India's tryst with fusion technology

India has joined the ITER project and thus the elite group of countries with interest in fusion technology. This step will help India to leapfrog in time when the fusion reactor will start delivering electric power a few decades from now.

DAILY EXCELSIOR

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India's tryst with fusion technology

By Dr K S Parthasarathy

On July 5, 2007 a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh approved the country's participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project at an estimated cost of Rs. 2,500 crore. This project aims at demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power. The partners in this venture are: European Union (represented by EURATOM), Japan, the People's Repulic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.

ITER is a tokamak to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power. It may cost $ 5 billion to construct it over a period of 10 years. Its total operating costs over 20 years may be of a similar order. Europe will bear half of the total expenditure and the other six partners will each contribute up to 10 per cent, leaving 10 per cent cost towards some contingency. ITER will be located at Cadarache, in the South of France.

The reactor which will produce a fusion power of 500 MW for a burn length of 400 seconds is sufficient to demonstrate the physics of the burning plasma in a power plant environment.

India will contribute equipment worth 500 million dollars to the experiment and will participate in its subsequent operation and experiments. Specialists have noted that the sheer magnitude of the investments being committed by the ITER partners demonstrates their belief and commitment in the future of fusion energy.

Since the partner countries have been carrying out the most advanced fusion energy research work for several decades, they will be able to address the complex issues related to the field promptly. Their effort will certainly produce a viable fusion energy source at the end of the project.

India will supply nine items including a 28 m dia, 26m tall SS cryostat, which forms the outer vacuum envelope for ITER, the vacuum vessel shields made of 2 per cent boron steel and occupying space between the two walls, eight 2.5 mega watt in cyclotron heating sources, complete with power systems and controls and cryo-distribution and water cooling subsystems (Nuclear India, May/June 2006).

Do we derive any benefit by joining this seemingly expensive project?

According to Dr P.K.Kaw, Director, Institute of Plasma Research, the Indian nodal agency for the project, the opportunity that participation in ITER offers us, is enormous (Nuclear India, May/June 2006). He listed several advantages. This is the first time that we shall be full partners in a prestigious international experiment. We shall have to come to international standards of quality, safety, time schedule maintenance etc. immediately.

Indian scientists and engineers will get direct hands-on experience in design, fabrication, and operation etc. on the latest fusion technologies. They will get access to many fusion technologies on the scale relevant to fusion reactors for the first time.

"If we backup the ITER INDIA effort with an aggressive, well focused national programme, it will allow us to leapfrog by at least a couple of decades" he said. India can legitimately claim that by accepting it as a full partner, international community has recognized India's fusion research activities.

According to Dr. M.R.Srinivasan, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Indian industry is well poised to secure some of the contracts for ITER project (The Hindu, July 27, 2005).

We have developed many sophisticated technologies during the construction of the two fusion devices Aditya and Steady State Superconducting Tokamak 1 (SST1) . This helps us to contribute various systems and components needed to construct ITER. Professor S.K.Mattoo, Institute of Plasma Research, confirmed that while participating in ITER, we will have access to the operation of systems contributed by other participants and operation of the fusion reactor. Our industry may not get an opportunity to produce those system. "ITER is not a solution to the shortfalls in the fusion technology of the country. ITER is a window of opportunity for laying a plan for infrastructure in fusion" Prof. Mattoo clarified (Nuclear India, May/June 2006).

Professor Mattoo stated that during the operation of the fusion reactor, the internal structure of the reactor will become radioactive. We may have to replace radioactive internal components mechanically. Such remote handling equipment must be capable of handling components weighing up to 50,000kg. This technology is being developed in Europe.

We may need advanced low activation materials to make the internal parts of the fusion reactor. This will ensure that fusion waste will not contain long lived radio-nuclides. Besides being resistant to activation, they must be capable of tolerating high surface heat loads and thermal cycling. The partners consider setting up an International Fusion Material Irradiation Facility to test these materials. India may join this collaborative effort.

India has special interest in developing fusion technology. In August 1955, when 1200 scientists from 72 nations attended the first International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Russian scientists waxed eloquent on their 5 MW nuclear power reactor; American scientists boasted of the uses of radioisotopes in medicine and industry; British bragged about their plans to make commercial atomic power stations.

".... the talk that most stirred the conference's first week was a bold prophecy by India's physicist Homi J. Bhabha, 45, conference president. Bound by none of the security regulations that so often gag U.S. experts, Bhabha predicted that by 1975 man will have tamed the Hydrogen bomb's fusion reaction and converted its tremendous energy (more than 1000 times that of the A-bomb) to useful electric power" Time Magazine (August 22,1955) reported.

Yes, Bhabha was overly optimistic. We are now nowhere near the goal. It took half a century for the world community to realize that they can achieve the dream of limitless, clean fusion power only through international cooperation! It is appropriate that India joined the elite club to realize the dream of Dr Homi J.Bhabha, the architect of nuclear India.

-PTI Feature