Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan
Feb 01, 2015
Prior to 2004 the Indian nuclear power policy was guided by the Bhabha Plan, aimed at the ultimate utilization of the abundant thorium resources in the country. But, Manmohan Singh Government deliberately scuttled this plan from 2005, to indirectly hand over technology reins of this sector to foreign governments and their reactor vendors.
I am one of the few senior scientists who had the good fortune to work under charismatic and ethical leaders like Bhabha, Nehru, Sarabhai, Ramanna and Indira Gandhi. Their aim was to shape a nuclear power programme, which matched the human and physical resources of India, to make it an indigenous asset built on a solid and sustainable foundation.
But, by 2014, when the UPA-2 government stepped down, the nuclear power programme had come down substantially in stature and performance, under a relatively lacklustre, corrupt and unethical leadership compared to stalwarts who ran the programme in earlier years.
I have been a close observer and analyst of UPA’s Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Therefore, I have a reasonably accurate picture of all that was done in nuclear policy restructure during the UPA-1&2 regimes.
The Indo-US nuclear deal of 2007 was a concept jointly planned and engineered primarily by the then Indian Prime Minister& his advisors, in close cooperation with the US government. Both sides co-opted carefully handpicked persons to give the critical push needed for executing this objective.
Ever since sanctions were imposed on all Indian nuclear efforts by the US and the West after our 1974 Pokhran-1 nuclear test, the US has been closely observing the progress of our nuclear programme. Under the able leadership of Indira Gandhi and nuclear scientists like Sethna, Ramanna, P K Iyengar and others, India steadily established the technology and the manufacturing base to indigenously produce up to 500-700 MWe capacity pressurized heavy-water reactors (PHWRs) by 2000.
Following an invitation from Dr.Ramanna, who obtained approval for that from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, I joined that effort in 1976 after resigning from a high-paid US job and surrendering my permanent-resident status in the US. By the time Pokhran-2 nuclear weapon tests were conducted in 1998, under a strong Vajpayee leadership, India could easily withstand a second set of technology sanctions imposed by the US and others.
By 2000, US was quite shaken by India’s rising nuclear capabilities and our growing number of PHWRs on the ground. Because Indian nuclear engineers know every detail of these PHWRs which they themselves designed, built from scratch and experimented with, we could avoid nuclear accidents during this learning stage from about 1975 to 2000, while around that time major accidents like the ones in Three-Mile Island (USA) and Chernobyl (USSR) happened.
Because India stuck solely with the PHWR, there are now three generations of engineers and scientists in India who have mastered the PHWR technology, with which they are capable of upgrading the reactors to 1000-1200 MWe-level, with confidence in PHWR safety which comes from the team’s close familiarity with these systems.
The US concerns with the Indian PHWR programme are manifold. Firstly, India’s indigenous PHWR costs just 35 percent compared to the US LWR (light water reactor), which will make it difficult for US and Western companies to sell their LWRs in India. Secondly, Americans all along wanted to wean India off PHWRs because these are the best plutonium producers and can contribute to increasing our stock of nuclear weapons fuel. To further reduce our weapons capability and future use of thorium through the fast breeder programme, the US also wants to influence the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to deny India the access to foreign technologies for spent-fuel reprocessing and uranium enrichment.
Lastly, if sufficient number of Western LWRs are sold to India, with their fuel supply to be contractually limited to two-year batches at a time, any intent of India to test a nuclear weapon can be thwarted because of a consequential lifetime ban on fuel supply, through conditionalities precisely built into the Hyde Act of 2006, a piece of US legislation still binding on India.
On India’s part, the deal enables us to import natural uranium from multiple sources. We can buy non-nuclear parts for our reactors without difficulty. But these are not adequate reasons for ditching an indigenous technology we have perfected over three decades. I am amazed that a few of the key senior scientists of the nuclear sector colluded with the then PM and the industrial groups to get the nuclear deal put in place.
“Make-in-India” is a very commendable concept. Modi can at best be given the credit for reminding Indians and the world about it, but the pioneers, who successfully demonstrated its workability, are several of his predecessors – but for an exception like Manmohan Singh who sat back and outsourced that concept to the Americans!
One of the shining successes of a “Make-in-India” programme is the development and demonstration of the Indian PHWR. It came about because of a patriotic fervour and pride in those who led the programme and motivated the teams of handpicked experts and intelligent youngsters, who in turn delivered results for the country for the sheer pleasure and pride they derived from doing it.
Our friend ‘Barack’ will never like such programmes, as evident from his lukewarm response to our solar power programme based on indigenously-sourced solar cells, panels and structures. Modi government should ignore ‘Barack’ and the crony capitalists in India and within our Diaspora who are supporting him.
Forge ahead with a totally “Make-in-India” programme in renewable energy with ambitious very high targets, and I am sure engineers, scientists and manufacturers in India will rise to the challenge and deliver.
Dr Gopalakrishnan is a former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. He can be reached at agk37@hotmail.com
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