Why in the News?

Recently, at the start of March 2024, our 500-MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) began fuel-loading, marking the successful completion of commissioning trials and rectification of a range of first-of-its-kind equipment in the fast breeder reactor technology.

Context:

• Homi Bhabha’s spirit of self-reliance has enabled the autonomous pursuit of ‘Thorium Goals’.
• His proposed three-stage strategy aims to develop critical nuclear technologies, starting with modest uranium resources, and achieve a large-scale thorium-based energy program.
• The largest contributor to the climate change-related existential threat we face has created an immediate demand for large-scale deployment of nuclear power plants.
• BHAVINI, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) are responsible for building and operating the PFBR.

What is the significance of thorium in making India energy self-sufficiency?

• • Meeting Energy Demand:

• Boosting Domestic Market: 

• • • Given the size of India’s population and its economy, its energy demands would lead to serious challenges to energy security.
    • For ‘Vikasit Bharat’, India needs around three-and-a-half times more energy, which can come only from nuclear energy, specifically thorium.
  • Reducing Imports:
    • India has been dependent on energy imports all along. Thorium presents us with a unique opportunity to become energy self-sufficient.
    • Renewable energy, including large hydropower projects, can, at best, meet current energy needs.
• Building Global Perspective:
  • India’s long-term Energy security:
    • Looking towards India’s level of nuclear energy deployment will, the PFBR is expected to become operational, paving India into the second stage of its three-stage nuclear power programme.
    • It works as the gateway for meeting the country’s energy needs for a long time into the future, leveraging India’s vast thorium resources, which are the largest in the world.
  • Further, there is no other clean energy source available on the Indian landmass that can cope with India’s energy needs.

Future Scope:

• Transitioning to Better Fuel:

• • • A high-assay, low-enriched uranium (LEU) and thorium fuel capable of delivering a seven-times larger fuel burn-up in the PHWR design is needed.
    • ANEEL fuel has been designed and will be available shortly. The ANEEL fuel concept could also bring the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR300-LEU), a fully developed design immune to any severe accident-related anxiety, to reality.

• Concurrent fuel Recycling Processes:

• • • A Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Facility (FRFCF) that would work alongside the PFBR is coming up.
    • Once a sizeable inventory of uranium-233 accumulates, we must bring in reactors specifically designed for thorium and the related fuel-cycle facilities, constituting the third stage of our nuclear power program.

• Advancement in Fast Reactor Technology:

• • • The rapid deployment of PHWRs based on imported uranium allows for the advancement of thorium utilization in PHWRs, facilitating the deployment of third-stage thorium reactor systems, reducing spent fuel inventory, and proliferation resistance, and enhancing safety and economy.
    • The fast reactor systems with faster growth based on inherently better breeding performance are needed.
    • More reactors on the PFBR model must be constructed to consolidate sodium-cooled fast reactor technology, a key feature of the second stage of the nuclear program.

• High-temperature reactor:

• • Thorium utilization can be improved in high-temperature reactors to produce low-cost hydrogen with minimal carbon footprint.
  • Direct hydrogen production without electricity would make hydrogen production cheaper and less dependent on hydrogen electrolyzers.

Conclusion: The beginning of fuel-loading in PFBR is a significant step that must be celebrated to motivate our scientists and prepare them for the bigger tasks ahead. Sustained encouragement backed up by a demanding but conducive framework around them is the need of the hour. One must move on the thorium path, though it has no parallel anywhere else in the world.

Mains PYQ:

1. With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy. (UPSC 2018)
2. Give an account of the growth and development of nuclear science and technology in India. What is the advantage of a fast breeder reactor program in India? (UPSC 2017)

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