guardian.co.uk: India plans to cut carbon and fuel poverty with untested nuclear power

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/29/nuclear-power-thorium-india

India plans to cut carbon and fuel poverty with untested nuclear power

Prime minister Manmohan Singh announces 100-fold increase in nuclear energy output by 2050 with thorium technology

Randeep Ramesh in Delhi
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 13.29 BST

Thorium pellets at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, India. Photograph: Pallava Bagla/Corbis

India's prime minister today signalled a huge push in nuclear power over the coming decades, using an untested technology based on nuclear waste and the radioactive element thorium.

Manmohan Singh, http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=52858">speaking at a conference of atomic scientists in Delhi, announced that 470,000MW of energy could come from Indian nuclear power stations by 2050 — more than 100 times the current output from India's current 17 reactors.

"This will sharply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and will be a major contribution to global efforts to combat climate change," he said, adding that Asia was now seeing a huge spurt in http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/aug/14/nuclear-power-world">nuclear plant building. The Indian plan, which relies on untested technology, was criticised by anti-nuclear campaigners as "a nightmare disguised as a dream".

The prime minister said a breakthrough deal with the US, sanctioned by the international community, had opened the door for the country to "think big" and meet the demands of its billion-strong population. He did not say how much the plans would cost, or how they would be paid for.

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[Nederland]

1. Yet another example

...of why Asians are taking over the world. Unlike Americans and Europeans, they apparently have the ability to weigh the pluses and minuses of all available technologies and not eliminate an option based upon irrational fears.

[kristopher]

3. That's a pretty self serving perspective

India is rife with corruption. Considering the history of the nuclear energy industry and the fact that this is technology that no one else thinks is ready for deployment, I'd say that a bit more analysis is required before concluding this is a positive step.

I'd be willing to wager that once final numbers are tallied, we'll find that the opportunity costs of funding this project instead of investing in wind and solar are huge.

And then there is the issue of net energy gain...

[joshcryer]

5. I don't see how the opportunity costs would be huge.

The main thing is insuring that you have a proven design and start mass manufacturing it, if that was done the costs should be quite competitive.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Obligatory links to Wikipedia ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

A thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle, including greater resource abundance, superior physical and nuclear properties of fuel, enhanced proliferation resistance, and reduced plutonium and actinide production.

Concerns about the limits of worldwide uranium resources motivated initial interest in the thorium fuel cycle<1>. It was envisioned that as uranium reserves were depleted, thorium would supplement uranium as a fertile material. However, for most countries uranium was relatively abundant, and research in thorium fuel cycles waned. A notable exception is the Republic of India which is developing a three stage thorium fuel cycle. Recently there has been renewed interest in thorium-based fuels for improving proliferation resistance and waste characteristics of used nuclear fuel<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Distribution

Under the USGS estimate, Australia and India have particularly large reserves of thorium. India and Australia are believed to possess about 300,000 metric tonnes each; i.e. each country possessing 25% of the world's thorium reserves.<34>

[NNadir]

4. You, um, are aware that the first commercial nuclear reactor, Shippingport, ran on Thorium

as an effective light water reactor?

Don't know a fucking thing about it?

Clueless?

Don't know a damn thing about nuclear energy and thus are ready to recite pablum from anti-nuke journalists who also work to spread deliberate ignorance of nuclear science, and abhorrence of knowledge of the subject?

I covered Indian nuclear science knowledge elsewhere, including this piece that gives the details of the Shippingport reactor operations with, um, thorium, during the Carter Administration, in the 4th of a 7 part series on Indian nuclear power research, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/8/201334/1925">The Light of Day: India's Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactor: Some Technical Comments. (Pt 4)



One reason that nuclear science in India is rapidly surpassing American nuclear science is that anti-science paranoids who know zero nuclear science have worked so hard to destroy a science they are themselves too dumb to understand.

If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[joshcryer]

6. Shippingport was a breeder for only 5 out of its 25 years.

Are there other better examples of breeder reactors lasting longer?

[jpak]

7. "make stuff up" - like your homemade molten salt breeder reactor????

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

8. Been reading a lot about India's breeder reactors today, they are not playing around.

They're serious about providing their people with clean electricity. I don't see any downsides and I wish them the best of success.