“The ultimate equity is equal per capita access to carbon space. Inevitably, India’s per capita carbon dioxide emission is going to increase. As the Prime Minister told the developed countries, ‘If you bring down your per capita greenhouse gas or carbon dioxide emission, all that we will guarantee you is that we will never cross you. We will meet at some point and then we will go down together’.
“You can have an aspirational goal about the degree (of decline), but once you have put carbon dioxide into space, it hangs around for 100 years, it’s not going to go away. So even if you don’t allow for the past damage to the environment, the least one can think of is equal per capita carbon dioxide emission for everybody.”
Dr. Chidambaram said that knowledge management in the field of nuclear energy was not a problem in India and China which were witness to a surging demand for energy.
Further, the “nuclear renaissance” in the developed countries which had slowed down because of the nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, was making a comeback, driven in the main by the climate change threat.
India had a three-stage nuclear programme. The first stage was based on heavy water reactors; the second involved extracting plutonium from the spent fuel and recycling it in fast-breeder reactors; and the third entailed the use of thorium (along with the extracted plutonium) in new reactors, thus “closing the nuclear fuel cycle” (with plutonium and thorium).
“When I say that you ‘close the nuclear fuel cycle’ with plutonium, what I mean is that you cut off the spent fuel, reprocess it, take out the plutonium and put it back into new reactors. If you are able to do that, the same uranium will give you 50 times more power.
“But if you are able to close it with thorium, then the same uranium will give 600 times more power. That is why it is so important, not only for India – but also in the context of the climate change threat – to ‘close the nuclear fuel cycle’.”
Explaining the process, Dr. Chidambaram said that when uranium-235 was burnt in the reactors, the residue (or spent fuel) was called uranium-238; this could be converted (after the absorption of a neutron) into plutonium. This plutonium was an excellent fuel for use in fast-breeder reactors (which produced more fuel than they consumed).
Interestingly, India had limited resources of uranium but it had the world’s largest reserves of thorium. Thorium by itself was not a fissile material (and hence could not be burnt in a reactor), but it could be easily converted into uranium-233 which could then go back to the thoriumplutonium-uranium-233 cycle.
Besides, closing of the nuclear fuel cycle would also help reduce the volume of waste to be treated and disposed of. But over and above everything else was one fact – that closing the nuclear fuel cycle would turn nuclear energy into a “near-renewable” source of energy.
Most of these processes would be facilitated by the new generation reactors that were poised to enter the domain under INPRO (International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles) of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was also chaired by an Indian, Mr.
R.K. Sinha.
Another method of increasing energy production was through a subcritical system (this was not a reactor but a multiplying system). The introduction into it of some kind of neutron source caused a “spallation” reaction which resulted in economic and faster production of new reactor fuel from thorium – which was in abundant supply in India.
Thus, Dr. Chidambaram said, it was possible to multiply a one gigavolt (one thousand million electron volt) proton by targeting it against a heavy element to release a huge amount of neutrons. This would then become a neutron source that could be multiplied.
Given the kind of energy demand in the country, it was not enough to produce large amounts of energy only for a short period of time; rather, it was essential to continue producing it so that there was energy security over a long period of time. “And to sustain this you need to go nuclear in a big way.”
Recently, the Prime Minister had said while inaugurating the international conference on peaceful uses of nuclear energy that he was willing to support a programme that would entail the production of a huge amount of nuclear power, even up to 470,000 megawatts.
It was at this stage that Dr. Chidambaram said that if India was to become a developed country by 2050, then electricity production had go up to over a million megawatts – and nearly half of that had to come from nuclear energy.
At that stage, the climate change threat would come into play.
At present the world’s nuclear power production was to the tune of 370 gigawatts and the life of the reactors was about 60 years. If all the uranium available in the world (as also any uranium reserves to be discovered over the next few years) was utilised in these reactors, they would help produce “another 100 gigawatts and then the game is over!”
