Small modular reactors (SMRs), the setting up of which was mentioned in the finance minister’s budget speech last week, are the way to go for green energy transition, many prominent citizens have said.
The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman, noted in her speech that “nuclear energy is expected to form a very significant part of the energy mix for Viksit Bharat.” She added that towards that pursuit, “our government will partner with the private sector for setting up Bharat Small Reactors, research & development of Bharat Small Modular Reactor, and research & development of newer technologies for nuclear energy.”
SMRs, which are small sized reactors of about 100 MW to 250 MW capacity, are the in-thing in the energy sector today, with many countries building such reactors.
Asked for a reaction to the statement, M K Narayanan, former National Security Advisor to Government of India and former Governor of West Bengal, told businessline that he had “always been a votary of SMRs.”
Narayanan, who was deeply involved in the Indo-US Nuclear Agreement of 2005, said that setting up large nuclear reactors had become difficult due to a variety of reasons.
Describing SMRs as a “compelling solution”, Narayanan said that while large nuclear power plants produce a lot of nuclear waste, disposing of waste from SMRs would not be a big problem—especially if emerging fuels, such as the ANEEL fuel, are used.
Renowned nuclear scientist and former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Anil Kakodkar, also welcomes SMRs. “Indian reactors are on par with the best in the world,” Kakodkar had told businessline in May.
Former CEO of the IT giant, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Lakshmi Narayanan, also told businessline that he was “excited” about SMRs—an area in which India can be a global technology leader.
Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the founder of IIT Madras Research Park, who taught electrical engineering at IIT Madras, is another supporter of SMRs. Jhunjhunwala has formed a group to examine micro nuclear reactors, of capacities as small as 5 MW. The Energy Consortium of IIT Madras is working on developing one such reactor.
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Expensive reactors
SMRs have their own share of detractors. A recent report of the think-tank, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), decried SMRs as “too expensive, too slow to build and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
Noting that the industry is “plagued by cost overruns”, the report observed that a key argument of SMR proponents was that the new reactors would be economically competitive. “But the on-the-ground experience with the initial SMRs that have been built or that are currently under construction shows that this simply is not true,” said David Schlissel, IEEFA director of resource planning analysis and co-author of the report.
“From 2016 to 2020, they said the target power price was $55/megawatt-hour (MWh). Now, after preparing a new and much more detailed cost estimate, the target price for the power from the proposed SMR has soared to $89/MWh, that too with subsidies,” the IEEFA report said.
However, Indian experts are not impressed by the argument. Noting that green energy transition could not be done without nuclear energy, M K Narayanan said that even if SMRs were costly, “if it has to be done, it has to be done.”
Kakodkar, going a step further, believes that India-made reactors would cost “at least half of the reactors made in Western countries.” He also observed that integration of large amounts of intermittent generation from renewable energy sources like wind and solar would be costlier than nuclear power from indigenously built reactors.
ANEEL – fuel of the future
Interestingly, all the three – M K Narayanan, Kakodkar and Lakshmi Narayanan – support a few nuclear fuel developed by an American company, Clean Core Thorium Energy set up by an Indian businessman, Mehul Shah. Lakshmi Narayanan has also invested in the company.
As businessline reported on January 10, 2024, the Chicago-based company has developed (and patented) a fuel, which is a mix of Thorium and Uranium of a certain level of enrichment, called HALEU (High Assay Low Enriched Uranium).
Clean Core calls this concoction ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life). ANEEL, which is a mixture of 80 per cent thorium and the rest Uranium enriched to a shade under 20 per cent, can enable India start using Thorium, abundantly available in the country, for producing nuclear energy. The fuel is currently undergoing tests at the Idaho National Laboratory, USA.
The good thing about ANEEL fuel is that it can be used in pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs), something that India is an expert in. India has decades of experience in running small PHWRs, of 220 MW capacity, at Kalpakkam near Chennai.
The Bharat Small Modular Reactor, mentioned in the budget speech, may be an offshoot of the 220 MW PHWRs.) ANEEL can fast-track India’s entry into SMRs. “In my view, the only truly operating SMR in the world is India’s indigenous “Bharat Small Reactor”,” Shah told businessline.
“Now that India needs to achieve a transition to large-scale green nuclear energy deployment, the management of a large volume of spent fuel arising from imported natural uranium could become a serious one. ANEEL fuel can shrink the spent fuel inventory by a factor of seven while further improving safety, accident tolerance, economics, and proliferation resistance,” he said.