Government mines for nuclear scientists

It's all hands on deck in the country's nuclear sector.

Envisaging the possibility of qualified-manpower crunch amid plans to scale-up nuclear capacity, the Government is increasing the intake in postgraduate and doctorate streams at the Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), a deemed university run by the Department of Atomic Energy.

Plans to increase the country's nuclear capacity essentially hinge on setting up and operating imported Light Water Reactor technologies, which would require a steady supply of trained manpower — especially high calibre technologists and scientists — to grapple with the four new reactor designs on the anvil.

“Steps to increase the intake at HBNI are under implementation. At present, a total of 1,100 students are pursuing PhD in HBNI. We are getting about 300 young students annually at our Training School and this number will go up further,” a DAE official said.

The government plans to build around 44 nuclear units over 10 years or so. Analysts peg the requirement as at least 10,000 skilled personnel annually.

Globally, the nuclear power sector has been facing a manpower crunch for long, as youngsters increasingly opt for finance and IT jobs over core science and engineering.

DAE officials said that the way the curriculum is designed in India, it would be easier to scale-up and respond to the expected surge in demand.

“In India, the specialisation in nuclear science and engineering is provided at the master's level, as against the practice followed by western countries of offering this at the undergraduate level. This would help us to respond fast to demand as the duration of the master's programme is two years against four years for undergraduate programmes,” an official said.

Stating that the groundwork for increasing the availability of trained professional has started, the official said the DAE's Training School will also be inducting more candidates, where engineers with bachelors degree and scientists with a master's are selected after a “rigorous” selection process.

The Training School has an annual intake of around 300 and these candidates go through an academic programme to learn nuclear science and engineering. In all, DAE runs four major research centres and seven grant-in-aid institutions.  

In its nuclear scale-up plans, State-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has shortlisted four reactor technologies for future Light Water Reactor-based projects — Westinghouse Electric Company's AP1000 series of reactors, GE-Hitachi's ESBWR reactor series, Areva 1,650 MWe EPR and the Russian state-owned firm Atomstroyexport's VVER reactor series.

There are 20 nuclear reactors with a capacity of 4,780 MWe (mega watt electric) in operation in the country. India has drawn up an ambitious plan to have an installed nuclear capacity of 63,000 MWe in 2032, of which about 40,000 MWe will be generated through Light Water Reactors sourced through international cooperation.

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