India's programme to develop fast breeder reactors

The article reviews the construction activities at the Indira Gandhi Atomic Research Centre at Kalpakkam, where scientists and engineers are installing India's first prototype fast breeder reactor. It heralds the beginning of the second stage of India's long term atomic energy programme.

K.S.Parthasarathy



June 7, 2008
(A PTI feature)
India’s Programme to Develop Fast Breeder Reactor
By Dr K S Parthasarathy
While nuclear policy planners and parliamentarians are debating the pros and cons of the Indo- US civil nuclear cooperation agreement, scientists and engineers at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu are leaping forward to develop fast breeder reactors in the second stage of India’s nuclear power programme.
DAE set up the Centre in 1971 for "...conducting broad based multidisciplinary programme of scientific research and advanced engineering, directed towards the development of sodium cooled Fast Breeder Reactor [FBR] technology, in India".
For scientists at IGCAR, "Fast reactors for energy security" is the most important slogan.
The just released,140 page, Annual report of DAE for 2007-08 gives glimpses of several research and development programmes; the final impact of some of which will be felt only in the coming few decades.
A compendium titled " IGCAR, Excellence with Relevance, High Impact Breakthroughs: Significant Achievements during 2004-07 records 54 articles as benchmarks in Science, 28 in Engineering and 27 in Technology. In 2004-07, IGCAR scientists published 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and secured 7 patents. Several of these have formed the basis of design and project decisions.
IGCAR is constructing the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) of 500 MWe capacity at Kalpakkam. Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), a public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy is implementing the project.
The progress card of IGCAR for 2007-08 is impressive; The Centre completed the detailed design and technology development of PFBR.
The scientists and engineers want the Centre to be a global leader in sodium cooled fast breeder reactor and associated nuclear fuel cycle based technologies by 2020. Their mission is well defined; their stakes are high; they are also in friendly competition with the well established Pressurized Heavy Water (PHWR) technology!
The civil construction of the "Nuclear Island", which will house 17 buildings, is on course. The civil engineers have completed a few of the peripheral buildings such as service water pump house.
Specialists are carrying out safety analysis of important systems by appropriate methodologies.
IGCAR placed purchase orders worth Rs 10,500 million for several major items. The organisation is taking up the procurement of long delivery items with various industries. The industrial manufacturers have delivered safety vessel, thermal baffle, thermal insulation panels and sodium tanks to the site.
Workers are busy fabricating the main reactor vessel at site. PFBR site is now a beehive of construction activities. The laboratories and workshops at Kalpakkam are busy contributing their share to prove that fast reactors will ensure energy security.
For the success of fast reactors, IGCAR needs plutonium.
The source of plutonium will be the 14 PHWRs being operated at Kota, Kalpakkam. Narora, Kakrapara, Kaiga and Tarapur by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), a public sector undertaking under the DAE
Of these, two 540 MWe reactors at Tarapur (TAPP-3 & 4), represent the largest capacity single electricity generating units in the country.
The average capacity factor (The capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of the actual output of a power plant over a period of time and its output if it had operated at full power for the entire time) of Indian PHWRs stabilized to about 60 % in mid 90s and steadily increased to nearly 90% during 2003.
India has readily achieved many international benchmarks. In 2002, the average capacity factor of Indian PHWRs was more than that for all reactors in USA. At the end of September 2002, KAPS- which recorded a capacity factor of 98.4% during the preceding 12 months became the best performing PHWR among 32 such reactors worldwide.
Unit 1 of the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station (KAPS-1) and unit-4 of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP-4) and unit-2 of the Kaiga Generating Station (KGS-2) operated non-stop for 372, 373and 529 days respectively. KGS - 1 & 2 won the gold shield instituted by the Ministry of Power for meritorious performance for the year 2005-06.
Neither technology nor industrial infrastructure limits the way forward to construct and operate more PHWRs. It depends mainly on funds.
Presently, the gestation period for new PHWRs is five years and NPCIL has plans to reduce it to four and a half years. This is a crucial factor, as the installation cost of nuclear power stations is relatively high
Since India has only very modest uranium resources, it has accepted a three stage nuclear power programme.
India chose pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) for the first stage, as these reactors are ideal to use our limited natural uranium resources optimally.
PHWRs offer higher plutonium yield. Plutonium is needed for the second stage of the atomic power programme. PHWR fuel is easy to fabricate. Lastly, Indian industry has the capacity to make various components needed for PHWRs.
IGCAR’s role starts with the second stage of India’s nuclear power programme which depends on setting up fast breeder reactors, backed by reprocessing plants and plutonium-based fuel fabrication plants. These reactors "breed" more fuel than what they consume.
India plans to achieve energy security on a sustainable basis by thorium utilization which is the aim of the third stage of Indian nuclear power programme.
Unlike some advanced countries such as USA, India decided to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium, the fuel for its fast breeder reactors. USA can dispose of spent fuel as "nuclear waste", as they have cheap uranium resources.
Indian reactors are operating at low capacity factors now because of mismatch between fuel supply and demand.
This status may be temporary. Operationalisation of Indo US civil nuclear cooperation agreement should have helped.
We can then purchase nuclear fuel from anywhere in the world at competitive price and export nuclear technology and services to other countries after ensuring appropriate safeguards.
Some constraints may slow down the Indian nuclear power programme.
But they will not stop it. Surely and steadily we will go forward. - PTI

