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For over two decades, India has been trying to put up a 500 MW ‘prototype fast breeder reactor’ (PFBR), a type of nuclear reactor that will conserve Uranium by breeding its own fuel.
The public sector company, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), incorporated in 2003, is executing the project, at Kalpakkam, near Chennai.
Budget 2024-25 hints at a higher level of activity at BHAVINI — it has allocated ₹1,184 crore to BHAVINI for capital expenditure, compared with₹200 crore in 2023-24 (revised estimate).
So, things are perking up at the long-awaited PFBR — a project which the entire world is watching. On March 3, Prime Minister Modi was at the PFBR site to witness ‘core loading’, a milestone.
The PFBR project has suffered huge delays, with its cost going up from the initial ₹3,492 crore to ₹7,670 crore in 2023.
Fast breeder reactors
Fast breeder reactors (or fast neutron reactors) are a class of nuclear power plants that are designed to produce energy from nuclear fission but also “breed” more fuel than they consume for the fission reaction.
As the atoms of fissile material (usually, Uranium-235) split to produce heat, the neutrons that escape from the fission reaction bombard a ‘blanket’ of naturally available U-238, making another nuclear fuel called Plutonium-239. Since these reactors produce more Plutonium-239 than the Uranium-235 they consume, they are called breeder reactors. It is also possible to have a blanket of Thorium, a ‘fertile material’ (that India has abundance of), so that the Thorium mutates into a ‘fissile material’, Uranium-233.
A government press release of March 3, 2024, noted that the PFBR was “an advanced third generation reactor with inherent passive safety features.” Since it uses the spent fuel from the first stage, FBR also “offers great advantage in terms of significant reduction in nuclear waste generated, thereby avoiding the need for large geological disposal facilities,” the release said.
It further said that despite the advanced technology involved, both the capital cost and the per unit electricity cost is comparable to other nuclear and conventional power plants.
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