India Nuclear Energy

India has a massive power deficit issue, which requires it to expand using all available fuel sources both green and non-green. The last government placed a huge emphasis on growing nuclear energy signing a landmark deal with USA, which broke its pariah status. Despite the numerous deals signed with uranium suppliers as well as reactor sellers, nothing much came out of this due to bad policy making which placed too much liability on reactor suppliers. Even those nuclear power plants which came up in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra faced huge protests from locals, due to the NIMBY factor. The plant in Tamil Nadu started running after interventions both by the central and state governments. Some NGO leaders had to be arrested and numerous litigation in the courts had to be fought.

Read about Nuclear Energy Advantages & Disadvantages here.

The new NDA government has placed strong emphasis on the growth of solar energy followed by wind energy. The Power Minister Piyush Goel has hardly spoken about growing nuclear energy. The government’s focus has been mostly on thermal, solar and wind energy. So we need to examine whether India is going to aggressively expand its nuclear energy plans.

Negatives

1)      Nuclear energy is facing an enormous global blowback after the Fukushima incident. Countries such as Germany, Belgium and others have completely shut down their existing reactors

2)      Nuclear energy plants are seeing high cost escalations and steep prices due to additional safety equipment and procedures

3)      India is also facing huge protests in its existing plant sites

4)      Other cleaner and safer fuel sources such as solar energy and wind energy are becoming more competitive and lower in cost

5)      Even China which has the biggest expansion plans is going slow due to the safety and protest factors

Positives

a)      India needs to expand all possible fuel sources including nuclear energy for power generation

b)      The Russian PM was recently in India and signed a deal to supply 12 reactors

c)      Nuclear power plants also serve a very important strategic need for nuclear armed countries like India by providing raw material for bombs

Hindu

Russia’s state-owned Rosatom said it would supply 12 nuclear energy reactors for India over 20 years, under an agreement aimed at boosting nuclear energy cooperation signed by the two countries during a summit in New Delhi on Thursday.A 1,000-megawatt reactor is operating at the Russian-built Kudankulam power station in India’s Tamil Nadu district, with a second due to come on stream in 2015.