India is taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint. The nation is growing by leaps and bounds in its solar and wind-installed capacity for power generation. The nation boasts of an installed capacity of 120 GW as of the last quarter of the financial year ending in March 2023 and is on track to achieve its 500 gigawatts (GW) green energy installed capacity target by 2030, as promised. The nation now ranks third in the Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index.
Besides solar and wind, the govt is also moving ahead in the field of nuclear energy, with a plan to increase the installed capacity three-fold in the next eight years. Nuclear fuel provides energy without any carbon emissions. Unlike most other sources of green energy, nuclear power provides consistent output as it does not depend on the vagaries of weather.
India has an installed nuclear capacity of 8180 megawatts or a little over 8 GW. That’s basically the average all-time power demand of Delhi. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the body that governs all nuclear power plants in the country, says that installed capacity will reach 22 GW by 2032, a nearly three-fold increase. At the Nuclear Energy Summit held at Brussels in March of this year, India stated that atomic power will form a significant portion of our nation’s electricity mix. Nuclear power may add as much as 100 GW to India’s energy mix in the next quarter century. Currently, most of the energy produced in India is from coal-fuelled power plants.
Currently, seven nuclear power plants are operational in India and at least five are under various stages of completion. Work is also underway to increase the capacity of plants at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, Kaiga in Karnataka and Rawatbhata in Rajasthan. Eight more are to be added to the list of active nuclear power plants and will add 6.8 GW to the national grid. Another ten reactors , with a combined capacity of 7 GW, are being built in fleet mode.
The head of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Alexey Likhachev stated that Russia will provide India with the next generation of nuclear fuel to produce energy. Russia has been a key partner of India in the nuclear energy sector. The statement was made in the presence of Ajit Mohanty the head of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) during a visit to a research institute in Tomsk in Siberia. Besides Russia, India also imports uranium from France Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
The DAE is also looking at Thorium to fuel India’s future, as we have the world’s largest reserves. A three-stage programme has been planned to fuel our civil nuclear ambitions. DAE’s plan aims to multiply fissile material availablity in the country. Thorium, due to its abundance, is seen as an inexhaustible source of energy. Thorium has to be converted to Uranium in order to utilise it as a fuel source. DAE is working towards technology development to make Thorium the fuel of the future.
The government is also seeking Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the tune of $26 billion in the nuclear energy sector and intends to add another 11 GW of power to the national grid via these private investments.
Dhruv Yadav
