India pours first concrete on Kakrapar Reactors 3 and 4.

[NNadir]

India's first pair of indigenously designed 700 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) are now officially under construction with the first pouring of concrete at Kakrapar 3 and 4.

Ground breaking for the two units, in Gujarat state, began in January 2010 and excavation works and other preparatory site works were completed by August, in record time according to Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). Approval from India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) was needed before concrete pouring could go ahead. The units are slated to start up in 2015 and 2016.

Indian plans call for 20,000 MWe of nuclear capacity to be on line by 2020 and 63,000 MWe by 2032, with nuclear supplying 25% of the country's electricity by 2050. It already has 19 operating reactors totalling 4183 MWe, and Kakrapar 3 and 4 mean the country now has 6 reactors under construction, the others being a 220 MWe PHWR at Kaiga 4, two 1000 MWe Russian-design VVER pressurised water reactors at Kudankulam, plus the 500 MWe Kalpakkam prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR). All are scheduled to start up by mid-2011, although reports earlier this year suggested that the Kalpakkam PFBR could be delayed by up to a year.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-First_concrete_for_Kakrapar_3_and_4-2211107.html">First concrete for Kakrapar 3 and 4


In 2009, California produced http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/ELECTRICITY_GEN_1997-2009.XLS">847 GWh of solar energy. This is 14 GWh less than California produced via solar energy nine years earlier, in 2000, way before Governor Hydrogen Hummer passed the "million solar roofs" bill which has done nothing to make solar energy be something other than the least significant form of energy in the State. (Dangerous natural gas fired plants produce 296,821 GWh of electricity, with all of the waste being dumped in Earth's atmosphere.) Converted to average continuous power - even though solar energy cannot produce continuous power, the entire solar power output of the State of California is the equivalent of a 96MWe power plant, any kind of power plant, operating at 100% capacity utilization.

Thus to produce as much energy as the entire State of "Million Solar Roofs" California produces from solar energy either of the new Indian reactors would need to operate at 13.8% of capacity utilization, something it is easy for nuclear reactors to do, since most operate in the 80-100% range, easily making nuclear energy the most reliable form of energy in the world.

India will almost certainly the first country in the world to switch to a thorium based fuel cycle, using the PHWR technology in which it has now surpassed Canada and in which it clearly now leads the world.

Have a nice evening.

[joshcryer]

1. Interesting, according to that, CA's solar power declined from 2000-2006.

What happened there.

[NNadir]

2. Well, some of the ballyhooed solar thermal plants crapped out and Solar One blew up with

a therminol fire.

It was quite a mess, releasing a huge toxic cloud.

There used to be some startling pictures of this event on the internet, but they fell down the memory hole.

Maybe the rest of the decline owed to the Santa Anna winds blowing dust on the solar panels, carbon particles dropping out of the skies in the big fires, and, oh yeah, some of the solar roof houses burning up in fires.

Since solar energy is a trivial form of energy, it doesn't take much to make it decline.

[joshcryer]

3. Fair enough, looks like a flat line anyhow.

[NNadir]

6. The graph's color scheme makes it tough to read. What is interesting

is that one can quite nearly draw a line of reflection between hydroelectric (on the bottom) and gas (on the top) and nearly see a reflection.

If it doesn't snow in the Sierras and in Colorado, they're going to burn more gas. The lines for wind and solar seem to be blocking each other out near the bottom. I doubt they are they produce enough energy to justify the thickness of their lines.

A lot of what is on "net imports" comes from the Palo Verde Nuclear Station in Arizona. This plant has an operating cost of 1.6 cents per kwh, representing - hydro aside - the lowest cost power in the Southwest.

It supplies huge shares of the electricity of the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles and thus is a major source of California "imports."

[joshcryer]

9. Yeah, sorry, those were the default colors that Excel made.

Not really a charting person, just charted it directly from the spreadsheet by selecting the values and clicking "insert chart."

To clarify for anyone wondering: nuclear is the line that is above / equal to hydro (for the most part). Wind is blurred in the other flat lines that don't go anywhere, slightly above solar, but projected out, would likely take a century to have any impact.

GG could probably make a nicer graph.

[AlecBGreen]

4. I have a question

It already has 19 operating reactors totalling 4183 MWe

That means on average each reactor is ~ 220 MWe. Why so low? I thought most reactors were in the 500-1000 range.

[NNadir]

5. India has tended to build small reactors, usually HWPR.

Because India had rejected the non-proliferation agreement, and developed nuclear weapons - something of which I do not approve - they were required to build an entirely endogenous nuclear infrastructure.

At the time of their isolation, they only had CANDU's from Canada, and realizing that sooner or later they would need to switch to thorium - becuase they don't have and couldn't get much uranium - they decided to build an endogenous nuclear infrastructure. This process is now about complete.

Because of the limited capacity of their industry, small was in this case better.

That said, they recently completed fabrication of reactor head for their 500 MWe FBR head in record time and under budget, that was early last year. Their newer reactors will apparently be larger.

India will have within the next half century, the world's largest inventory of U-233, made from thorium in reactors, an extraordinary nuclide that can be used for thermal breeders.

