Nuclear Energy

The first commercial nuclear power station started operation in the 1950s.
Nuclear energy now provides about 10% of the world's electricity from about
440 power reactors.

Nuclear is the world's second largest source of low-carbon power (29% of the
total in 2018).
TWh: Terawatt-
hour
Gwe: Gigawatt
electrical
Twelve countries in 2019 produced at least ¼ of their electricity from nuclear.

France gets around 3/4 of its electricity from nuclear energy, Slovakia and
Ukraine get more than half from
Nuclear

USA, UK, Spain, Romania

and Russia about 1/5 of
electricity is from nuclear.
Nuclear Power
in India
Nuclear Power in India

The government's 12th five-year plan for 2012-17 targeted by 2032

total installed capacity of 700 GWe to meet 7-9% GDP growth, with
63 GWe nuclear.

In March 2018, the government stated that nuclear capacity would

fall well short of its 63 GWe target and that the total nuclear
capacity is likely to be about 22.5 GWe by the year 2031.

Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) supplied 35

TWh of India's electricity in 2013-14 from 5.3 GWe nuclear capacity.

India's fuel situation, with shortage of fossil fuels, is driving the

nuclear investment for electricity, and 25% nuclear contribution is
the ambition for 2050.
Nuclear Power in India
Since building the two small boiling water reactors (BWR) at Tarapur in
the 1960s, civil nuclear strategy has been directed towards complete
independence in the nuclear fuel cycle.

The pressurised heavy-water reactor (PHWR) design was adopted in

1964, since it required less natural uranium than the BWRs, needed no
enrichment, and could be built with the country’s engineering capacity
at that time – pressure tubes rather than a heavy pressure vessel being
involved.

India's nuclear energy self-sufficiency extends from uranium exploration

and mining through fuel fabrication, heavy water production, reactor
design and construction, to reprocessing and waste management.

It is also developing technology to utilise its abundant resources of

thorium as a nuclear fuel.
Nuclear Power in India
The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) has been constructed in India
that will be able to use uranium-plutonium oxide.
It has a blanket with thorium and uranium to breed fissile U-233 and plutonium
respectively.

The long-term goal is to develop an advanced heavy-water thorium cycle.

The first stage of this employs the PHWRs fuelled by natural uranium, and light water
reactors, which produce plutonium.

Stage 2 uses fast neutron reactors burning the plutonium with the blanket around the
core having uranium as well as thorium, so that further plutonium is produced as well
as U-233.

Then in stage 3, Advanced Heavy Water Reactors (AHWRs) will burn thorium-
plutonium fuels in such a manner that breeds U-233 which can eventually be used as a
self-sustaining fissile driver. An alternative stage 3 is molten salt breeder reactors
(MSBR),
Uranium mines in India
Mining and processing of uranium is carried out by Uranium Corporation of India Ltd
(UCIL), Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), in Jharkhand near Calcutta.

Common mills are near

Jaduguda (2500 t/day) and
Turamdih (3000 t/day).

Jaduguda ore is 0.05-0.06%U.

All Jharkhand mines are in the

Singhbhum shear zone, and
all are underground except
Banduhurang.

Another mill is at
Tummalapalle in AP,
expanding from 3000 to 4500 t/day.
Fundamentals of nuclear energy

Uranium-235 is the only natural material being fissionable by

neutrons of low energy and allowing a self-sustaining chain
reaction, which means that each fission event causes, on average,
exactly one additional such event in a continued chain.

Fission typically releases between one and seven neutrons

(with an average of 2.4).

The power level can be controlled via movement of control rods

which contain
neutron poison,
such as
boron or hafnium.
Fundamentals of nuclear energy

The condition for establishing a chain reaction in a nuclear reactor is

commonly expressed as the achievement of criticality.

This can be quantified in terms of the bor effective multiplication

factor k, defined as the ratio of the number of neutrons produced
by fission in one generation to the number in the preceding
generation.

A system is termed critical if k =1, It is subcritical if k< 1and

supercritical if k> 1.
Fundamentals of nuclear energy

Nuclear fuel contains at least ten million times more usable energy per
mass unit than does chemical fuel making nuclear fission a very dense
energy source.

