CHENNAI 15 Our gateway to a prosperousfuture Endnotes€¦ · killing more than 1,500 peo-ple, more...
1
...CH-CH 15 THE HINDU SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2011 CHENNAI SPECIAL ESSAY (Continued from the previous page) Furthermore, it is believed that the changing climate pat- terns will carry a costly adap- tation price tag in the future — an enormous $300 billion every year, which will be a huge drain on the global GDP xx . All these issues can be addressed only when we graduate from Type-0 fuels to the next-generation fuels — the most prominent amongst them being nuclear fuels, which will also power our deep space missions of the fu- ture. A standard approximate comparison between a 1000- MW coal plant and a similar nuclear plant is given in Table 1 (on the previous page). Safety issues of nuclear power b) Now, let us delve more into the other issue — that of plant safety. Throughout the history of nuclear power gen- eration there have been four major incidents of plant fail- ure — the Kyshtym accident in fuel reprocessing in 1957, the relatively smaller Three Mile Island meltdown (Unit- ed States), the much bigger Chernobyl accident (USSR, 1986) and the recent Japa- nese incident at Fukushima. The first accident was purely due to underdeveloped tech- nology, and much of the blame for the next two disas- ters is attributed to human error. Even in the case of the Fukushima disaster of 2011, there were extraordinary nat- ural forces in action — the rare occurrence of the tre- mendous stress load of an earthquake coupled with the unprecedented shear load of a tsunami. Of course, there is a need for better technology and more stable plant design across the world, but the oc- currence of four failures in six decades cannot be made out as a case for completely dis- banding the technology — which is one of our foremost keys to graduating beyond the fossil fuel-based low-end en- ergy. The best of technologi- cal progress, while being the biggest ally of mankind, does come at an incremental risk. The key is to learn and evolve to mitigate the risk, rather than use the first incident as an excuse to disband science. Let us take a few examples. In 1903, the Wright brothers translated into reality the re- markable dream of controlled human flight. Not more than half a decade later, in 1908, the first flight disaster oc- curred, which severely in- jured Orville Wright and killed his co-passenger. Many accidents followed, and even today air accidents kill more than 1,500 people every year. Imagine whether we would be flying between distant ci- ties, across oceans and conti- nents, if the incident of 1908, or the ones later, were used as a reason to disband human flight? When the mighty ship Titanic set sail in 1912, it was heralded as the pioneering mission in the field of large and comfortable ocean liners. But on its first voyage it struck an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1,500 peo- ple, more than two-thirds of those on board. But that nev- er stopped our quest for big- ger and faster means of ocean travel. The very first attempt to send man to the moon, Apollo-1, met with an acci- dent and killed three promi- nent astronauts. It took another 10 missions, with mixed results, before Apol- lo-11 finally made it to the moon in 1969, with Neil Arm- strong setting foot on the lu- nar surface and declaring to the world those never-to-be- forgotten words: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Indeed, that small step was preceded by many a stumble. The Indian space pro- gramme, which is now ranked among the best in the world, started with a failure in 1979 when our first rocket, instead of putting the satellite into a near-earth orbit, went into the Bay of Bengal. I was the Mission Director of the launch, and we were accused of putting a few crores of ru- pees into the sea. We did not wind up our dreams with that one accident and the criti- cism. The mission continued and the next year we were successful. Today, that pro- gramme, which started with a failure, is the first and only one to discover the presence of water on the moon with its Chandrayan mission, and is now a pride of the nation. The argument is, of course, that all failures and accidents pro- pel us to think and develop better and safer technologies towards better service. And in the case of nuclear power, we do acknowledge that the ef- fects of radiation can reach a wider impact zone. But then, improvement, and not escap- ism, should be our step for- ward. Nuclear fuel of the future: Thorium Let us introduce a lesser- known member among radio- active materials — Thorium. It is perhaps the best solution possible in the future and would be technologically and commercially the best option in another two decades. Tho- rium, the 90th element in the Periodic Table, is slightly lighter than Uranium. Thori- um is far more abundant, by about four times xxvi , than the traditional nuclear fuel, Ura- nium, and occurs in a far purer form, too. It is believed that the amount of energy contained in the Thorium re- serves