Dismal state of medical X-ray safety

This article briefly reviews the dismal status of radiation safety in medical x-ray installations in India.The writer proposes that decentralizing the regulatory activities by forming regional directorates is one of the options to improve the safety status.

K.S.Parthasarathy





Date:05/06/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/seta/2008/06/05/

stories/2008060550081400.htm
Back Sci Tech



Dismal state of medical X-ray safety

A study supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 12 developing countries (not including India) showed that the fraction of the medical X-ray images rated as poor was as high as 53 per cent (American Journal of Roentgenology, June 2008). This leads to unnecessary radiation doses to patients due to repeat examinations. The conditions in the 45 hospitals in 12 countries improved as the hospitals started implementing quality assurance programmes. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has complete information on the status of medical X-ray safety nation-wide. However, in the implementation of X-ray safety measures in each installation, India has miles to go.

Analysis of dark room techniques in 175 X-ray departments in India revealed that 12 per cent of these installations were exposing patients to excessive doses of more than 200 per cent because of improper techniques. The use of automatic film developing equipment may help in improving the condition.
Needlessly exposed

A more recent survey of 30 mammography clinics in Mumbai revealed that patients are needlessly exposed to high radiation doses.

Researchers in an AERB project measured skin doses in 12 different examinations. For all types of examinations except skull, the skin doses were mostly within the reference levels published in the Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and the Safety of Radiation Sources.

The ratio of maximum to minimum dose was five for chest X-ray; lumbar spine, eight, thoracic spine (lateral) 8.5 etc. If the doses are too high, it is not good practice as the patient does not receive optimized protection.

There is no justification for exposing patients to such a wide range of doses to get the same clinical benefits.

In 1994, AERB found that nearly 30 per cent of over 30,000 X-ray units it studied were over 15 years old. Older equipment may deliver higher doses. The user of the equipment must evaluate the safety features of each old unit; there are ways to remedy their deficiencies.

There are over 2,500 CT units in the country. The progress in carrying out quality assurance tests of these is very slow.

An AERB supported coordinated research programme covered 785 X-ray units in 495 hospitals. About forty per cent of the 1,15,000 examinations studied were on the reproductive sections of the population; 20 per cent of examinations were on children under 15. Physicians must be extra vigilant in X-raying children as their tissues are growing and as such more sensitive to radiation.

Surveys at 71 CT Units in India revealed that on an average 8.9 per cent of CT procedures were on children; paediatric protocols were not used in 32 of the 71 installations. These centres are exposing children to unjustifiably high radiation doses (The Hindu, March 6, 2008).

India has about 45,000 x-ray units; many of them are very old; about 1500 units are added every year. Each unit must be inspected periodically. Large scale introduction of CT scan units and interventional radiology units calls for greater caution. Enforcing the X-ray safety provisions in the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules 2004, is the only way forward to ensure safe use of this potentially powerful tool .

Proactive promotion of X-ray safety is not a substitute for effective implementation of regulations. In 1986, an AERB task group chaired by Dr Arcot Gajraj, an eminent radiologist, recommended decentralization of radiation surveillance programmes for X rays by setting up five Regional Enforcement Directorates.

