There is no industry in India where science, technology, defence, the environment, politics and patriotism are more closely mixed than in nuclear power. Yet at the last count there were over 30 other countries in the world where nuclear plants provide power without arousing as much passion. This is true even for countries where there is heavy dependence on nuclear power: Lithuania’s sole power reactor provides 80 per cent of its total power requirement, more than France whose 59 power reactors provide over 77 per cent of its total requirement. Nuclear power provides just three per cent of India’s requirement but the recent US-India draft agreement on nuclear energy has once again brought international attention to India’s unique and contentious status in the nuclear world.

Few countries produce nuclear power : indeed, of the nuclear weapons states, Pakistan has nuclear power plants but does not produce them, while Israel does not produce any commercial nuclear power. India is the only nuclear weapons state which is both outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and produces nuclear power plants. The decision to embark on this brave path assumed that it would be sustainable; ‘brave’ because designing and building nuclear power plants is by far the hardest of the three main commercial nuclear applications of generating power, building weapons and providing radioisotopes for various industrial and health applications.

Plants for uranium enrichment or plutonium extraction, always well-hidden from public scrutiny, just need to work long enough to eventually produce sufficient fissile material for a bomb. Building power reactors means overcoming a set of major technological hurdles, and it also puts a public face on the technology and means meeting stringent demands of safety and reliability. Following India’s Pokhran 1 ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosion, the US and other countries set up the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) and agreed on strict embargoes of supplies for non-signatories of the NPT. It then took nearly two decades for the Indian reactor programme to get back on track and the 20,000 MWe of nuclear power that were promised for 2010 are now not likely to be produced for another decade after that.

Critical to any plans for an enhanced Indian nuclear power programme is the question of fuel supply. Most potential uranium supplier countries have subscribed to the NPT and the conditions laid down by the NSG. Canada and Australia have large, high-grade deposits and between them produce over 50 per cent of the world’s uranium. But Canada and the US are both unhappy about the use of the Trombay CIRUS reactor (supplied in 1954 by Canada, with heavy water from the US) for producing plutonium that went into explosives, whether called peaceful or not. Australia has been rigid in not supplying uranium to any country outside the NPT. None of the other major uranium suppliers in Africa, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has shown any inclination to break ranks with the NSG countries.

Indian deposits of uranium are relatively low-grade and are estimated at yielding a total of 60,000 tons, compared to around 400,000 tons already being exploited in Australia. This sets a limit to the future of an Indian uranium-based programme unless uranium becomes available from other sources.

The 441 power reactors in use in the world today are expected to have another 100 added by 2010, so there will be a major increase in worldwide demand for uranium. At the same time, there is already a shortage of uranium and prices have moved up from $15.50/kg in 2004 to $43/kg in 2006; potential suppliers like Russia have already warned of their own shortages. The Bhabha Plan for Indian nuclear power envisaged using natural uranium for power plants in Phase 1. The by-product of plutonium from these plants was then to be combined with Indian thorium (available plentifully here) to fuel the Phase 2 plants which would then produce uranium-233. The Phase 3 power plants would be fuelled with this uranium-233 and thorium and produce even more uranium-233, thus completing the ‘breeding’ cycle. However, the cost of power from breeder reactors is today much higher than power from the more conventional pressurised heavy water reactors.

How much of India’s power plans can be based on a thorium-fuelled fast breeder technology that is still to be proved? By current estimates, Phase 3 plants should go on stream by the middle of the next decade. What if the development takes longer, or if the costs are higher than expected?

Petroleum prices peaked at $70 a barrel in 2005 and in the near future could reach $100 a barrel. For nuclear power to be meaningful in India’s energy equation, substantial generation must come on stream soon. It is time to put aside patriotism and personal vanity and take hard decisions for the next generation of Indian nuclear power plants. Unless the embargo by the NSG is lifted, there will be no external supply of uranium and we will be completely dependent on the already delayed breeder reactor technology. In terms of national strategy, any muscle that comes from having nuclear weapons will then be heavily compromised by the lack of adequate sources of energy for development.