on earth is more than the combined total energy that is left in petroleum, coal, other fossil fuels and Urani- um, all put together. And in- formation revealed in an IAEA Report (2005) on Tho- rium fuels indicates that In- dia might have the largest reserves of Thorium in the world, with over 650,000 tonnes. (Note: The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is the world’s centre of cooperation in the nuclear field. It was set up in 1957 as the world’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ organisation within the U.N. family.) This is more than one-fourth of the total depos- its of Thorium; in compari- son, we have barely 1 per cent of the world’s Uranium de- posits, which is currently be- ing put to effective use, our having opted for the closed fuel cycle technology. Thorium has many other advantages. It is estimated that Thorium may be able to generate (through Urani- um-233 that could be pro- duced from it) eight times the amount of energy per unit mass compared to (natural) Uranium xxvii . In the much de- bated issue of waste gener- ation also, Thorium has a relative advantage. It pro- duces waste that is relatively less toxic due to the absence of minor actinides (that are associated with Uranium). At the same time, it is ac- knowledged that the long- lived high-level waste from Uranium, especially in light of the Indian strategy of adopting the closed fuel cycle involving reprocessing for the recovery of Plutonium and Uranium, can be effectively managed using technologies available today. Indian nucle- ar experts tell us that the rela- tively small volumes of such waste (long-term storage space of less than a quarter of the size of a football field is adequate for the estimated waste from a 1000 MWe plant) can be safely stored af- ter vitrification for hundreds of years without causing any risk to the environment or people. One question that crops up is, why then has Uranium rather than Thorium become the popular choice for nucle- ar energy programmes across the world? There are two rea- sons: one is technological and the other is historical. The technological reason stems from the simple fact that at first one needs to pro- duce Uranium-233 from Tho- rium, and for this, reactors based on the naturally avail- able nuclear fuel material, Uranium-235, are required. In addition, the recovery of Uranium-233 by large-scale reprocessing of irradiated thorium, as well as the likely presence of hard gamma emitting Uranium-232, pose certain practical hurdles. But according to experts, all these can be overcome technologi- cally. The second and the histor- ical reason why Thorium has lagged behind in the ladder of development, comes from its advantage of being able to provide Thorium-based fuel, as seen from the context of the relatively unstable geo- political conditions — which is that Thorium cannot be weaponised. Unlike Urani- um, which is always on a tight-rope walk between be- ing a power source and find- ing destructive applications, Thorium bombs just cannot be made. Here history steps in. It must be remembered that much of the current civil nuclear applications are di- rect offshoots of the military nuclear technologies of the Cold War period. So, the first significant outcome of nucle- ar technology was the Man- hattan Project during the Second World War, which ul- timately culminated in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing of 1945 by the U.S. A nuclear weapon is differ- ent from a nuclear plant, as in the former there is no need to control or slow down the re- actions that lead to a cata- strophic energy release in a short time interval — which is the essence of a bomb. How- ever, a nuclear plant needs moderation of the reaction to sustain a steady but con- trolled release of energy. It was only by the end of 1951 that some noteworthy work was done in controlled nucle- ar power generation at the EBR-1 experiment in Idaho to produce 100 kW of nuclear power. This “weapon first” approach to nuclear technol- ogy led to the fact that there was little focus on developing methods to energise from Thorium, which is non-weap- onisable, and a larger focus on Uranium, which can be weap- onised. But now, being the largest owner of Thorium, and also being amongst the nations which will see the highest surge in power demand with its growth, the opportunity is for India to pursue its exist- ing nuclear programme with a special focus on research and development on the Tho- rium route as the long term sustainable option, which we are already undertaking. For this purpose, it is imperative to continue to implement the current Indian plan of mak- ing use of the uranium and plutonium-based fuel cycle technologies as well as irradi- ate larger amounts of Thori- um in fast reactors to breed Uranium-233 fuel as it gradu- ates to the Thorium-based plants. It is noteworthy that the Indian plan for an ad- vanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) is an important step to launch early commence- ment of Thorium utilisation in India, while considerable further efforts