The suggestion to set up regional directorates came up repeatedly at least once every ten years since 1971! AERB has been persuading the State Governments for the past several years.

State health authorities who are responsible for enforcing AERB provisions in probably the majority of hospitals in each State must get a wake up call.

K.S. PARTHASARATHY
FORMER SECRETARY, AERB

ksparth@yahoo.co.uk

© Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu

Nuclear fuel from N-waste

Since the methods of managing high level nuclear wastes are discussed again and again, I thought that it is worthwhile to recapitulate a suggestion made by BARC scientists in the late eighties. They proposed that the transuranic elements can be removed from nuclear waste.Some of them are better than normal fissile materials.

K.S.Parthasarathy





Nuclear fuel from N-waste
K.S.Parthasarathy

Many people consider management of high-level nuclear waste as a complex issue. The fuel discharged from a nuclear power reactor contains 94 per cent uranium,1 per cent transuranic elements such as neptunium, plutonium, americium and curium and about 5 per cent fission products such as caesium-137, strontium-90 etc

Transuranic elements are long lived and remain toxic for thousands of years. There is international consensus that the nuclear industry can design, construct and operate deep geological repositories to dispose of high-level waste, including transuranic elements permanently.

There may be smarter solutions. A few years ago, scientists from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre argued that we can eliminate the stigma attached to nuclear waste and nuclear energy, if we recover some of the transuranic elements, and use them as nuclear fuel.

The study, authored by M. Srinivasan, K. Subba Rao, S Garg and P K Iyengar and presented at the 5th International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems at Kalsruhe in July 1989 found that each and every isotope of transuranic elements is a more valuable nuclear fuel than the corresponding fissile isotopes of plutonium.

Fission products in the used fuel arise from the splitting of uranium or transuranic elements. Most of the fission products such as caesium-137 which have half-lives of a few tens of years decay relatively rapidly. In a few hundred years, the activity of fission products such as cesium-137 will be negligible.

We must keep the long-lived activity away from the biosphere for a long period because of the presence of long-lived transuranic radionuclides such as plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years).

If we destroy transuranic elements by some means, the long-term radiation hazard will reduce substantially; the activity will be insignificant after a few hundred years. One method is to burn them efficiently in fast reactors. Keeping the active material away for a few hundred years is feasible

If we irradiate uranium in light water reactors, at a power level of 1000 MWe for just over a month, every tonne of spent fuel, after a few years of cooling, will contain nearly 10 kg of plutonium, 0.5 kg of neptunium, 0.041 kg of curium and 0.14 kg of americium. These elements are not “wastes”. Scientists will be able to develop innovative recovery methods and fuel fabrication technologies to use these elements.

The production rate of heavy elements in the thorium-uranium-233 cycle is a million times less than those in the uranium-238-uranium-235 cycle. This is because fuels based on uranium-238-uranium-235 cycle need only two successive neutron captures to produce heavier nuclides; the urtanium-233 fuel cycle needs 7 to 8 neutron captures.

There are exotic schemes to transmute radionuclides in waste streams using novel non-fission neutron sources such as spallation targets, superconducting cyclotrons or fusion reactor blankets.

For instance, Yousry Gohar from the Argonne National Laboratory suggested that 344-MW- integrated- fusion power from deuterium-tritium plasmas for 30 years with an availability factor of 0.75, can dispose of 70,000 tons of the US inventory of spent fuel generated up to 2015. The concept eliminates the need for a deep geological repository site.

He claimed that show- casing the device which offers energy from the transmutation process to produce revenue, may help to enhance public acceptance of fusion energy.

Ultimately, the simplicity of the process and the cost- benefit criteria will prevail. BARC study is mostly theoretical. BARC scientists have developed methods to recover heavy elements on a laboratory scale

I justify referring to the 1989 Indian study now because new ways related to high level nuclear waste management are still under discussion. USA and Sweden plan to dispose of the spent fuel without reprocessing. India, France, UK and Japan will reprocess it to recover plutonium.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter halted funding for reprocessing of spent fuel. USA is now considering the revival of the programme .The proposed US policy aims to reduce the number of geologic repositories in USA to one, reuse valuable parts of the used fuel to maximize the energy from uranium ore and to recycle used fuel to minimize waste.

India’s atomic energy programme which Dr. Bhabha proposed in 1954 had all these elements!

— K.S. Parthasarathy is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board