India is extracting uranium from extremely low grade ores (as low as 0.1 per cent of uranium) compared to ores with up to 12-14 per cent uranium content in certain resources in countries such as Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada.

This translates into Indian nuclear fuel costing 2-3 times that of international supplies.

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