No sense in India’s nuclear ambitions

Last October, India and USA signed a historic nuclear agreement that lifted 34 year old nuclear embargo from the signees of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that had prevented India from increasing its nuclear power production. Over the past year India has been on a shopping spree for nuclear reactors and fuel. There are a number of reasons why going nuclear power way is a bad idea. And none of those reasons are cancer, just plain old economics.

In the 1960s India became the world’s first developing country to have nuclear power generators and today it forms 2.5% of India’s electricity generation. The government targets for nuclear energy have been steadily increasing each passing month, the latest figure being 63 giga watts (GW) by 2032 from existing capacity of 3.7 GW. India’s previous targets of 10 GW by 2000 was not met and there’s little reason to believe the current target can be met.

High nuclear targets are being pushed by the government because it could form a crucial chip in Copenhagen due to its effect on decreasing India’s emissions growth from power production. All this talk about finding alternatives to coal power has given nuclear power a new respectability. This pursuit of nuclear energy as an alternative to dirty coal plants is making Delhi blind to the real costs of building and operating a nuclear plant, which have been discouraging countries around the world from building nuclear plants.

In India previous nuclear projects have been marred by massive cost overshots of nearly 3-4 times of the original estimates. And these projects have taken almost double the amount of planned time for completion. Currently the Department of Atomic Energy estimate the nuclear reactors from France’s Areva to cost around 3000-4000 USD, while the real cost is around 9000 USD. Most plants today run on high subsidies and cost write-offs. Because of these the price of a unit of electricity from a nuclear plant is around 5-6 INR compared to 3-4 INR from coal plants. Presumably in the future coal will become expensive enough for nuclear power price comparable to coal plants. But this is only on continuation of the subsidies.

The Department of Atomic Energy is still continuing its planning from an outline made in the 1970’s. The three-phase programme proposed using heavy water reactors, then using fast breeder reactors in the second phase and subsequently thorium-based reactors for power generation in the third phase. The flaw is that fast breeder reactors today are proving to be failures across the world, with no example of a successful commercial plant. Germany sold its US $5 billion worth fast breeder reactor to a Dutch entrepreneur who converted it into an amusement park. It is only ridiculous that India is deciding to pursue research of fast breeder turbines.

Even if a fast breeder plant could be successful, then waste management is extremely expensive. Waste management forms about 20% of the cost of the project. Even though a reactor functions for 40-50 years, the waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to comprehend how monitoring waste for thousands of years makes any sense or if is even possible.

Nuclear companies from the USA have been promised two projects in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. But before they can invest in these projects, they are expecting a risk liability dilution law. No foreign company will set up a nuclear plant in India without a cap on its liability in the case of a nuclear disaster. There’s a proposed bill to transfer liability from supplier to operator, government owned Nuclear Power of India Corporation Limited. Previous nuclear disasters have proven to be extremely expensive and thus insurance costs of the supplier could be exponentially high, potentially increasing the cost of the project by two times.

India’s nuclear safety record is not commendable, with studies proving high incidences of certain diseases in area surrounding a nuclear power plant. All this has been commonly swept under the carpet by the government, with the Supreme Court rejecting a public petition demanding the disclosure of an Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s report on the safety of nuclear power plants in 2004 under pressure from the government. A UN report in 1993, found occupational hazard in nuclear plants in India was six to eight times the world average.

It is hard to understand why would the government want to take so many risks for the sake of increasing power generation from nuclear sources? Especially when wind or solar could prove to be equally efficient and cheaper. Personally I don’t see any sense in building a power source which has the potential to annihilate millions due to a mishap.

I’ve tried not to give the often mentioned health issues as reasons because there are conclusive studies which prove health hazards while there’s little discussion on the economics of nuclear power.