INDIA IN TRANSITION. Nuclear programme headed nowhere

India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) at COP-21 (the conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change) included nuclear as an energy technology for reducing carbon emissions. The INDC calls for 63 GWe of nuclear installed capacity by 2032.

To put this in perspective, India has 21 reactors that make up just under 5 GWe of installed capacity (the current total installed capacity from all sources of electricity is 281 GWe). The US, which has about ~100 GWe or 99 large reactors, has the world’s largest fleet of reactors. If achieved, 63 GWe would be the world’s second or third largest fleet of reactors. Some of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) projections beyond 2030 are even more ambitious — calling for nuclear energy to supply 25-50 per cent of all electricity by mid-century and beyond.

This raises two significant questions: are the institutions underlying the nuclear energy programme capable of supporting such an expansion, and if not, what changes might make such an expansion of nuclear energy both desirable and possible?

The Indian nuclear programme traces its organisational and institutional structure to its inception in 1948 when its apex policy-making organisation, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created, followed soon after in 1954 by the establishment of the DAE.

Homi Bhabha, the AEC’s first and longest-serving chairman, persuaded Nehru, a close friend, to headquarter the nuclear energy programme in Mumbai so that the DAE would be close to companies that would manufacture equipment. Bhabha also requested that the DAE be granted autonomy in matters of recruitment, materials procurement, and construction.

Indeed, this extensive autonomy granted to both the Indian nuclear and space programmes is now believed to have been critical for their development. Both programmes are widely acknowledged as being innovative — having first localised technologies from the outside, and later developed indigenous variants.

However, the wide discretion granted to the leaders of a nascent nuclear programme, although appropriate at its inception when it faced great technological uncertainty, seems somewhat problematic at a time when the programme appears poised to enter a period of significant growth.

The planning for and construction of nuclear reactors ought to be undertaken as part of broader energy planning initiatives, rather than nearly autonomously by the DAE.

At a time when there is both a growing enthusiasm for global nuclear energy as well as concerns about cost and safety, planners and policymakers should plan for the future with an alertness to many dimensions of the use of nuclear energy: How does nuclear energy fit with other sources of energy? How much nuclear capacity should be brought online and when? How much should it cost? How safe should nuclear reactors be?

Prime Minister Modi consolidated coal, power, and renewable energy under a single ministerial portfolio (Piyush Goyal), whereas nuclear (along with space) remains under the charge of a different minister (Jitendra Singh). While this separation makes sense for security reasons, it prevents integrated planning for energy.

Separating the power and defence dimensions of the nuclear program is tricky but not impossible. One possible option is separating reactors used for civilian and defense purposes (a step in this direction was the separation plan India proposed as part of the Indo-US deal).

A second and critical requirement for a nuclear energy programme is an independent regulator. This was perhaps the most significant lesson learned from each of the three major nuclear accidents (TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima). The Indian nuclear safety regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), although de facto independent is not yet independent de jure . A Bill that would grant it this independence has been now been in the pipeline for over four years. However, a significant increase in the size of the program could possibly overwhelm the regulator or lead to a rapid and poorly planned expansion — both of which would weaken the informal networks that are now critical for regulation.

Any expansion of the regulator should be carefully orchestrated. Nuclear regulators around the world, having grown too large and too set in their ways, are experiencing bureaucratic paralysis. Perhaps, the best and most unfortunate example is the American nuclear safety regulator, which now takes over a decade to review new plant designs.

Although the research, design, operation and regulation of nuclear reactors requires (besides nuclear engineering) scientific and engineering expertise, nuclear engineers, too, will be needed in significantly larger numbers if the size of nuclear programme increases.

At the present, expertise in the nuclear area is chiefly concentrated within the DAE and its daughter organisations and there are few independent experts and centres of expertise outside the DAE that are able to evaluate and independently assess its engineering and policy decisions. Such expertise, would lend greater credibility and legitimacy to projections for the growth of nuclear energy.

The DAE has historically trained its own scientists and engineers through specialised training schools and its own university (Homi Bhabha National Institute). Thus each new generation of Indian nuclear engineers is steeped from the outset in the culture and traditions of the DAE. While this has led to an extraordinary institutional stability, it has also caused a sort of technological lock-in.

India’s technology strategy for nuclear energy today — a three-stage programme with the eventual goal of utilising domestic thorium reserves — is the same as it was in the 1950s, when it was first devised by Bhabha. There is great value in considering alternate technologies and pathways of development and the newer, and in some cases safer, technologies under development around the world.

Outside the DAE, three IITs have graduate programmes in nuclear engineering. To ensure these departments grow over time, stronger ties between the DAE and these departments can and should be developed by recruiting their graduates in larger numbers, drawing on their research facilities and allowing them to access DAE facilities, and contracting research projects to them.

A gradually increasing number of private universities are also beginning to offer courses in nuclear engineering, and this is an encouraging development. However, for nuclear energy, science, and engineering, questions are closely intertwined with those of ethics and policy. Thus the expansion of nuclear energy in India will require not only more nuclear engineers, but a different kind of nuclear engineer, trained more broadly, and attentive in equal parts to science, systems and society.

The Indian nuclear energy programme may be at the cusp of an expansion. However, it seems clear that the institutions that have carried the programme thus far should be reconsidered and rebuilt for a possible future in which the use of nuclear energy grows significantly.

The writer is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. This article is by special arrangement with the Centre for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania

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