ANL/NE-09/03 India’s Baseline Plan for Nuclear Energy Self-sufficiency Nuclear Engineering Division Prepared for: National Nuclear Security Administration Office of International Regimes and Agreements National Nuclear Security Administration On the cover India's Nuclear facilities About Argonne National Laboratory Argonne is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. The Laboratory’s main facility is outside Chicago, at 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439. For information about Argonne and its pioneering science and technology programs, see www.anl.gov. Availability of This Report This report is available, at no cost, at http://www.osti.gov/bridge. It is also available on paper to the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors, for a processing fee, from: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information P.O. 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The views and opinions of document authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof, Argonne National Laboratory, or UChicago Argonne, LLC. ANL/NE-09/03 India’s Baseline Plan for Nuclear Energy Self-sufficiency by R.G. Bucher Technical Nonproliferation Policy Support Section National Security and Nonproliferation Department Nuclear Engineering Division Energy Science and Engineering Directorate Argonne National Laboratory for U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Office of Nonproliferation and International Security Office of International Regimes and Agreements January 2009 Prepared for: National Nuclear Security Administration Office of International Regimes and Agreements National Nuclear Security Administration ANL/NE-09/03 This page intentionally left blank ANL/NE-09/03 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction............................................................................................................. 1 2.0 Overview of India’s Three Stage Program ............................................................. 2 2.1 Stage 1 Reactors.................................................................................................. 3 2.1.1 Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) ............................................ 3 2.1.2 Foreign Stage 1 Light Water Reactors (LWRs).......................................... 5 2.2 Stage 2 Reactors.................................................................................................. 7 2.2.1 Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) ............................................................. 8 2.2.2 Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR)................................................... 11 2.3 Stage 3 Systems ................................................................................................ 14 2.3.1 Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR)............................................... 15 2.3.2 Accelerator Driven Subcritical Systems (ADS) ....................................... 17 2.3.3 Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR).......................................... 18 3.0 Nuclear Power Production Goals...................................................................... 20 Appendix A. India’s Nuclear Facilities ...................................................................... 22 Appendix B. Issues with the U-233 / Th-232 Fuel Cycle .......................................... 23 References......................................................................................................................... 26 List of Tables Table I Stage 1 Nuclear Power Plants in Operation.................................................6 Table II Stage 1 Nuclear Power Plants under Construction ......................................6 List of Figures Fig. 1 Schematic Flow Sheet for the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) Power Plant .....9 Fig. 2 Schematic Flow Sheet for the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) Power Plant .......................................................................................................................12 Fig. 3 Schematic Flow Sheet for the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) Power Plant ............................................................................................................16 Fig. 4 Cross Section of AHWR Cluster ...........................................................................16 Fig. 5 Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) Core Cross-Section Design (Left) and Single Fuel Block (Right).....................................................................19 Fig. 6 Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) Vertical Cross-Section Design .....20 i ANL/NE-09/03 This page intentionally left blank ii ANL/NE-09/03 1.0 Introduction “Energy is the engine for economic growth and when the country moves ahead on the growth path, it is necessary to exploit every energy resource available in the country.”1 India’s nuclear energy strategy has traditionally strived for energy self-sufficiency, driven largely by necessity following trade restrictions imposed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) following India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion” of 1974. On September 6, 2008, the NSG agreed to create an exception opening nuclear trade with India, which may create opportunities for India to modify its baseline strategy. The purpose of this document is to describe India’s “baseline plan,” which was developed under constrained trade conditions, as a basis for understanding changes in India’s path as a result of the opening of nuclear commerce. Note that this treatise is based upon publicly available information. No attempt is made to judge whether India can meet specified goals either in scope or schedule. In fact, the reader is warned a priori that India’s delivery of stated goals has often fallen short or taken a significantly longer period to accomplish. It has been evident since the early days of nuclear power that India’s natural resources would determine the direction of its civil nuclear power program. It’s modest uranium but vast thorium reserves dictated that the country’s primary objective would be thorium utilization. i Estimates of India’s natural deposits vary appreciably, 2 , 3 but its uranium reserves are known to be extremely limited, totaling approximately 80,000 tons, on the order of 1% of the world’s deposits; and nominally one-third of this ore is of very low uranium concentration. However, India’s roughly 300,000 tons of thorium reserves account for approximately 30% of the world’s total. Confronted with this reality, the future of India’s nuclear power industry is strongly dependent on the development of a thorium- based nuclear fuel cycle as the only way to insure a stable, ii sustainable, iii and autonomousiv program.4 The path to India’s nuclear energy self-sufficiency was first outlined in a seminal paper5 by Drs. H. J. Bhabha and N. B. Prasad presented at the Second United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1958. The paper described a three stage plan for a sustainable nuclear energy program consistent with India’s limited uranium but abundant thorium natural resources. In the first stage, natural uranium would be used to fuel graphite or heavy water moderated reactors. Plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of these thermal reactors would drive fast reactors in the second stage that would contain thorium blankets for breeding uranium-233 (U-233). In the final stage, this U-233 would fuel thorium burning reactors that would breed and fission U-233 in situ. This three stage blueprint still reigns as the core of India’s civil nuclear power program. i Thorium, unlike uranium, does not contain an isotope capable of sustaining the fission chain reaction necessary for a nuclear reactor. However, thorium can be converted into such an isotope [uranium-233 (U-233)] in, for example, nuclear reactors, providing fuel for a nuclear power industry; this conversion process is reviewed in detail in Appendix B. ii stable: free from supply disruption and market volatility iii sustainable: renewable through utilization of available resources to breed additional nuclear fuel iv autonomous: self-sufficient via indigenous capabilities so as to not be subject to external influence 1 ANL/NE-09/03 India’s progress in the development of nuclear power, however, has been impacted by its isolation from the international nuclear community for its development of nuclear weapons and consequent refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). 6 , 7 Initially, India was engaged in numerous cooperative research programs with foreign countries; for example, under the “Atoms for Peace” program, India