to use Thori- um in both thermal and fast reactors would be essential to harness sustainable energy from Thorium-generated Uranium-233. Various technologies for Thorium-based plants are al- ready being developed and deployed on a test basis across the world including in India, which have a promising future. These include first breeding it to fissile Urani- um-233 isotope in the con- ventional reactors or through the revived interest in tech- nologies like the Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) which use salts to trap the fissile materi- al and do not react with air or burn in air or water. In this technology, the operational pressure is near the ordinary atmospheric pressure, and hence the cost of construc- tion is low and there is no risk of a pressure explosion xxviii . A significantly large quan- tity of highly active nuclear material exists, and will con- tinue to exist in the form of nuclear armaments — which was the mother programme of the nuclear energy pro- gramme. In 2010, there were about 22,000 nuclear war- heads spanning at least nine countries of the world, and 8,000 xxix of them are in active state, carrying a risk far grea- ter than controlled nuclear power reactors. If the argu- ment of risk is to be used to eliminate the peaceful energy generation programme, then the nuclear opposition fac- tions must first direct their efforts at Washington and Moscow, the owners of 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads, to disband their nuclear arsenal — which is, by design, intended to be hostile. Would that happen? Unlike- ly, at least in the foreseeable future. Our aim should be to minimise the risks associated with nuclear power. The power of the nucleus is mighty and the future of hu- manity lies in harnessing it in a safe and efficient manner. In the years to come, it will fuel not only our earth-based needs but also our space mis- sions and perhaps even our civilisation’s reach to other planets for habitation. Our current nuclear projects will expand into better and safer materials, like Thorium, and later on, into better reactions like fusion, which once com- pletely developed, will be able to generate hundreds of times more of power than current fission methods. Affordable, clean and abundant energy provided by nuclear sources is our gateway to a future that is healthy, learned and con- nected — a future that will span deep into space and crosses the boundaries of cur- rent human imagination. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the 11th President of India, from 2002 to 2007, and pioneered the Vision for an Economical- ly Developed India by 2020. He is at [email protected] Srijan Pal Singh is an expert in the area of sustainable de- velopment and is an electrical engineer with an MBA from the IIM-A. He is at [email protected] © Copyright: Authors ... Our gateway to a prosperous future “There is a need for better technology and more stable plant design across the world, but the occurrence of four failures in six decades cannot be made out as a case for completely disbanding the technology.” i http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htm ii Thorium as a Secure Nuclear Fuel Alternative, A Canon Bryan, 23-April-2009, Journal of Energy Security (available at http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_con- tent&view=article&id= 187:thorium-as-a-secure-nuclear- fuel-alternative&catid= 94:0409content&Itemid=342) iii Steve Kirsch, The Most Important Investment that We Aren’t Making to Mitigate the Climate Crisis, 26.12.2009 Huff Post Green, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/ the-most- important-invest_b_402685.html) iv Data from World Resources Institute (for 2003) v India and China, Raghav Behal vi India envisages about 950,000 MW power requirement by 2030, http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/energy- watch/news/article_1184013.php/India_envisag- es_about_950000_MW_power_ requirement_by_2030 vii “World Nuclear Power Reactors 2006-08 and Uranium Requirements.” World Nuclear Association. 2008-01-14. viii “World Uranium Production U3O8/ million lbs.” Ux Consulting Company, LLC ix World Nuclear Power Reactors & Uranium Require- ments, World Nuclear Association (21 October 2011) (avail- able at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html) Data is for 2010 x Nuclear Power Plant Information, IAEA PRIS (2010), available at http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/ pris.nucshare.htm xi International Monetary Fund, 2010 xii India 2011/12 coal import needs may jump to 114 mln T, Reuters, September 27, 2011 xiii Rise of the Coal Bill, RN Bhaskar, Forbes India Magazine (April 2010) xiv Matters elucidated thus far by RERF studies, http://www.rerf.or.jp/rerfrad_e.pdf xv Matters elucidated thus far by RERF studies, http://www.rerf.or.jp/rerfrad_e.pdf xvi IPCC Reports on climate change xvii Air quality and health, Fact Sheet, WHO (http:// www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en /index.html) xviii Climate Change and Health, WHO 