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14/03/24 10:12 AM IST

India’s first indigenous Fast Breeder Reactor begins ‘core loading’

In News
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnesses initiation of core loading of India's indigenous Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu.
India’s FBR programme
  • Efforts to build an FBR were initiated two decades ago, and successive governments have nurtured the project as a step towards India developing comprehensive capabilities that span the entire nuclear fuel cycle, by which electricity is produced from uranium in nuclear power reactors.
  • In 2003, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, the Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd or BHAVINI was incorporated to build and operate India’s most advanced nuclear reactor, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).
  • The project was expected to be completed by September 2010, but was delayed due to technological challenges.
  • Once commissioned, India will be the second country after Russia to have a commercial operating FBR.
  • China has a small programme on fast breeders; programmes in countries such as Japan, France, and the United States were shut down amid safety concerns.
Placer Deposits
  • A placer deposit is a natural concentration of heavier minerals created by the action of gravity on moving particles.
  • These concentrations are typically found along streams, rivers, beaches, and stretches of residual gravel where they are washed up.
  • Besides thorium (from monazite ore), gold, platinum, titanium, uranium, and rare earth elements are commercially mined from placer deposits.
Three stages and FBR
  • The first stage — the setting up of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) and associated fuel cycle facilities — is in progress.
  • PHWRs are reactors that use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water (deuterium oxide) as coolant and moderator.
  • The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) operates 22 commercial nuclear power reactors with an installed capacity of 6,780 MWe.
  • The programme has been supplemented by the construction of imported Light Water Reactors (LWRs) — the first of two units built with Russian collaboration is already generating power.
  • The second stage involves the setting up of FBRs backed by reprocessing plants and plutonium fabrication plants, primarily to multiply the inventory of fissile material.
  • Multiplication of fissile inventory is also needed to establish a higher power base for using thorium in the third stage of the programme.
  • The third stage will be based on the ThU233 cycle. For producing U233, obtained by irradiation of thorium in PHWRs and FBRs, an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is proposed.
  • The combination of power reactors from all the three stages is expected to ensure long-term energy security for the country.
  • But the commercial utilisation of thorium on a significant scale can begin only when abundant supplies of either U233 or Pu239 are available.
  • The progress on the FBR has made the passage to the third phase visible.
Way forward
  • The DAE aims to increase the share of nuclear power in the energy mix by 2032 by producing 22,400 MWe from its nuclear power plants.
  • It has approved the construction of 10 new PHWRs in ‘fleet mode’, in which a plant is expected to be built in five years from the first pouring of concrete.
Source- Indian Express

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