Heat production due to radioactive decay is in the range of 6% one

second, 4% one minute and still 1% one day of the original power after
reactor shutdown, calling for sufficient continuous core cooling.

Most current power reactors use ordinary light water as coolant, to

which the fission energy is transferred, and as a moderator to lower
the energy of fission neutrons to “thermal” level.

Natural uranium that contains 0.71% U-235 is enriched to 3–5%,

before conversion to uranium dioxide and insertion into the reactor
core.
Fundamentals of nuclear energy

With uranium fuel, 239Pu is produced by the capture of neutrons in

238U.
It contributes fissile material which is consumed in the reactor before
the fuel is removed, supplementing the original 235U in the fresh fuel.

The rate of 239Pu production is described in terms of the conversion

ratio, which is defined in general terms as the ratio of the number
of fissile nuclei produced to the number of fissile nuclei destroyed.
Fundamentals of nuclear energy

The nuclear fuel cycle and options, partially with fractions of fissile material (U-235,
Pu-239), minor actinides and fission products. MOX stands for mixed oxide nuclear fuel.
U3O8, which is the first stage of processing at the mine is commonly known as yellowcake
Six Challenges to the Nuclear
Renaissance
 1. Uranium: A Sustainable Energy Source?

• Known reserves of uranium are found in relatively

stable industrialised countries (Australia 23%),
Kazakhstan (15%), Russia (10%), Canada (8%), South
Africa (8%) the USA (6%).

• Current usage is about 68 000 tonnes of uranium per

year, with current resources of uranium estimated at
5.4Mt. At current rates of consumption this will last
80 years.
 2. Nuclear Power Economics
• Nuclear power plants are very expensive to build
relative to all other forms of electricity production,
with a Front-loaded cost structure (high initial
investment then relatively low running cost)

• The track record for the construction costs of nuclear

plants has been poor.

• Actual costs were far higher than had been

projected.
 Why would you want to
spend €3 billion on one of
these?
 3. Shortages in Skilled Labour and Materials

• This includes a lack of skilled engineers, as well

as a backlog in orders for machine parts and for
reactors vessels.
• Labour shortages may impact upon ambitious
new build programmes.
• Only one facility in the world (Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries, Ltd) has the capability to
manufacture large reactor vessels, which raises
questions about the ability of the firm to meet
the increasing global demand
 4. Nuclear Safety
• During the fifty years that commercial power
plants have operated worldwide, there have
been three serious accidents.

• All the serious reactor incidents (Windscale,

Chernobyl, Fukushima) involved human error.

• The safety record of existing nuclear reactors

has improved over time as safety regulations
have been upgraded.
 Nuclear Safety II
• There is no nuclear plant design that is totally
risk free.
• A recent MIT study based on probabilistic risk
assessment (PRA), suggests one to expect four
core damage accidents up to 2050
• They concluded that this was an unacceptably
high number – it should be 1 or less, which is
the current expected safety level.
5. Nuclear Waste Disposal and
Decommissioning Nuclear Plants

Radioactive waste is created at all points in the nuclear

fuel cycle:

from uranium mining,

fuel enrichment and
discharges from plants, to the
highly radioactive waste resulting from reprocessing spent
fuel and
decommissioning contaminated sites.
 6. Proliferation
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT) came into effect in 1968. It stated that those
states that already possessed nuclear weapons should
not transfer atomic weapons to ‘‘non nuclear weapons
states’’.

The NPT is seen to have three pillars: (1) non

proliferation, (2) disarmament, and (3) the right to
peaceful nuclear technology.
Coal and gas are far more harmful than nuclear power
By Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen, 2013: Prevented mortality
and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear
power. Environ. Sci. Technol., doi:10.1021/es3051197.

Human-caused climate change and air pollution remain major global-

scale problems and are both due mostly to fossil fuel burning.

They conducted a long-term, quantitative analysis of the effects of

nuclear power on human health (mortality) and the environment
(climate).

Using historical electricity production data and mortality and

emission factors they found that despite the three major nuclear
accidents, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million
net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009.
An average of 76,000 deaths per year were avoided annually
between 2000-2009, with a range of 19,000-300,000 per year.