On the other hand, if the nuclear fuel cycle was closed (as espoused by the Indian nuclear establishment) then the same uranium would help generate 600 times more power.
Denied a visa but decorated with a ‘Padma Vibhushan’
he was denied a visa to the USA soon after India conducted her second peaceful nuclear explosion in 1998. A few months later, the President of India conferred on him the country’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.
Dr. R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the government of India and the man at the centre of the nuclear maelstrom of 1998/ 99, also played a key role in the first nuclear experiment at Pokharan in 1974.
A former Director of India’s primary nuclear facility, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), he is one of the members of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Commission of Eminent Persons.
Born and brought up in Madras, he obtained his M.Sc. in physics from the university there and was awarded a Ph.D. for his award-winning thesis on “Nuclear magnetic resonance” at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Awarded the D.Sc. by eight universities, he became Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1993 and chaired the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1994/95.
It was his key role in the design and successful completion of operation “Smiling Buddha” (he led the Department of Atomic Energy in an extremely secretive manner) working on Pokharan-II in 1998, that upset the US which refused him a visa to attend a meeting of the International Union of Crystallographers’ Society.
Apart from serving as the President and/or Chairman of many organisations, including the IITs at Madras and Bombay and the Material Research Society of India, he has also been associated with Jaslok Hospital for several years as Chairman of its Scientific Committee.
With such impeccable credentials, as enumerated by Dr. Vikram Lele, Dr. Rajagopala Chidambaram was the perfect choice to expound on “Nuclear energy and climate change” which he did at the last meeting of the Club.
The Americans used the “open fuel cycle” in the name of proliferation, whereby they put away the spent fuel as waste (secreting it in mountains and elsewhere). But what they forgot was the fact that plutonium had a half-life of 24,000 years.
“I tell my American friends that you are building a plutonium mine over there, one day you will have to go back to it; and there is no way that you can face the climate change threat using nuclear energy as a mitigating technology without closing the nuclear fuel cycle.”
The world was increasingly coming round to the view that nuclear power was not so bad after all. Italy used to be anti-nuclear (though it had no compunctions about buying nuclear electricity from France), but Prime Minister Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed an agreement in February – and Italy had gone back to being nuclear.
Even the British government was now emphasising that all plants that were coal-based or based on fossil fuels had to be replaced by renewable sources, nuclear energy or the carbon capture and storage system. Of the 20 gigawatts being planned over the next decade, 80% would come from nuclear sources.
The effort all around was to prevent carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere. But that was easier said than done. R&D work was in progress in this field and the costs were likely to be high.
When he asked the President of the International Energy Agency about the additional cost involved, he said that building a coal-based plant would cost $500 million and another $300 million would have to be spent on the carbon capture and storage system.
Apart from Italy and the UK, even committed anti-nuclear activists such as James Lovelock and Greenpeace were now emphasising the need to go nuclear. (See Box on Page 7)
Repeating his assertion that India was fortunate in having had a head start in nuclear reactors and in deciding on a closed nuclear fuel cycle, Dr. Chidambaram said nuclear technology had stagnated in the West; young persons were not entering the field and R&D efforts were slowing down.
But in the two major countries where nuclear efforts had not slowed down, India and China, knowledge management was not a problem and both were at an advantage.
A committee set up by the IAEA to study the “Role of the IAEA in 2020 and beyond” (Dr. Chidambaram was a member), had found that in the two greatest challenges facing humanity, energy security and the climate change threat, the expanded use of nuclear technology offered immense potential.
Finally, Dr. Chidambaram presented his version of the Human Development Index (HDI) which, he said, he had been espousing for 15 years. He said the UN defined the HDI by three parameters, viz., per capita GDP, life expectancy at birth and adult literacy.
However, in his opinion, HDI required only two parameters – per capita electricity consumption and female literacy. He had opted for female literacy because he believed that it was a measure both of literacy and of equity and justice in a particular society.
