Abstract
Considering the rising expectations of its youthful population and trends of growth in electricity demand in the past one decade or so, a per capita consumption of 5000 kWh per year by the middle of this century will need to be planned for in India . With population likely to rise to about 1.6 billion people, and losses from transmission and distribution brought down to the global average of about 7%, total demand for electricity in India will be about 8600 TWh per year by the middle of this century. This chapter examines supply options based on multiple considerations, including resource sustainability and economics, and establishes that nuclear power will have to be a significant component of India’s electricity mix. This chapter goes on to list the initiatives of the Government to accelerate the growth in installed nuclear capacity, and also the programmes of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) aimed at development of technologies so that India, over time measured in short decades, is able to utilise the full energy potential of domestic as well as imported uranium and, in the long run, move on to exploit thorium.
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Notes
- 1.
Utilities are undertakings whose primary purpose is production, transmission and distribution of electric energy. These could be public sector undertakings, private companies, cooperative organisations, local or regional authorities or governmental organisations.
- 2.
A non-utility is an independent power producer, which is not a public utility, owning facilities to generate electric power for sale to utilities and end users. Non-utilities may be privately held facilities, corporations, cooperatives, such as rural solar or wind energy producers, and non-energy industrial concerns having capacity to feed excess energy into the grid.
- 3.
1 kWh = 860.421 kcal; 1 kcal = 4.184 kJ.
- 4.
1 toe = 10 million kcal.
- 5.
Lignite is also used in India for the generation of electricity . To keep the argument simple, lignite resources, etc., are not included in the narrative here.
- 6.
The IESS, 2047, has been developed expressly as an energy scenario building tool. The guiding ambition of IESS is to develop energy pathways leading up to the year 2047, comprising likely energy demand and supply scenarios. The data relating to implications—energy security, costs, land and carbon dioxide emissions—are merely indicative and not firm estimates. Therefore, this is a scenario building exercise and not strictly an energy model.
- 7.
Hydro-electricity production and electricity produced by other non-thermal means (wind, tide/wave/ocean, photovoltaic, etc.) are accounted for by using 1 TWh = 0.086 Mtoe. However, the primary energy equivalent of nuclear electricity is calculated from the gross generation by assuming a 33% conversion efficiency, i.e. 1 TWh = 0.086–0.33 Mtoe.
- 8.
It assumes that uranium is enriched in a plant operating on centrifuge technology. In case diffusion technology is used, EROI comes down to 75.
- 9.
Bhandari et al. convert all energy invested and output to primary energy equivalent by using primary to electrical energy conversion efficiency using average number for the country’s grid. Weisbach et al. add electrical energy and primary energy directly.
- 10.
Operative reserve in a grid is the generator capacity available to the grid manager to meet demand and supply fluctuations. Intermittency of renewable sources results in large variations on supply side. Spinning reserve is the extra generation capacity that is available by increasing the output of generators that are already connected. Such a supply can come on line within seconds to minutes. Supplemental reserve is the extra generating capacity that is not currently connected and can be brought on line after a short delay. It could be from fast start generators or from an interconnected grid.
- 11.
Replacement power is reserve power provided by generators requiring long start-up time, several minutes and even going to an hour. It relieves generators providing spinning and supplemental power, thereby restoring operating reserve in the grid. Intermittence of renewable implies that replacement power that is equal to installed renewable capacity has to be available and that has to come from base-load stations.
- 12.
Closed fuel cycle produces minimum waste per unit of electricity generated and also ensures sustainability of uranium by using its full energy potential. Spent fuel consists of fission products and minor actinides, and uranium and plutonium. Reprocessing recovers uranium and plutonium. Minor actinides have a very long half-life, and their presence in the waste makes it necessary to store the waste for a long time. Nuclear waste can be partitioned, a process that separates minor actinides from the waste. The remaining waste then would require storage for a period of about 300 years, which is a historical time frame. Minor actinides can be fabricated into fuel and burnt in fast reactors. The process of burning is called transmutation . An engineering-scale demonstration facility for partitioning of minor actinides has been set up in India and is already working. Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is nearing completion, and the step remaining to solve the waste problem is to demonstrate the process of transmutation. Partitioning of waste from fast reactors will also require similar demonstration.
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Grover, R.B. (2017). Resurgence of Nuclear Power in India. In: Janardhanan, N., Pant, G., Grover, R. (eds) Resurgence of Nuclear Power. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5029-9_1
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