2010, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ xix “UNSCEAR assessment of the Chernobyl accident.” Unscear.org. xx Climate change fight to cost $300 billion a year, Alister Doyle (12-August-2009), OneWorld (available at http:// southasia.oneworld.net/globalheadlines/climate-change- fight-to-cost-300-billion-a-year) xxi How Coal Works, Union of Concerned Scientists (avail- able at http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/ brief_coal. html) xxii Each kg of coal generates about 2.93 kg of CO2 xxiii Considering the following calculations. About 30,000 million tons of CO2 is responsible for the casualties of about 1.3 million lives per year. (1 billion ton = 1000 million ton). Thus, 1 MT corresponds to about 43.33 causalities per year. And 8.37 million tons would be responsible (by interpolation) for about 362 lives being lost. xxiv Similar to the above derivation xxv Based on the eight fold mass to energy advantage we have earlier cited from the article: Thorium as a Secure Nucle- ar Fuel Alternative, A Canon Bryan, 23-April-2009, Journal of Energy Security xxvi IAEA, 2005 xxvii Extracted from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/ inf62. html xxviii Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors http://www.amer- icanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/4/liquid-fluoride-tho- rium-reactorsThorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy, http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/thorium- fuel-for-nuclear-energy/3 xxix “Federation of American Scientists: Status of World Nuclear Forces.” Fas.org. Endnotes TH Chennai/ CITY OpenPg_02 User: cosrh 11-05-2011 23:59 Color: C M Y K
Transcript of CHENNAI 15 Our gateway to a prosperousfuture Endnotes€¦ · killing more than 1,500 peo-ple, more...
...CH-CH
15THE HINDU SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2011CHENNAI SPECIAL ESSAY
(Continued fromthe previous page)
Furthermore, it is believedthat the changing climate pat-terns will carry a costly adap-tation price tag in the future— an enormous $300 billionevery year, which will be ahuge drain on the globalGDPxx. All these issues can beaddressed only when wegraduate from Type-0 fuels tothe next-generation fuels —the most prominent amongstthem being nuclear fuels,which will also power ourdeep space missions of the fu-ture. A standard approximatecomparison between a 1000-MW coal plant and a similarnuclear plant is given in Table1 (on the previous page).
Safety issues of nuclear power
b) Now, let us delve moreinto the other issue — that ofplant safety. Throughout thehistory of nuclear power gen-eration there have been fourmajor incidents of plant fail-ure — the Kyshtym accidentin fuel reprocessing in 1957,the relatively smaller ThreeMile Island meltdown (Unit-ed States), the much biggerChernobyl accident (USSR,1986) and the recent Japa-nese incident at Fukushima.The first accident was purelydue to underdeveloped tech-nology, and much of theblame for the next two disas-ters is attributed to humanerror. Even in the case of theFukushima disaster of 2011,there were extraordinary nat-ural forces in action — therare occurrence of the tre-mendous stress load of anearthquake coupled with theunprecedented shear load of atsunami. Of course, there is aneed for better technologyand more stable plant designacross the world, but the oc-currence of four failures in sixdecades cannot be made outas a case for completely dis-banding the technology —which is one of our foremostkeys to graduating beyond thefossil fuel-based low-end en-ergy. The best of technologi-cal progress, while being thebiggest ally of mankind, doescome at an incremental risk.The key is to learn and evolveto mitigate the risk, ratherthan use the first incident asan excuse to disband science.
Let us take a few examples.In 1903, the Wright brotherstranslated into reality the re-markable dream of controlledhuman flight. Not more thanhalf a decade later, in 1908,the first flight disaster oc-curred, which severely in-jured Orville Wright andkilled his co-passenger. Manyaccidents followed, and eventoday air accidents kill morethan 1,500 people every year.Imagine whether we wouldbe flying between distant ci-ties, across oceans and conti-nents, if the incident of 1908,or the ones later, were used asa reason to disband humanflight? When the mighty shipTitanic set sail in 1912, it washeralded as the pioneeringmission in the field of largeand comfortable ocean liners.But on its first voyage itstruck an iceberg and sank,killing more than 1,500 peo-ple, more than two-thirds ofthose on board. But that nev-er stopped our quest for big-ger and faster means of oceantravel. The very first attemptto send man to the moon,Apollo-1, met with an acci-dent and killed three promi-nent astronauts. It tookanother 10 missions, withmixed results, before Apol-lo-11 finally made it to themoon in 1969, with Neil Arm-strong setting foot on the lu-nar surface and declaring to
the world those never-to-be-forgotten words: “One smallstep for man, one giant leapfor mankind.” Indeed, thatsmall step was preceded bymany a stumble.
