Jitendra Singh is the Atomic Energy Minister of India. He told India’s parliament that a “delay in completion of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) project is mainly due to first-of-a-kind technological issues being faced in the integrated commissioning phase of the project.”
In a written answer to the India House of the People (Lok Sabha) he said, “These issues are being solved systematically in close co-ordination with the designers.”
Singh had been asked “whether any delay has been observed in critical projects such as the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, and Indian High Temperature Reactor; and if so, the reasons therefor?”
In his answer to the Lok Sabha, he added that “the design validation of Advanced Heavy Water Reactor is on-going along with peer review of the design. The project … is not formally launched hence, no delay has incurred. Molten Salt Reactor is a version of Indian High Temperature Reactor. The establishment of reactor technology as part of proof in design concept is being carried out, hence no delay has incurred”.
One part of the question was “whether India is implementing the three-stage nuclear power program as envisioned by Dr Homi Bhabha, and the present status of each stage”.
His answer to this part of the question was, “Yes. The first stage of the country’s sequential three stage program comprising of the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors has attained maturity. For realization of second stage of nuclear power program, Fast Breeder Test Reactor and other facilities were established for material research and proof of design concepts. The five-hundred-megawatt PFBR is at advanced stage of commissioning at Kalapakkam, implemented by BHAVINI. The third stage of the program for utilizing the vast resources of thorium reserves of the country is presently under development.”
Fast breeder reactors form the second stage of India’s three-stage nuclear program, utilizing plutonium recovered from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from the pressurized heavy water and light water reactors that form the first stage of the program. The third stage envisages using advanced heavy water reactors to burn thorium-plutonium fuels and breed fissile uranium-233. The goal is to achieve a thorium-based closed nuclear fuel cycle.
The PFBR has been developed by BHAVINI (Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited) which is a government enterprise under the Department of Atomic Energy. Construction began in 2004, with an original schedule completion date of 2010. It will use a core of uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, surrounded by a uranium-238 ‘blanket’, with plans to use a blanket of uranium and thorium to breed plutonium and uranium-233 for use as fuels for AHWRs.
In August 2024 India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board officially granted permission for the PFBR to move to the next stage of the commissioning process which is the First Approach to Criticality. This includes loading the fuel into the reactor core and the start of low power physics experiments.