A big event in India’s nuclear journey passed off quietly. Just as well

A most significant event took place in the country last week, but with almost no attention paid to it – probably because the Prime Minister did not make a big deal of it. He came, he saw, he left, apparently all in 45 minutes.

Fittingly appropriate, I must say, considering what it was all about. It was the “commencement of core loading of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR)”. In simple terms, the operators of this nuclear reactor, PFBR, began to load fuel into the reactor and switched it on – and they will slowly crank it up over some months to ‘criticality’, when they can be sure that a sustainable fission chain has been set off and the reactor can run and produce power.

But India already has 20+ nuclear reactors and more are coming up, and all of them together don’t still account for more than 4-5% of India’s power generation. So why is the switching on of one more nuclear reactor so significant?

So, here’s the thing in a nutshell: India has huge energy needs to meet its industrialisation and developmental goals, but it is not endowed with massive hydrocarbon (oil and gas) resources. Nuclear energy is the only source that can meet India’s energy and power needs while at the same time helping to de-carbonise the economy. But to harness this technology, we need the right fuel. We do not have enough uranium reserves, but we have abundant thorium (which can be converted into uranium), said to be enough to power India for more than 250 years. To be able to use thorium optimally, we have to graduate through a 3-stage nuclear programme. That is what Homi Bhabha designed in the 1950s, and we have been following since. The existing nuclear reactors are all of the first stage – burning uranium to produce power, and plutonium for the second stage reactors. With the PFBR, we have reached that second stage on a commercial scale. This reactor will breed plutonium as it consumes it. It will also help convert thorium to U-233 on the side. The dream of reaching the thorium stage is thus closer.

The PFBR story is the story of India, its leadership and the people, at all levels, in the nuclear establishment determinedly pursuing a plan laid out in 1958, no matter what. If it succeeds – and at this stage, one sees no reason why it shouldn’t – then India will have arrived as the leader on the world nuclear stage at just the time when there’s growing interest worldwide in reviving nuclear power, thanks to climate change.

I have been inside the reactor vault, the ‘sanctum sanctorum’, as it were, and the control room of the PFBR, where PM Modi too was taken, some 10 years ago, when it stood ready, more or less. And I have met and interviewed dozens of people involved in it — from Sivaramakrishnan, a crane operator who had to lift up the reactor and safety vessels -- special steel vessels of 12-13 m diameter -- above 80-foot tall walls and place them in a precise spot on the other side (with a tolerance of 300 mm!) without being able to see the other side (believe me, there’s a logic to why it had to be done that way), to people right up the hierarchy of scientists, engineers, directors and CMDs of ‘Bhavini’, the company formed to build the PFBR, and IGCAR, the research centre whose experience of building and running a test breeder reactor (FBTR) since 1985 determined every detail of the PFBR.

I have also met and interviewed scientists, engineers and directors and heads at the apex of the Department of Atomic Energy and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and many other institutions that make up India’s vast nuclear establishment, as well as people from the likes of L&T, Walchandnagar Industries, MTAR, etc., who were involved in the manufacture of key components, sub-systems, etc.

The story of the PFBR, more than anything else, is the story of the perseverance and triumph of these people. Let me point you to only a few of these people, events and stories:

Nehru: In the 1950s, the US and Britain, too, wanted to build thorium-based reactors. In 1951, when Nehru appealed to the US for food aid as India reeled under near-famine conditions, the US Congress made it conditional on India lifting its ban on export of Kerala’s thorium-rich monazite sands, and exporting them to the US. Nehru refused to give in. The US Congress held off the food aid for weeks, but finally gave in. That export ban stands even today. We need the thorium ourselves.

‘Carbide’ Ganguly: When France, which was helping us design the experimental FBTR, backed off from cooperation and refused to sell the special mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel required, India’s breeder reactor dreams seemed at an end. India was not in a position, at the time, to make the MOX fuel. In stepped C Ganguly, a young PhD who had researched on an alternative carbide fuel. The FBTR ended up using the carbide fuel, a world-first, and has run on it for nearly 40 years now, thanks to Chaitanyamoy, nay ‘Carbide’ Ganguly.

The Tsunami: Then PM Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the PFBR in October 2004. A special elevated platform was built for the PM to do the honours by remote since his security chief would not allow him to go into a large excavated area. Two months later, when the December 2004 Tsunami struck and the entire excavated area was flooded and everything in the vicinity washed away, it was this VIP platform that helped save the lives of all but one of the 150 people who were at the site. A construction superviser who was standing on that platform alerted the workers to flee just in time as he saw the giant waves rush in.

Anil Kakodkar: During the India-US ‘nuclear deal’ talks, the US insisted that India put its Fast Breeder Reactor under international safeguards. Given its strategic and commercial importance, the DAE resisted it strongly. Some in the government and some ‘strategic experts’ ridiculed the Fast Breeder programme as a “pipedream” that would never take off and that it would be silly to let go of the deal for its sake. Pressure was sought to be mounted on the DAE to relent. The then DAE Chairman Anil Kakodkar decided to use the only weapon he had: He went public with his “over my dead body” opposition. The FBR was taken off the table. Today, the “pipedream” has become reality.