The Indian space pro-gramme, which is now rankedamong the best in the world,started with a failure in 1979when our first rocket, insteadof putting the satellite into anear-earth orbit, went intothe Bay of Bengal. I was theMission Director of thelaunch, and we were accusedof putting a few crores of ru-pees into the sea. We did notwind up our dreams with thatone accident and the criti-cism. The mission continuedand the next year we weresuccessful. Today, that pro-gramme, which started with afailure, is the first and onlyone to discover the presenceof water on the moon with itsChandrayan mission, and isnow a pride of the nation. Theargument is, of course, thatall failures and accidents pro-pel us to think and developbetter and safer technologiestowards better service. And inthe case of nuclear power, wedo acknowledge that the ef-fects of radiation can reach awider impact zone. But then,improvement, and not escap-ism, should be our step for-ward.
Nuclear fuel of thefuture: Thorium
Let us introduce a lesser-known member among radio-active materials — Thorium.It is perhaps the best solutionpossible in the future andwould be technologically andcommercially the best optionin another two decades. Tho-rium, the 90th element in thePeriodic Table, is slightlylighter than Uranium. Thori-um is far more abundant, byabout four timesxxvi, than thetraditional nuclear fuel, Ura-nium, and occurs in a farpurer form, too. It is believedthat the amount of energycontained in the Thorium re-serves on earth is more thanthe combined total energythat is left in petroleum, coal,other fossil fuels and Urani-um, all put together. And in-formation revealed in anIAEA Report (2005) on Tho-rium fuels indicates that In-dia might have the largestreserves of Thorium in theworld, with over 650,000tonnes. (Note: The IAEA, theInternational Atomic EnergyAgency, is the world’s centreof cooperation in the nuclearfield. It was set up in 1957 asthe world’s ‘Atoms for Peace’organisation within the U.N.family.) This is more thanone-fourth of the total depos-its of Thorium; in compari-son, we have barely 1 per centof the world’s Uranium de-posits, which is currently be-ing put to effective use, ourhaving opted for the closedfuel cycle technology.
Thorium has many otheradvantages. It is estimatedthat Thorium may be able togenerate (through Urani-um-233 that could be pro-duced from it) eight times theamount of energy per unitmass compared to (natural)Uraniumxxvii. In the much de-bated issue of waste gener-ation also, Thorium has arelative advantage. It pro-duces waste that is relativelyless toxic due to the absenceof minor actinides (that areassociated with Uranium).
At the same time, it is ac-knowledged that the long-lived high-level waste fromUranium, especially in lightof the Indian strategy ofadopting the closed fuel cycleinvolving reprocessing for therecovery of Plutonium and
Uranium, can be effectivelymanaged using technologiesavailable today. Indian nucle-ar experts tell us that the rela-tively small volumes of suchwaste (long-term storagespace of less than a quarter ofthe size of a football field isadequate for the estimatedwaste from a 1000 MWeplant) can be safely stored af-ter vitrification for hundredsof years without causing anyrisk to the environment orpeople.
One question that crops upis, why then has Uraniumrather than Thorium becomethe popular choice for nucle-ar energy programmes acrossthe world? There are two rea-sons: one is technological andthe other is historical.
The technological reasonstems from the simple factthat at first one needs to pro-duce Uranium-233 from Tho-rium, and for this, reactorsbased on the naturally avail-able nuclear fuel material,Uranium-235, are required.In addition, the recovery ofUranium-233 by large-scalereprocessing of irradiatedthorium, as well as the likelypresence of hard gammaemitting Uranium-232, posecertain practical hurdles. Butaccording to experts, all thesecan be overcome technologi-cally.