With this in mind, I predict that their nuclear industry will be a huge fuel exporting industry and will become a tremendous cash cow for the nation.

They claim that they are planning to build 63 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050. I would not be surprised to see that figure rise over the next decades.

[AlecBGreen]

7. follow up

thanks for the quick reply. At the risk of revealing my ignorance of nuclear power, just wanted to ask a few more questions to clarify.

India developed nuclear arms so they were "they were required to build an entirely endogenous nuclear infrastructure." Was this set down by the IAEA?

Because they had to source their own nuclear fuel internally (right?) they built multiple, smaller plants of the CANDU design. Why? It seems to me the economy of scale would make so much redundant infrastructure prohibitively expensive. If they are all CANDUs and they all use the same fuel type, why not build a smaller number of larger plants?

If/when they transition to more thorium reactors, will the waste & spent fuel from the heavy-water CANDUs they have now be usable in a Thorium reactor? Will the U-233 you mention be a byproduct of the new Thorium reactors or the older heavy-water CANDUs?

Thanks for shedding some light on this.

[NNadir]

8. Most nations that are signatories to the NNPT refused any kind of nuclear technology

exchange with India.

I very much doubt that any reactor related technology was ultimately mysterious to them. If you really look, you can find out anything you want about reactor physics, and for that matter, bomb physics in the public sphere, provided one has a modicum of a decent scientific education. This is, apparently, exactly what the Indians did. If you go to any major university, you will see Indian students, graduate students, post docs and professors.

Ironically, the technology that has the largest dual use capacity is enrichment, which frankly is the only nuclear technology that I think should be restricted, and is precisely the technology that India will be the first country not to need - if their nuclear program renounces, as it should, nuclear weapons. Moreover, they will be the country - because of the type of reactors that they have, to engage in nuclear weapons disarmament, should they choose that, as we hope they will.

I have been over the design of their FBR in some detail. It definitely has been designed to consume plutonium to breed U-233 from thorium. They carefully analyzed the fastest path to increasing fissile fuels. The plan is to take plutonium from their used nuclear fuel, place in the fast breeder with depleted uranium rods and thorium rods.

All U-233/Th-232 heavy water thermal reactors are breeders, and every reactor of this type can achieve very high burn-ups. I am sure that within a few decades, India may have large inventories of U-233 which hopefully, it will be willing to export abroad.

In a world with large inventories of U-233 and plutonium, enrichment can be phased out.

I agree that small reactors are less economic than large ones over their lifetime, but they have a much lower capital cost. In order to build a large nuclear reactor, one must make a commitment - and care about the long term - but we live in a world in which short term thinking is dominating world culture right now. This means making a huge financial investment so that one's great grandchildren might live better, or at least as well, as you do.

When India began it's nuclear infrastructure, it did not have access to much capital, nor did they necessarily have the machinery or skills to build, for instance, large pressure vessels.

They can do that now. This is reflected in the fact that the scale of Indian nuclear reactors are now increasing.

[joshcryer]

10. Do they have any plans to research / develop U-233/Th-232 MSR's?

You mention HWRs here and I believe I asked you this before but I can't remember.

[NNadir]

11. India shows no signs of developing an MSR, although they, again, will be well

suited for a U-233 based version.

The most serious MSR program I know of is French.

Many Americans, myself included, are enamoured of this technology, but I think the real caveat is that many people are reluctant to develop a technology that will put fuel manufacturers out of business.

Watch Kirk Sorensen. He's a serious driven guy, and he's young. I might see him driving this program deeper and further than it's ever gone.

We have a lot of patents flying around, and many technical discussions going on publicly in the primary literature and privately among enthusiasts, as well as the web, but the MSR - although it is a technology that is sure to one day be realized - is not something I expect to see go commercial in the near term.

I find this odd in many ways, but unsurprising. What is technically superior is not always what is commonly used. This is obviated by the fact that the world still burns coal when nuclear is available.

[joshcryer]

12. That's really what I don't understand about the people in charge.

While capitalism is "great" and all, the people in charge need to stand up and say "Look, researching technologies that change how capital flows in some areas won't kill us." This is what's so humorous about people against advanced nuclear technologies (which have not yet shown commercial ability), they argue against these technologies because they're not profitable in the status quo way. "We won't build closed cycle nuclear because fuel processing is so profitable, ergo it's not viable."

Well, look, neither are the fucking renewable technologies that show growth potentials so pitiful that it will take centuries for them to even break even with mere natural gas.

I'm all for, and you won't like it, solar CSP. But I know dang well it ain't viable unless you put a factory out in the desert that sits there for a decade solely making CSP. Converting a whole desert, hundreds of thousands of square miles, into viable energy producer. This is physically possible (both resource-wise and technology-wise), but such a system would have enormous capital costs (billions of dollars) and has no investment potential (who wants to invest in something that won't give back returns for decades and then will have to compete with the already low prices of electricity on the market?). I understand, like a reprocessing MSR, that it's just not the way us capitalists do things.

And it's a damn fucking shame. I hope Kirk continues his work and I hope the whole Energy from Thorium crew make something happen, because this is "magic technology" level stuff here and I am beginning to believe that without it, our civilization is in for one fucking hell of a wakeup call.