Likewise, they calculated that nuclear power prevented an average

of 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) net GHG emissions
globally between 1971-2009.

It is equivalent to the past 35 years of CO2 emissions from coal

burning in the U.S. or 17 years in China.
Greenhouse Gas Effect of Coal-Burning Plants
Coal-fired electric power plants emit massive amounts of greenhouse
gases and other harmful pollutants to the atmosphere on a daily basis
viz., sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Greenhouse Gas Effect of Nuclear Power Plants

Nuclear power plants emit no carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, mercury, or other toxic gases.

A properly managed facility does not directly contribute to atmospheric

climate change; the cooling towers of nuclear plants only emit water
vapor.

Some coastal plants, however, discharge heated water back to lakes and
seas. Raising water temperature in this way may alter the way carbon
dioxide is exchanged with the air by ocean bodies .
.
Waste Disposal

A typical coal-burning power plant creates over 300,000 tons of waste

ash and sludge each year.

That residue forms a toxic mess with pollutants such as arsenic,

cadmium, chromium and mercury.

A typical nuclear power plant generates 20 metric tons of radioactive

waste annually.

This material must be isolated, transported and stored in remote

locations for hundreds of years.

urgent -- and thus make nuclear a better choice than coal for the
environment
 Hard Choices

While a nuclear power plant is completely safe

under ideal conditions, the failure of a poorly
designed facility in Chernobyl led to the world's
largest single eco-disaster.

The failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plants

following a series of earthquakes and tsunamis
demonstrated that even well designed nuclear
energy systems are not risk-free.

Frightening as those episodes may seem, however,

the danger of climate change caused by greenhouse
gas emissions may be more ss
 Type of nuclear wastes
Exempt wastes have levels of radioactivity too low to warrant any concern from the
regulators. These can be disposed of to the environment and are not likely to cause
any adverse impact

Low and intermediate level wastes are further categorized as short lived and long-
lived wastes. Radiological hazards associated with short lived wastes (<30 years
half-life) get significantly reduced over a few hundred years by radioactive decay.

High level waste contains both short and long lived radionuclides, warranting high
degree of isolation from the biosphere and usually calls for final disposal into deep
geological formation (repository).

Low-level waste (37–3.7×106 Bq/L), intermediate-level waste (3.7×106–3.7×1011

Bq/L) and High-level waste (above 3.7×1011 Bq/L).

Typically, a large nuclear power plant of generating capacity of 1000 MW electricity

produces ‘around 27 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste, 310 tonnes of
intermediate-level and 460 tonnes of low-level radioactive waste’.
Indian Philosophy of Nuclear waste management

The overall philosophy for the safe management of radioactive

waste relies on the concepts of

(i) delay and decay,

(ii) dilute and disperse and
(iii) concentrate and contain.
 Basic steps of Nuclear waste disposal
Characterization
To determine its physical, chemical and radiological properties.

Storage
Storage of radioactive waste such that: (i) isolation, environmental protection and
monitoring are provided, and (ii) actions involving treatment, conditioning and
disposal are facilitated.

Treatment
Pre-treatment of waste is extremely important because it provides in many cases the
best opportunity to segregate waste streams, for example, for recycling within the
process or for disposal as ordinary nonradioactive waste

Conditioning
It involves transformation of radioactive waste into a solid form suitable for handling,
transportation, storage and disposal. It includes immobilization of radioactive waste,.
Common immobilization methods include solidification of LIL in cement or polymer,
and vitrification of HIL in a glass matrix.

Disposal
 High level waste
High level radioactive liquid waste (HLW) containing most (∼99%) of
the radioactivity in the entire fuel cycle is produced during
reprocessing of spent fuel.

Thus the management of high level liquid waste in the Indian context
encompasses the following three stages.

(i) Immobilisation of high level liquid waste into vitrified borosilicate

glasses.

(ii) Engineered interim storage of the vitrified waste and other high
level wastes with passive cooling and surveillance over a period of
time, qualifying it for ultimate disposal.

(iii) Ultimate storage/disposal of the vitrified waste and other high

active solid waste in deep geological repository.
 Vitrification process
Owing to the high radiation fields, various operations are carried out remotely in
specially designed and state-of-the-art cubicles made of 1.5 metre thick concrete
walls known as ‘hot cells’.