The second and the histor-ical reason why Thorium haslagged behind in the ladder ofdevelopment, comes from itsadvantage of being able toprovide Thorium-based fuel,
as seen from the context ofthe relatively unstable geo-political conditions — whichis that Thorium cannot beweaponised. Unlike Urani-um, which is always on atight-rope walk between be-ing a power source and find-ing destructive applications,Thorium bombs just cannotbe made. Here history stepsin. It must be rememberedthat much of the current civilnuclear applications are di-rect offshoots of the militarynuclear technologies of theCold War period. So, the firstsignificant outcome of nucle-ar technology was the Man-hattan Project during theSecond World War, which ul-timately culminated in theHiroshima and Nagasakibombing of 1945 by the U.S.
A nuclear weapon is differ-ent from a nuclear plant, as inthe former there is no need tocontrol or slow down the re-actions that lead to a cata-strophic energy release in ashort time interval — which isthe essence of a bomb. How-ever, a nuclear plant needsmoderation of the reaction tosustain a steady but con-trolled release of energy. Itwas only by the end of 1951that some noteworthy workwas done in controlled nucle-ar power generation at theEBR-1 experiment in Idaho toproduce 100 kW of nuclearpower. This “weapon first”approach to nuclear technol-ogy led to the fact that therewas little focus on developingmethods to energise from
Thorium, which is non-weap-onisable, and a larger focus onUranium, which can be weap-onised.
But now, being the largestowner of Thorium, and alsobeing amongst the nationswhich will see the highestsurge in power demand withits growth, the opportunity isfor India to pursue its exist-ing nuclear programme witha special focus on researchand development on the Tho-rium route as the long termsustainable option, which weare already undertaking. Forthis purpose, it is imperativeto continue to implement thecurrent Indian plan of mak-ing use of the uranium andplutonium-based fuel cycletechnologies as well as irradi-ate larger amounts of Thori-um in fast reactors to breedUranium-233 fuel as it gradu-ates to the Thorium-basedplants. It is noteworthy thatthe Indian plan for an ad-vanced heavy water reactor(AHWR) is an important stepto launch early commence-ment of Thorium utilisationin India, while considerablefurther efforts to use Thori-um in both thermal and fastreactors would be essential toharness sustainable energyfrom Thorium-generatedUranium-233.
Various technologies forThorium-based plants are al-ready being developed anddeployed on a test basisacross the world including inIndia, which have a promisingfuture. These include firstbreeding it to fissile Urani-um-233 isotope in the con-ventional reactors or throughthe revived interest in tech-nologies like the Molten SaltReactors (MSR) which usesalts to trap the fissile materi-al and do not react with air orburn in air or water. In thistechnology, the operationalpressure is near the ordinaryatmospheric pressure, andhence the cost of construc-tion is low and there is no riskof a pressure explosionxxviii.
A significantly large quan-tity of highly active nuclearmaterial exists, and will con-tinue to exist in the form ofnuclear armaments — whichwas the mother programme
of the nuclear energy pro-gramme. In 2010, there wereabout 22,000 nuclear war-heads spanning at least ninecountries of the world, and8,000xxix of them are in activestate, carrying a risk far grea-ter than controlled nuclearpower reactors. If the argu-ment of risk is to be used toeliminate the peaceful energygeneration programme, thenthe nuclear opposition fac-tions must first direct theirefforts at Washington andMoscow, the owners of 90 percent of the world’s nuclearwarheads, to disband theirnuclear arsenal — which is, bydesign, intended to be hostile.Would that happen? Unlike-ly, at least in the foreseeablefuture. Our aim should be tominimise the risks associatedwith nuclear power.
