India's Atomic Energy Programme

Past and Future

by Dr. H.N. Sethna

India had foreseen the potential for the peaceful utilization of atomic energy at a time
when the pioneering activities in this field were geared essentially for military use. More than
a year before the traumatic demonstration of the destructive force of atomic energy in
Hiroshima, Dr. Homi Bhabha, the architect of the Indian nuclear programme, had declared
that "when nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in say, a
couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find
them ready at hand". This statement captures the essence of India's efforts over the last three
decades for the peaceful utilization of atomic energy, namely, the development of scientific
and technological ability within the country to design and execute projects right from the
laboratory stage to the industrial scale largely on the basis of its own efforts.

India had consciously avoided softer options and chosen the slower and harder path of a
programme aimed at self-reliance which, in the long run, has paid substantial dividends.
Today India is among the seven or eight countries in the world, and the only developing
country, to have the complete fuel cycle, right from uranium exploration, mining,
extraction and conversion, through fuel fabrication, heavy water production and reactors,
to reprocessing and waste management. India has also reached a stage where its indigenously
developed know-how can support all the required activities encompassing feasibility studies,
site selection, detailed project design, construction, commissioning and operation of any
plant in the entire fuel cycle chain. It has taken almost three decades of effort to reach this
stage of development. The innumerable hurdles to be overcome along the way have given
our scientists and engineers confidence that other difficulties, which may have to be faced
in the future, can be surmounted.

THE EARLY PROGRAMME

India has had a rich tradition of fundamental research activities in various fields and has
produced outstanding individual scientists like Sir C V Raman, S.N. Bose, K.S. Krishnan,
Sir J.C. Ray and H.N. Saha. Organized research in nuclear science, however, began only in
1945, with the establishment of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay
The Atomic Energy Act was passed in Parliament soon after the country gained
independence in 1948, and set forth India's objective for the development and utilization
of atomic energy solely for peaceful purposes It was, however, only in 1954 that the
Government established a Department of Atomic Energy charged with the sole responsibility
for all nuclear activities in the country. Until that time the work of the Atomic Energy
Commission had been restricted to the survey of radioactive minerals, setting up plants for
processing monazite and limited research activity in the area of electronics, methods of
chemical analysis of minerals and the recovery of valuable elements from available minerals.

Dr Sethna is Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission

2 IAEA BULLETIN - VOL 21, NO 5
Figure 1. A view of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay, near
Bombay.

In 1954, a multi-disciplinary centre for research and development was set up in Trombay,
near Bombay, which is now known as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
The fundamental criterion in the setting up of this national centre was that the institution
should grow as the various groups developed indigenous know-how and became able to
expand in a useful and co-ordinated manner. The beginnings were modest This Centre was
initially manned by a small band of around 130 scientists and technicians. The Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre has grown over the years to become the foremost institution of
science and technology in the country with a staff of around 10000 of whom 3000 are
scientists. A majority of these scientists and engineers are graduates of the Training School
set up at the Centre in 1957.

A common dilemma of developing countries has been that technology imported from
industrialized countries is often difficult to adapt to local socio-economic conditions. Such
technology transfers can sometimes even hamper scientific innovations and entrepreneurial
initiative for indigenous development leading to repeated technology imports. Many
developing countries do not have a cadre of scientific and technical personnel who are
capable of advising their national authorities on a strategy for the introduction of a
sophisticated technology, such as nuclear energy, which would be suitable to local conditions.
Most developing countries do not have adequate financial resources for establishing their
own R & D efforts. The few developing countries that have the financial resources are, by
and large, short of manpower and without adequate educational infrastructure. Another
constraint which all developing countries have had to face is the absence of a diversified
industrial base. In the developed countries, the frontier applications of nuclear technology
were essentially an extension of already advanced conventional technology. On the other
hand, even in India the era of nuclear power is concurrent with the beginnings of large-scale
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steel production, installation of fertilizer plants and other conventional industry set up with
imported know-how. We had realized that the supenmposition of advanced technology
obtained from abroad does not imply progress in the real sense - it only creates illusions of
progress. We recognized at an early stage of development that, due to these and various
other factors, the most important task for the introduction of nuclear technology in India
was to establish a cadre of scientists and engineers and generate interaction among various
scientific disciplines and, at an appropriate stage, translate this interaction into concrete
projects.