These hot cells are equipped with remote handling gadgets and systems. Some of
the major remotisation gadgets include custom designed robots, remote welding
units, remote inspection/surveillance devices and manipulators.

Development of glass matrix for HLW is interplay of its composition, specific glass
additives and the processing temperatures.

The vitrified products are evaluated for various properties like melt temperature,
waste loading, homogeneity, thermal stability, radiation stability and chemical
durability using advanced analytical instruments.
 Cold Crucible Induction Melting (CCIM)
It is emerging as a futuristic technology for vitrification of high level liquid waste.

Besides being compact and advantageous as in-cell equipment, it offers flexibility,

susceptibility to treat various waste forms with better waste loading and enhanced
melter life.

The cold crucible is manufactured from contiguous segments forming a cylindrical

volume, but separated by a thin layer of electrically insulating material.

The number and the shape of the

segments and the insulating gap between
them must be optimized to minimize the
power dissipation by induced currents in
the crucible, while ensuring cooling of the
crucible.
 Near surface disposal facilities
As a national policy, each nuclear facility in India has its own near surface disposal
facility co-located.

There are seven NSDFs currently operational within the country.

These are located at Trombay, Tarapur, Kalpakkam, Kota, Narora, Kakrapar and
Kaiga.

The various disposal modules currently adopted in NSDFs are:

(i) stone-lined earth trenches (SLT), (ii) reinforced concrete trenches (RCT) and
(iii) tile holes (TH).
Modules of near surface disposal facility
A solid storage and surveillance facility (SSSF) has
been set-up at Tarapur for interim storage of HLW.

This facility has a capacity for storing nearly 1700

overpacks with an inventory of nearly 80,000,000
TBq of radioactivity.

The over packs are suspended vertically from the

top slab. A concrete roof of 1.2m
thickness provides adequate radiation shielding.

The wall temperature

in the thermal vault is
expected to be 90–110
◦C when the vault is
full.
 Deep geological disposal
The basic requirement for geological formation to be suitable for the location of
the radioactive waste disposal facility is

remoteness from environment,

absence of circulating ground water and
ability to contain radionuclides for geological periods of time.

Granites, constituting about 20% of the total area of the country, could be the
most promising candidate for deep geological repository.
 Other options of final diposal
Ocean-dumping
For many years the industrialized countries (e.g. USA, France, Great Britain, etc.)
opted for the least expensive method for disposal of the wastes.

Oceanic Disposal Management Inc., a British Virgin Islands company, has also
proposed disposing of nuclear and asbestos waste by means of Free-Fall
Penetrators.

Essentially, waste-filled missiles, which when dropped through 4000 m of water,

will embed themselves 60–80 m into the seabed’s clay sediments.

Sub-seabed disposal
The floor of deep oceans is a part of a large tectonic plate situated some 5 km
below the sea surface.

These regions are desert-like, supporting virtually no life. The Seabed Burial
Proposal envisages drilling these ‘mud-flats’ to depths of the order of hundreds of
metres, such boreholes being spaced apart several hundreds of metres. The high-
level radioactive waste would be lowered into these holes and stacked vertically.
Transmutation of high-level radioactive waste

This route of high-level radioactive waste envisages that one may use
transmutational devices, consisting of a hybrid of a subcritical nuclear reactor
and an accelerator of charged particles to ‘destroy’ radioactivity by neutrons to
produce stable nuclides.

Solar option

It is proposed that ‘surplus weapons’ plutonium and other highly concentrated

waste might be placed in the Earth orbit and then accelerated so that waste
would drop into the Sun.
Recycle and reuse

Significant reduction in the potential radioactivity of the waste can

be achieved through improved recovery and recycling of plutonium.

In the partitioning and transmutation technology, the long lived

minor actinides (Np, Am, Cm) and fission products (129I, 99Tc, etc.) are
isolated from the waste and transmuted by subjecting them to
neutron Bombardment.

They either become non-radioactive or convert into elements with

much shorter half-lives than the original.

This would be a long term strategy for the management of high level
waste and would provide both environmental and resource
advantage.