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India draws up plan for thorium use in nuclear reactors
Thursday, 06 March 2003, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: India has drawn up an ambitious 
4.5 billion plan to use its huge thorium reserves as an alternative to its modest uranium deposits to fuel its nuclear power plants.
S.B. Mookherjee, minister of state in the atomic energy department, Wednesday said India's long-term nuclear programme envisaged "progressive deployment of thorium-based nuclear fuels for nuclear power generation".
It has been estimated that India possesses about 360,000 tonnes of thorium, about a third of the world's total reserves. Its reserves of uranium are much lower at 92,000 tonnes.
Mookherjee said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha 224.3 million had been spent on the development of technologies to tap thorium as an alternative to the "relatively meagre indigenous resources of uranium".
"The advanced heavy water reactor currently under development in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre will generate most of the power from thorium," he said.
Thorium and uranium are the two naturally occurring elements that have the potential of being used as fuel in a nuclear power plant.
In the first phase of its nuclear power programme, India used available uranium resources to build 14 nuclear power plants, including two of the "boiling water" type and the other of "pressurised heavy water" type.
In the second phase, plutonium will be generated using breeder reactors. These reactors use uranium as fuel and generate much larger quantities of plutonium, which can then be used to produce energy. In other words, they "breed" their own fuel supplies.
In the third stage, India will use thorium to power nuclear reactors. The technology for this will have to be developed indigenously as no country will provide the know-how for using thorium as fuel for nuclear energy.
Source: IANS
4.5 billion plan to use its huge thorium reserves as an alternative to its modest uranium deposits to fuel its nuclear power plants.
S.B. Mookherjee, minister of state in the atomic energy department, Wednesday said India's long-term nuclear programme envisaged "progressive deployment of thorium-based nuclear fuels for nuclear power generation".
It has been estimated that India possesses about 360,000 tonnes of thorium, about a third of the world's total reserves. Its reserves of uranium are much lower at 92,000 tonnes.
Mookherjee said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha 224.3 million had been spent on the development of technologies to tap thorium as an alternative to the "relatively meagre indigenous resources of uranium".
"The advanced heavy water reactor currently under development in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre will generate most of the power from thorium," he said.
Thorium and uranium are the two naturally occurring elements that have the potential of being used as fuel in a nuclear power plant.
In the first phase of its nuclear power programme, India used available uranium resources to build 14 nuclear power plants, including two of the "boiling water" type and the other of "pressurised heavy water" type.
In the second phase, plutonium will be generated using breeder reactors. These reactors use uranium as fuel and generate much larger quantities of plutonium, which can then be used to produce energy. In other words, they "breed" their own fuel supplies.
In the third stage, India will use thorium to power nuclear reactors. The technology for this will have to be developed indigenously as no country will provide the know-how for using thorium as fuel for nuclear energy.
Source: IANS