In those parts of India where literacy was high (such as Kerala), there was little difference between male and female literacy. But wherever average literacy was low, the difference between male and female literacy was high. He had written several articles pointing out that female literacy inversely correlated with infant mortality and birth rate.
India would not become a developed country unless it achieved 100% literacy without gender discrimination. Per capita GDP and per capita electricity production being related; the more energy or electricity produced resulted in more goods being manufactured. Thus, it was possible to replace per capita GDP by per capita electricity consumption.
“On plotting life expectancy against per capita electricity consumption… (I have plotted a logarithmic scale, because on a linear scale all the developing countries will disappear near the origin)… we get an S-shaped curve which is flat at the bottom (about 40 years, because major epidemics have disappeared) and flat at the top (about 80 years, because that’s the average life expectancy).
“But in between it grows very sharply. India is on that curve and it is reflected in my HDI graph. In any energy system, a part will go for industry, another for urban consumption and one part to small towns and villages and this part will help in ensuring better drinking water, better sanitation, better primary health care and so on.
“These have an impact on health parameters, especially life expectancy at birth. India is climbing very rapidly on this front. We want India to reach where Japan and the USA have reached. To get there, our per capita electricity production must go up by six to eight times… to be a developed country by 2050, we must have about one million megawatts. We cannot do that without nuclear energy. There is no other way,” Dr. Chidambaram added.
Answering questions, he told PP Arun Sanghi that by 2020 about 20,000 megawatts would be generated through nuclear power. However, with the likely import of uranium and of reactors, too, the figure could go up to 30,000 or 40,000 megawatts.
Burjor Poonawala asked about the importance of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, given that India was well ahead of several countries in its R&D efforts.
Dr. Chidambaram said that the problem was India’s limited resources of uranium. With its indigenous sources, the country would be able to produce only about 10,000 megawatts; then the process would stop.
“Unless we go for fast-breeder reactors… but then it takes time to take out the fuel from the fast-breeder and to put it back. Already, our heavy water reactors are beginning to run at low capacity factors; we can run at 90 to 80%, but they may come down substantially. The first thing that will happen (with imported uranium) is that the capacity factors of our indigenous reactors will go up.”
However, the most important aspect of the Indo-US nuclear deal was that India had got a waiver from the NSG (nuclear suppliers’ group) which opened up the possibilities of international collaboration with France, Russia and others. Till the NSG waiver, India could have international collaboration only if it put all its reactors under comprehensive safeguards.
Now, India could have facility-specific safeguards, applicable only in new collaborations. As for the existing reactors, there was no need to accept any safeguards over them.
Mudit Jain wondered why Australia refused to give uranium to India in spite of the NSG waiver. He also wanted to know the cost per megawatt of nuclear power.
Dr. Chidambaram said like India every country had the right to collaborate or supply to other countries according to its rules and regulations.
He said the cost of nuclear power was about $1.5 million per megawatt; it was one of the cheapest in the world. However, the capital cost of a nuclear power plant (per megawatt) was higher than that of a coal-fired plant.
“After all, it costs more to build a reactor than to build a boiler! But the fuelling costs are lower… Nuclear reactors use a very powerful but condensed source of energy. Hence the amount of fuel needed is very low.
“Nevertheless, if you are going to build at a coal pithead, a coal-fired plant is going to be cheap. But as you move away from the coal mines, the cost of transportation of coal goes up… On the other hand, if you take the lifetime cost, then the cost of a nuclear plant is lower than that of coal-fired power.”
When Sitaram Shah asked about the price differential between nuclear and thermal power, Dr. Chidambaram said that over the next 20 years most of the addition in India would come from coal-fired plants. After that, nuclear plants would start to catch up. As coal slowly began to run out, efforts would be made to go for an integrated gasification combined cycle (to reduce carbon dioxide emission), but that would raise the plant cost.
Slowly, nuclear power would come into prominence. But till that time, Dr. Chidambaram added, he would opt for hydro plants, whether large or microhydel projects.
The vote of thanks was proposed by IPP Ashish Vaid.