The power of the nucleus ismighty and the future of hu-manity lies in harnessing it ina safe and efficient manner.In the years to come, it willfuel not only our earth-basedneeds but also our space mis-sions and perhaps even ourcivilisation’s reach to otherplanets for habitation. Ourcurrent nuclear projects willexpand into better and safermaterials, like Thorium, andlater on, into better reactionslike fusion, which once com-pletely developed, will be ableto generate hundreds of timesmore of power than currentfission methods. Affordable,clean and abundant energyprovided by nuclear sourcesis our gateway to a future thatis healthy, learned and con-nected — a future that willspan deep into space andcrosses the boundaries of cur-rent human imagination.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the11th President of India, from2002 to 2007, and pioneeredthe Vision for an Economical-ly Developed India by 2020.He is at [email protected]
Srijan Pal Singh is an expertin the area of sustainable de-velopment and is an electricalengineer with an MBA fromthe IIM-A. He is at [email protected]
© Copyright: Authors
... Our gateway to a prosperous future
“There is a need for better technology and more stable plant design across theworld, but the occurrence of four failuresin six decades cannot be made out as acase for completely disbanding thetechnology.”
i http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htmii Thorium as a Secure Nuclear Fuel Alternative, A Canon
Bryan, 23-April-2009, Journal of Energy Security (available athttp://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_con-tent&view=article&id= 187:thorium-as-a-secure-nuclear-fuel-alternative&catid= 94:0409content&Itemid=342)
iii Steve Kirsch, The Most Important Investment that WeAren’t Making to Mitigate the Climate Crisis, 26.12.2009 HuffPost Green, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/the-most- important-invest_b_402685.html)
iv Data from World Resources Institute (for 2003)v India and China, Raghav Behalvi India envisages about 950,000 MW power requirement
by 2030, http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/energy-watch/news/article_1184013.php/India_envisag-es_about_950000_MW_power_ requirement_by_2030
vii “World Nuclear Power Reactors 2006-08 and UraniumRequirements.” World Nuclear Association. 2008-01-14.
viii “World Uranium Production U3O8/ million lbs.” UxConsulting Company, LLC
ix World Nuclear Power Reactors & Uranium Require-ments, World Nuclear Association (21 October 2011) (avail-able at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html)Data is for 2010
x Nuclear Power Plant Information, IAEA PRIS (2010),available at http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.nucshare.htm
xi International Monetary Fund, 2010xii India 2011/12 coal import needs may jump to 114 mln T,
Reuters, September 27, 2011xiii Rise of the Coal Bill, RN Bhaskar, Forbes India Magazine
(April 2010)xiv Matters elucidated thus far by RERF studies,
http://www.rerf.or.jp/rerfrad_e.pdfxv Matters elucidated thus far by RERF studies,
http://www.rerf.or.jp/rerfrad_e.pdfxvi IPCC Reports on climate changexvii Air quality and health, Fact Sheet, WHO (http://
www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en /index.html)xviii Climate Change and Health, WHO 2010,
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/xix “UNSCEAR assessment of the Chernobyl accident.”
Unscear.org. xx Climate change fight to cost $300 billion a year, Alister
Doyle (12-August-2009), OneWorld (available at http://southasia.oneworld.net/globalheadlines/climate-change-fight-to-cost-300-billion-a-year)
xxi How Coal Works, Union of Concerned Scientists (avail-able at http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/brief_coal. html)
xxii Each kg of coal generates about 2.93 kg of CO2xxiii Considering the following calculations. About 30,000
million tons of CO2 is responsible for the casualties of about1.3 million lives per year. (1 billion ton = 1000 million ton).Thus, 1 MT corresponds to about 43.33 causalities per year.And 8.37 million tons would be responsible (by interpolation)for about 362 lives being lost.
xxiv Similar to the above derivationxxv Based on the eight fold mass to energy advantage we
have earlier cited from the article: Thorium as a Secure Nucle-ar Fuel Alternative, A Canon Bryan, 23-April-2009, Journal ofEnergy Security
xxvi IAEA, 2005xxvii Extracted from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/
inf62. htmlxxviii Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors http://www.amer-
icanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/4/liquid-fluoride-tho-rium-reactorsThorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy,http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/thorium-fuel-for-nuclear-energy/3
xxix “Federation of American Scientists: Status of WorldNuclear Forces.” Fas.org.
Endnotes
TH Chennai/ CITY OpenPg_02 User: cosrh 11-05-2011 23:59 Color: CMYK