It was in this spirit that the first major project of the Centre was undertaken, namely, the
building of a pool-type reactor. This reactor, named APSARA, became critical by 1956,
within two years of the decision to construct it. It was the only reactor at that time in Asia,
outside the Soviet Union We did not ask for such a reactor from the advanced countries
but went about the work on our own. Except for the fuel elements, which were imported
from the United Kingdom, the reactor and all its equipment were designed and built by our
own people within the country. It was not an easy task. For instance, in the mid-1950s we
had no experience in India on welding thick aluminium plates to the quality requirements
for the reactor. Our engineers engaged on this job had to establish welding procedures and
then train the welders themselves. Some of the early applications of argon arc welding
involving aluminium and stainless steel were made on this and other projects at the Centre.
The entire instrumentation and control system for the reactor was designed and built
locally. The team of scientists engaged in this work drew upon their previous experience in
designing instrumentation for cosmic ray experiments. This early experience has been
mentioned in some details, since it demonstrates that with the multi-disciplinary interaction
involved in the setting up of this first reactor, our learning process started well before the
reactor became critical and available for experimental work and isotope production.

About the same time, in 1956, we decided to build CIRUS, a 40 MW natural uranium heavy-
water moderated research reactor, with Canadian collaboration Our scientists were
associated with the Canadians at all stages of this co-operative project. We simultaneously
embarked on the task of setting up plants at the Centre, fully based on our own technology,
for producing nuclear-grade uranium metal and fuel elements for this NRX-type reactor.
We completed this task in time to provide half the initial fuel charge for this reactor,
which became critical in mid-1960. The CIRUS reactor continues to be in operation to this
day using fuel produced at the Trombay plant and heavy water from the facility we set up
at Nangal in Northern India.

In the decade 1956—66, we embarked on a wide variety of technological activities such as

uranium extraction and purification, fuel fabrication, reactor control and instrumentation,
research reactor construction, radioisotope separation, radiation medicine and vacuum
technology. Practically all these areas of technology were frontier areas even in the context
of developments at that time around the world. All these facilities had small beginnings and
expanded with the growth of expertise generated in our establishments.

In 1961 we commenced work for setting up a reprocessing plant at the Centre completely
on our own and without any foreign collaboration. The plant was successfully
commissioned in 1964, making India the fifth country in the world with reprocessing
facilities. Incidentally, the cost of this plant was less than half the estimated cost of a
similar capacity plant under construction at that time in another country. Our subsequent
4 IAEA BULLETIN-VOL 21, NO.5
Figure 2. Tube to tube-sheet welding for the R-5 research reactor calandria at the BARC
workshop.

experience in the construction of a power reactor reprocessing plant has confirmed our
ability to set up and operate small capacity reprocessing plants at costs lower than
indicative reprocessing costs elsewhere in the world.

THE APPLICATION OF COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR POWER

The decade 1966-76 saw the introduction of nuclear power in India. When early studies on
the feasibility of nuclear power were carried out in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was
concluded that threshold conditions for introducing nuclear power on an economic basis
existed in India in the western, northern and southern regions of the country These regions
were chosen because of their distance from coal fields, which are largely concentrated in
the eastern and central parts of the country. The transportation of coal over long distances
to thermal stations continues to strain our transportation system and interruption of
supplies have often caused load shedding. In some power systems, especially in the southern
region where the bulk of electricity was traditionally provided by hydroelectric power plants,
excessive load shedding had become a common phenomenon due to successive failures of
the monsoons. Power production from oil and gas were never seriously considered in India,
since a substantial portion of our requirements have to be imported. With increases in oil
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prices power production using oil became unfeasible. It was, therefore, recognized that power
production in India would have to continue to rely on coal and hydro and, increasingly over
the years, on nuclear power.

In formulating the strategy for nuclear power development in India, we had to take into
account that, while our uranium reserves are rather modest (53 000 tonnes of which
30,000 are reasonably assured) we have one of the largest reserves of thorium in the world.
We therefore conceived a three-stage nuclear fuel cycle strategy, with the installation of
natural uranium reactors in the first phase, followed by fast breeder reactors in the second
phase, using plutomum from the first generation reactors with either uranium-238 or thorium
in the blanket, followed eventually by reactors based on the self-sustaining thorium-
uranium-233 cycle.

India is one of the few countries at present continuing with the development of natural-
uranium-fuelled reactors. The major reason has been our preference for a reactor system that
can be operated using indigenous resources. This system also has the advantage of an efficient
burnup, producing significant quantities of plutomum for use in fast reactors.

