The second half of 2021 was a major build-up to the COP26 climate summit when, for once, a rather boring-sounding subject dominated the headlines—energy. Renewables ruled the roost, but it was only a matter of time before nuclear energy would find a seat at the table. 

And it did, even at Glasgow last month after having been unwelcome at the COP21 in Paris in 2015. With more than 200 countries thrashing out an energy-mix for a carbon-neutral future, nuclear energy reportedly “generated a lot of interest” this year.

And it doesn’t look like this interest is fading anytime soon either. 

Last week, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) executive director Fatih Birol said the organisation would “release a major report in May 2022 on the role nuclear can play in reaching net zero”.

And on Friday, India let the cat out of its bag during Question Hour in the Parliament when it said the country will have nine new operational nuclear reactors by 2024. In addition, 12 new reactors have been approved during the pandemic that will generate 9,000 MW of power once completed—taking the country’s nuclear power capacity to 22,480 MW by 2031. It stands at 6,780 MW currently. 

The present share of nuclear energy in India’s total installed power capacity is only 2%, but in order to achieve net zero targets, installed nuclear capacity will have to go up significantly. According to one October estimate by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), if carbon capture and storage technology is not available, India’s nuclear-based capacity will have to “range from 37-167 GW in 2050 and 316-392 GW in 2100”. 

Now, that’s a humongous task for a country like India, not just in terms of absolute wattage creation but for all the project management capability it’d require. Most of India’s nuclear reactor projects have been delayed in the last decade. And importantly, nobody is ever held accountable for the delay. 

There’s also no denying that it’s an inherently complicated subject and, in the post-Fukushima world, social acceptance has been hard to come by. Public protests have pushed back the timelines, but India also has several internal constraints that have tied the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited’s (NPCIL) hands. A public sector unit, it’s the only company in the country responsible for the generation of electricity from nuclear energy. 

“Project completion is taking inordinately long. Earlier, a project that NPCIL would do in five years, it’s now taking 8-9 years,” says a nuclear energy operations executive who has worked with the NPCIL. For instance, he says, when Kakrapar-3 was commissioned in January 2021, the next unit, Kakrapar-4, should have been ready to be commissioned within six months. “But it’s still under construction and it won’t be before mid-to-late 2022 that it can be commissioned.” 

That’s a stretch; Kakrapar-3 was originally expected to be commissioned in 2015. It seems a five-year delay is par for the course. (Kakrapar-4 was supposed to be commissioned by September 2021.)

After a decades-long nuclear winter (in mood, at least) following the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan, the world is slowly warming up to this energy source. Only 4.8 GW of construction was initiated in 2020, according to the IEA. Of the 58 GW of nuclear capacity under construction, 12 GW are in China, 4.8 GW in India, 4 GW in the United Arab Emirates, and 3.5 GW in Russia. 

While India does figure next to China in nuclear energy capacity building, its pace of project completion comes nowhere close. Over the course of this year, the Chinese have also revealed their nuclear ambitions—with commissioning dates and financing estimates.

Apart from financing, India’s nuclear power plans have been delayed by its nuclear liability legislation. In 2010, the country adopted a Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act—making Indian operators primarily liable for any nuclear accident, but leaving open the possibility of recourse to suppliers. The Jaitapur nuclear project in Maharashtra has been under discussion since 2009; it has only now been revived again.

International negotiations are a slugfest in commercial, political, and safety interests. Therefore, it’s understandable why India is pressing ahead with home-grown reactors like the 700 MWe (megawatt electric unit) Kakrapar-3. This is the biggest indigenously developed variant of the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor which has been the mainstay of India’s nuclear reactor fleet. 

Earlier last month, former Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar wrote in a newspaper: “Go green, go nuclear”. The Department of Atomic Energy and the private sector, he argued, can produce “enough nuclear reactors for India’s clean energy”. 

But the operative word in his piece was “reforms”. 

While Kakodkar did not elaborate on these reforms in his article, nuclear industry officials tell me that, among other things, the “rules” are very rigid and do not allow any flexibility in decision-making—even for CMD-level executives. The sword of “vigilance” always hangs over officials and they prefer to let projects lay in a limbo—a work-to-rule approach under which no one will question the delay—than be innovative in execution. 

For instance, for one of the reactors at Kakrapar, a senior official placed a single-party purchase order with the construction company L&T, which was already a tendered supplier and contractor for the project. “The official felt it was prudent and would expedite the project. And it indeed helped the project,” says the executive quoted above. But then, during an audit, the official was “tagged” and an auditor suggested that the single-party purchase could’ve been avoided. “The official swore publicly that he’d not do anything that’d point fingers at him or his colleagues.”

You won’t be suspended for years of delay, but you could be questioned for Rs 100 in a so-called fund “mismanagement”. “People have had their pension held up for 10 years. Vigilance is such a scary thing these days—a junior guy sitting there can ask the senior most tech guy in the project about any procedure. People are baffled,” said a second executive in the nuclear establishment.  

Whichever way one slices India’s energy-mix problem, nuclear is part of the solution. But only if reforms are also included in the mix.

That’s all for this week. Do write in to [email protected] with your feedback and suggestions on what we should explore and write about. 

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