The Hindu Business Line : Will nuclear energy gain greater acceptability?

A view of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. India's advanced heavy water reactor is one of the five designs selected under the IAEA's INPRO programme to develop fail-proof, totally safe technology.

WILL the 21st century see an upswing in the fortunes of nuclear power? Will this clean source of electricity be able to put behind it the lingering threat of a holocaust, and power ahead? Are fail-proof, totally safe reactors that can produce hydrogen cheap and push the applications of nuclear energy in the offing?

More than 60 years after the unlocking of the secrets of the atom, the prime movers in the nuclear business — the US, Russia, Germany and France — and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have embarked on expanding the civilian energy applications of nuclear technology with efforts to reduce risk to near zero by building the next generation nuclear reactors.

These reactors will be inherently passive and shut down automatically. Their design will ensure proliferation resistance and the overall economics would be competitive to other power reactors using fossil fuels or renewable sources. Chernobyl-type accidents will be a thing of the past and dual-use material, such as plutonium, would not get into the hands of rogue nations.

While as of now such a reactor is in the realm of possibility, global efforts to build and convert it into a reality by 2025 are fast gathering pace.

With economics and proliferation emerging as major concerns in the nuclear arena, especially with countries like North Korea, Iran, Libya, and others clandestinely making efforts to build a nuclear arsenal, the pressure on the nuclear power countries to expand the civilian applications has grown manifold.

How will these next-generation reactors work? Giving an insight into the ongoing efforts, Dr C. K. Ganguly, the newly-appointed Director (Nuclear Fuel Cycle) of the IAEA, said two major global initiatives are under way to expand the civilian nuclear power programme in the 21st century.

The IAEA has initiated an Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycle Programme (INPRO), while the US is leading a Generation IV International Forum (GIF) programme.

In both these futuristic programmes, the objective is to develop and use nuclear power reactors for four broad purposes — generating electricity, producing hydrogen fuel, desalinating sea water and heating.

India is part of the IAEA's INPRO programme, which has 14-member-states, including China, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Korea, Argentina, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Turkey and the EC. The programme, started in 2003, has selected three reactor designs, which are evaluated against five stringent criteria laid down by the IAEA.

The designs are CAREM, the Argentinian medium-sized (150-300 Mwe) light water reactor (LWR); India's Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHR) of 300 Mwe and Russia's BN-800 Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR).

The IAEA's five criteria are that they should be sustainable, economically viable, safe, proliferation resistant and ensure waste and environment security, explained Dr Ganguly, who was till recently Chief Executive of the Hyderabad-based Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC).

The GIF venture, started in July 2002, has attracted 10 countries, which include Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The reactor designs that have been put to scrutiny are the gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) of the US; lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) of Switzerland; sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) of Japan; super critical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) from Canada, and the very high temperature reactor (VHTR) of France.

These reactors are proposed to operate at high temperatures to maximise efficiency and minimise radioactive waste. Water coolants such as helium and molten salt are planned to be used. The currently widely used pressurised heavy water reactors have certain limitations in this area. The IAEA will rate the performance and suitability of the new reactor designs, which in turn would help the more than 150 member-countries to choose from them if they want to set up a nuclear power project, Dr Ganguly said.

The most optimistic scenario — which could usher in a nuclear renaissance, if the breakthrough indeed comes — is generating energy the nuclear fusion way. In principle, nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun and the hydrogen bomb, offers a far higher energy output than fission, with far less radioactive waste. But the engineering challenge of producing electricity through a fusion reactor is complicated.

An international collaborative venture with an investment to build a $10-billion fusion experiment is still in its nascent stage.

Producing hydrogen from specially designed nuclear reactors is perhaps the biggest challenge that could determine the fortunes of nuclear energy in the coming decades. `Hydrecity', as electricity generated from hydrogen is termed, is being attempted seriously.

This growing interest in the potential for a `Hydrogen Economy' could have a major influence on the future of nuclear power concerns and its potential to indirectly supply energy for transportation.

Nuclear-fuelled transport has never become a reality, except in nuclear-powered military submarines and surface ships. However, with growing concerns over the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, this could change.

Like electricity, hydrogen as a fuel is environmentally benign; however, like electricity, hydrogen must be produced; pure hydrogen does not exist in nature to be mined or refined. Both of the primary hydrogen production processes under consideration — electrolysis and steam reforming of methane — are energy-intensive and require the consumption of some other form of fuel. Nuclear reactors that can make hydrogen are definitely welcome.

To explore alternatives, major hydrogen research initiatives are currently underway in Japan, China, Europe and the US. These initiatives are also exploring innovative nuclear designs to produce hydrogen — such as the use of thermo-chemical reactions under high heat — which could achieve both greater energy efficiency and carbon reductions for the transportation sector.

A look at the developments in the nuclear power shows that in the early 1940s nuclear energy was primarily directed at building deadly arms. The devastating consequences of this became all too obvious after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

Then came the `Atoms for Peace' initiatives, championed by the US. The search was on for a way to produce electricity to meet domestic and commercial demands as well as complement thermal and hydro power in several countries. However, the perceived risks in nuclear technology continue to dog the rapid growth of this source of energy.

At the end of 2003, nuclear power contributed 16 per cent of the global electricity generation/consumption. There are 442 operational nuclear power plants the world over, dominated by over 100 in the US, around 65 in France, over 50 in Japan, and 19 in Germany; fewer than 10 per cent of the total are in the developing countries.

Many industrialised nations generate substantial portions of their electricity from nuclear fission: France 78 per cent, Belgium 55 per cent, Germany 28 per cent, Japan 25 per cent, the US 20 per cent, and Russia 17 per cent. By contrast, for large developing countries such as Brazil, India and China, the percentages are only 3.7, 3.3 and 2.2 respectively.

Current expansion and growth prospects for nuclear power are centred in Asia. Of the 27 units under construction worldwide, 16 are located in India, Japan, South Korea and China (including Taiwan, China). Twenty-two of the last 31 reactors to be connected to the grid are also in East and South Asia.

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