India's first nuclear power station at Tarapur, near Bombay, consisted, however, of two
boiling-water reactors (BWR), each of about 200 MWe capacity, which went into operation
in 1969. The decision to go in for a BWR system for our first nuclear power plant was
prompted by the desire to demonstrate the economic viability of nuclear power in the
country without delay by using a proven system. This station was a turnkey project awarded
to General Electric of the USA on the basis of a global tender. The involvement of Indian
personnel was, however, substantially more than the usual turnkey project Our scientists
and engineers were responsible for all the preliminary work such as site selection, tender
preparation and evaluation and also participated, to the extent possible, in the review of
detailed designs, construction, inspection and testing of equipment and commissioning
activities. Since 1975, the enriched uranium fuel elements for this station have been fabricated
in India at the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad from uranium hexafluonde imported
from the USA We had not gone in for the development of indigenous enrichment capability
primarily since a commercial scale enrichment plant would not be economically feasible for
only one power plant for which, in any case, we had entered into an agreement for life-time
fuel supplies.

About the same time as a commitment was made on the Tarapur plant, we also decided to
install a heavy-water power station at Kota in the State of Rajasthan consisting of two
220 MWe reactors In this case, the project was a collaborative venture with Canada. India
retained the responsibility for construction and installation activities while Canada under-
took to supply the design and major equipment. We took the risks involved not only on the
prices and schedule that such a procedure entailed but also in the capital investment on a
system which was in its initial stages of development. While major equipment for the first
unit of this station was imported, part manufacture of some of the major components was
undertaken in India. We also fabricated many items of auxiliary equipment and half the
initial fuel charge for the first unit. The efforts to rely on indigenous resources were
intensified for the second unit of this station and major components such as the calandria,
end shields, steam generators and fuelling machines were manufactured in the country.
The first unit of the Rajasthan station has been in operation since 1975 and the second unit
is in an advanced stage of commissioning.
6 IAEA BULLETIN - VOL 21, NO 5
Figure 3. The Rajasthan nuclear power station at Kota.

Our third atomic power station, consisting of two heavy-water reactor units of 235 MWe
each, the first of which is expected to attain criticahty next year, is being built near Madras
in Southern India. The full responsibility for the execution of this project rests with our own
engineers and scientists. Several design modifications and improvements have been
introduced at this plant for reasons of economy and to take into account local conditions.
The fourth power station under construction at Narora in the State of Uttar Pradesh in
Northern India also consists of two 235 MWe heavy-water reactors. These reactors have
several new design features and concepts, including earthquake resistant design of the
buildings and reactor components. Among the new features of the Narora reactors are an
integral calandna-end-shield assembly, two independent fast-acting shut down systems for
safety and reliability and a simplified water-filled calandria vault. We are standardizing the
Narora designs and propose to repeat this design for two additional projects before we move
on to construction of 500 MWe reactors of our own design. For certain components,
such as reactor coolant pumps and steam generators, we have decided to standardize not
only for the current size of reactors under construction, namely, 235 MWe, but also for the
next size of EiOO MWe. We propose to achieve this by using twice the number of components
for the larger reactors and defer the scaling-up effort required by our industry to a later stage.

As a result of intensified efforts at using our own resources, we have progressively reduced
the import component of our nuclear power projects. The import component of the first
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Figure 4. Heavy-water plant, using Indian-developed technology, nearing completion at Kota.

unit of the Rajasthan station was 45%, and this was reduced in the case of the second unit
to 30% The import component declined further to 12% for the Madras power station and
it is only around 9% for the Narora plant. Even this marginal import will be eliminated once
the new manufacturing plants being set up in the country start operation. The establishment
of design and manufacturing capability also helped us to reduce indirect costs of engineering,
field management and commissioning, which usually form a substantial part of a turnkey
project. For instance, we were able to reduce the cost of engineering as a percentage of cost
per kilowatt installed from around 15% for the first unit of the Rajasthan station to less
than 6% for the Narora plant. This is in spite of the fact that extensive design modifications
were carried out for seismic conditions and various new concepts introduced in the later
plant.

