Nuclear Reactors 274 - India Is Encountering Serious Problems With Its Plans For Nuclear Expansion
India is in a difficult situation with respect to energy production. It has modest internal resources but is projecting a need to increase energy production ninety percent in the next 13 years. It does not share any borders with energy exporting countries and is thus vulnerable to possible interference with energy delivery depending on geopolitical problems in its neighborhood.
Under the Paris Accords, India has committed to reduce carbon emissions by a third by 2050. It also committed to getting at least forty percent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources. These commitments may cause problems with India's demand for water. Attempts at "clean" coal energy production and nuclear power demand huge quantities of water. Even alternative sources like solar-thermal and geothermal are water intensive. Only solar-photovoltaic and wind are light in water consumption.
India is offering incentives to stimulate more renewables in its energy mix but renewables are intermittent. Hydro and nuclear power can supply steady base load power but there is strong public resistance to both. Wind power currently produces more power in India than nuclear power. Although India is committed to producing at least twelve percent of its power from nuclear by 2030, many think that this is unrealistic.
The global nuclear energy industry has serious problems. Increasing costs of construction, major delays in construction schedules, expensive modification required by post-Fukushima safety upgrades and heavy government subsidies make new nuclear plants uncompetitive in the current energy market of cheap natural gas and oil.
Another problem for nuclear power is that fact that some major companies that have been contracting to build nuclear power reactors have been facing severe financial problems. Areva in France is having trouble meeting commitments and will need five billion dollars from the French government to survive. Westinghouse in the U.S. has cost its parent company, Toshiba, over six billion dollars and it has just declared bankruptcy. Toshiba is getting out of the reactor construction business which is leaving the completion of projects in India and Britain in doubt.
A third problem for nuclear power in India specifically is serious grass-roots resistance to new builds. This resistance caused major delays in commissioning the Kudankulam project and forced the relocation of the first planned Westinghouse project from Gujarat to Andhra Pradesh.
I have blogged before about problems that India was having obtaining nuclear technology because it had not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It also had severe penalties for industrial accidents that scared off prospective investors and suppliers for nuclear projects. In 2005, India signed a deal with the U.S. that was supposed to ameliorate these problems and has been working on changing specific features in its laws on industrial insurance. India publicly announced a major move into nuclear power as a result of the changes.
In 2006, Toshiba purchased Westinghouse nuclear division partly in anticipation of the expanding market for power reactors in India. Now, ten years later, the global market for nuclear has cooled and Toshiba is getting out of the reactor business. India has never signed any nuclear power project based on the projections and enthusiasm of 2005.
Perhaps these problems that have prevented a bold expansion of nuclear power in India have been of benefit to India. Considering that Areva's reactor project in Finland is behind schedule and over budget and Toshiba's Westinghouse projects are in serious trouble, India's ratepayers may have escaped being stuck for soaring costs for their own new nuclear reactors by the problems India is having in financing and building new nuclear power reactors.
Kudankulam nuclear power reactor:
