India will ‘commission a nuclear power reactor every year’: NPCIL chief Premium

India's Nuclear Power Corporation plans to commission a nuclear power reactor every year, emphasising the role of nuclear power in its clean energy transition and decarbonisation efforts.

On December 17, 2023, India’s largest indigenously developed 700-MWe pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) – the fourth unit in Kakrapar, Gujarat – attained criticality. Six months earlier, another 700-MWe unit in the same facility had started producing commercial electricity. In 2024, another unit with the same capacity is expected to be commissioned in Rawatbhata, Rajasthan. Behind all these reactors is the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). Its chairman and managing director B.C. Pathak told The Hindu NPCIL plans to “commission a nuclear power reactor every year” hence.

Mr. Pathak is a Distinguished Scientist of the Department of Atomic Energy and has more than 30 years of experience implementing the NPCIL’s nuclear power projects, including 220-MWe, 540-MWe, 700-MWe and 1,000-MWe reactors of both PHWR and pressurised water reactor (PWR) technologies. He assumed his current charge in NPCIL in February 2022. On December 13, 2023, he spoke to The Hindu on India’s nuclear power plans and strategy. Excerpts from the interview follow.

In the conference on ‘Nuclear for Clean Energy Transition’ (in December), organised by the Indian Nuclear Society in association with the NPCIL, you made a distinction between electricity generation and energy. You said much of the energy currently comes from fossil fuels. Can you expand on this?

Globally, on an average, the energy composition consists of about 20% electricity and 80% energy from coal, petrol, diesel, gas, lignite, and other components. Efforts are being made to decarbonise the electricity sector by putting up solar power plants, wind energy, renewables, and nuclear power plants.  The 80% energy sector consists of fuel that is being directly used as molecules or as a reducing agent. There is a need to decarbonise that sector also.

Efforts are being made globally to replace this fuel by a fuel that does not emit carbon dioxide. That is why the emphasis is being made on the production of green hydrogen. Green hydrogen, to some extent, will help [in decarbonisation].

In future, nuclear power may play a major role in producing hydrogen because nuclear is clean energy. Hydrogen, produced from clean energy sources, is generally termed green hydrogen. That is why nuclear has a dual role – in terms of electricity generation and as a promising potential clean energy source.

But a lot of work has to be done across the globe on this. It will take some time. That is what I was trying to explain by making a distinction between electricity and energy. Electricity is actually a subset form of energy only.