Figure 5. A calandria, of Indian manufacture, being installed at the Madras nuclear

power station.
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 ;;•«;**;:';;;.;

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THE IMPACT OF INDIA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME

To achieve our present level of self-sufficiency, the Department of Atomic Energy undertook
tasks which perhaps have not been attempted by a similar organization anywhere else in
the world. This reflects both our inherent weakness and our strength. We had to locate
domestic manufacturers and persuade them to put in the effort to make precision components,
both heavy and light, for the first time in the country. The Department of Atomic Energy
itself had to evolve procedures for manufacture, quality control, inspecting techniques, etc.
Often we had a difficult time in locating a single manufacturer with all the facilities for
completing a job and we were forced to farm out such work to different manufacturers.
This brought in its wake special problems of co-ordination between different shops,
sequencing operations, corrective actions for deviations, etc., and finally we had to take up
the work of the assembly of components In some cases, as for example, certain coolant
channel components, we could not find any manufacturer willing to put in the effort and
the money for such high-precision items, we could have taken the easier route of importing
these components but having decided to tackle the problem and solving it ourselves we
undertook this work within the organization
Nuclear power in India has not only been demonstrated as an economically competitive and
safe source of energy but it has also played the invaluable role of a catalyst for the scientific,
technical and industrial development of the country as a whole. Pioneering work in the
field of process and equipment design for various chemical operations or metallurgical
activities were carried out by the Department of Atomic Energy. The success of our national
effort has made our industry, both in the private and public sectors, conscious of its
potentialities for excellence. There was a significantly higher level of quality consciousness
and improvements in the shop practices of almost all manufacturers who have been
associated with our programme Though the resultant upgrading of the technological base
was initially a difficult and expensive task, it has often given our industry the confidence
and ability to secure expert orders against international tenders even for conventional
equipment for sugar plants, cement plants, power plants, etc.
Work in the fields of nuclear fuels and materials has also generated internal demands for
advanced materials of construction and for the means of producing them. For instance,
the techniques developed for the extrusion of Zircaloy has found application in the
extrusion of alloy steel tubes for use in our petroleum industry. The experience gained in the
operation of highly instrumented plants in the nuclear industry permit local design of various
chemical plants. Our expertise in vacuum melting and casting of uranium could be useful
for the production of metals and alloys of controlled composition and to the progress of
powder metallurgy. Even in the conventional field of civil construction, the experience
gained on our nuclear projects has resulted in the mastering of new techniques. One example
is in the field of pre-stressed concrete. The reactor buildings at the Madras station are built
completely in pre-stressed concrete for a designed internal pressure containment of over one
atmosphere. There is a large number of similar examples of the beneficial spinoff from the
atomic energy programme to industrial development in the country.

THE FUTURE
Our reactors in operation and under construction presently account for only about
1300 MWe of installed capacity. The "high" estimate for our projected installed capacity
at the turn of this century is a relatively modest 10 000 MWe, of which 3000 MWe is
10 IAEA BULLETIN - VOL.21, NO.5
expected to be provided by fast breeder reactors. This will not be an easy task. Although
we can build nuclear power plants at lower investment costs than are achieved in other parts
of the world, the initial investment required and the gestation periods involved are still
greater than those for coal-fired power stations. The availability of adequate investment
capital could, therefore, pose a constraint in the immediate future. In the longer run,
investment in nuclear power is expected to increase as mining and transport of coal in the
next few decades becomes progressively more capital-intensive. We will also have to continue
our efforts to upgrade domestic industry to meet the additional requirements of our
programme.

The "no growth" philosophy and curbing of consumption in the energy sector, which is
being advocaLed for good reasons in some advanced countries, has no relevance in our socio-
economic conditions. Although our per capita consumption of electricity is very low, the
bulk of electrical energy is consumed either in industry or in agriculture. Domestic use of
electrical energy is hardly 10%. A significant part of the energy input in India is from the
so-called non-commercial sources, such as fire-wood, which leads to deforestation on a
large scale. Both economic and environmental factors would, therefore, dictate an increase
in electrical energy consumption. It is perhaps for these reasons that we have not faced
problems of public acceptance of nuclear power in India. This has not in any way made us
complacent about the important question of nuclear safety. Our health physicists and
radiation protection groups have established stringent standards and norms and we are
actively participating in international co-operative efforts to strengthen and streamline
methods further for safety evaluation and surveillance.

India's programme for the peaceful utilization of atomic energy has, to a certain extent,
been affected by restrictive trade practices and unilateral embargoes on nuclear supplies by
certain countries. These are unfortunate developments since they are essentially based on
political mistrust and discrimination. In the case of India, such measures will cause
temporary delays and perhaps cost over-runs for projects in the near future. In the long run,
these developments will only strengthen and accelerate India's programme for complete self-
sufficiency in the nuclear field.

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