doesn't it occur to you that nuclear energy and proprietary software have a lot in common ? as opposed to free software and renewable energy sources.

- free/renewables : decentralized (distributed), collaborative, cheap/free to use, secure, democratic (available everywhere) and clean

- proprietary/nukes : very centralized, closed and opaque, very expensive, security/safety issues (and consequences !!), monopolistic/totalitarian and dirty

i know geeks like nukes, but that's just plain stupid. big technology and big investments do not mean it's better for the people. see, in France for instance, they've got 85% of their electricity coming from nukes. that's only 17% of their final energy consumption. not a great way to stop relying on oil, i tell you. open your eyes.

oh, and uranium is not really getting cheaper these days ( http://bp2.blogger.com/_w0OEY2TK3HA/R3h40jCe1zI/AAAAAAAAAd0/CdSCuORp0Jw/s1600-h/UraniumPrice15yrs.jpg ), even though you seem to have some mining projets in Ladakh.

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So what would be the solution for supplying sufficient power to country of India's size?

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Wind Energy, Thermosolar Energy, Biomass.

Electricity from newly built Wind Parks is already cheaper than Electricity from Oil Power Plants, and it keeps getting cheaper while Oil - as you said - gets more and more expensive.

Nuclear Energy is the dirtiest and most dangerous form of gaining energy, plus it is very expensive and non-renewable. Nuclear waste is very dangerous for thousands of centuries, and if only a single nuclear power plant explodes, India will be completely ruined. I don't see a single advantage of nuclear power plants, only tremendous risks.

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So how come US, France and so many other countries in west still use that? Like you said, 85% of France's power comes from Nuclear power plants.

Not that I am disagreeing with what you are saying though. But, point is we need power and the government is trying to do something, maybe it is working on other solutions as well.

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Because the Nuclear Lobby is very strong in these countries, and because they already have nuclear power plants. Don't forget that these power plants are run by private companys, but were funded and built by the countries (mostly in the 70's, at the time of the big nuclear hype). A private company would never build a nuclear power plant without excessive funding by the country, because it is that expensive.

The governemnt should focus on renewable energy and - maybe one of the most important things - energy saving. The complete "nuclear power" trip is either because they are dumb, because they want more nuclear bombs, or because they get bribed by companys.

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Last I checked, the whole nuclear power / nuclear business in India is not privately owned or even run. Dept of Atomic Energy, NPCIL and such govt bodies develop, run, operate those. Private companies have nothing to do / very minimalistic to do with it at all - atleast at decision making level, operation level etc. And nuclear power/energy research is not new to India even, it has been there since decades now. Read up on Homi Bhabha and his works. We are talking of 1930s-1960s here.

We are talking here of this. The act that is under fire atm by some political parties unfortunately. Scroll down on that page to read press release and related article.

And finally, yes we have been working on other ways to generate energy and that includes Wind Farms and more. Check this page and follow the references.

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lol. There is no "very strong" nuclear lobby in the US at least. The expense of nuclear power plants is mainly limited to construction though, or do you think oil or millions of tons of coal is cheap?

Renewable energy and energy conservation should be at the top of the list of a nation's energy strategy. But you'll find that you still need power, especially in peak loading scenarios (you think solar power will power our heaters in the winter? not a chance :) For these situations it's better to use nuclear power than coal or oil. Coal plants themselves emit more radioactivity than nuclear plants do due to the concentration effect of the radioactive polonium in the fuel.

(btw if you're a smoker you get a fair amount of radiation exposure from the same effect, tobacco seems to concentrate radioactive polonium which you then concentrate in your lungs by smoking...)

Finally (at least in America) the technology for building nuclear weapons and dealing with nuclear power is handled fairly separately. We do not need power plants to build weapons and indeed, most power plants we have can't enrich fuel for the weapons anyways. So reducing power plants wouldn't stop the ability to develop nuclear bombs. Conversely, more nuclear power plants does not mean a proliferation risk. I will also point out that nuclear stockpiles around the world are being dismantled so things are already going in the right direction there.

- mpyne

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I suppose you might want to consider the shortcomings of renewable sources of electricity too.
- Hydel power: Requires a huge amount of cachement area for storing water. A big size Hydro electric power project like Koyna Project requires a water cachement which is 50KM long. So you suggest chopping down the forest land in whole state and making a dozen such dams? And what if there's less than average waterfall that year?
- Wind power: Give me a break. You call that efficient? Where do we get all that coastal land from?

Nuclear power being the dirtiest form of energy - is mere perception. Nuclear power plants are the mighty beasts of power generation. Agreed, the construction costs are big, but once constructed, they provide continuous electricity for next 20/25 years - non-stop. All nuclear power plants have safe waste disposal management systems. Indian nuclear establishments dump the waste several kilometers inside the earth's crust. So far, India has had a safe record of nuclear operations.

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I *DID NOT* mention Hydel Power. India is not the country for this.

Wind Power: So in India you only can have Wind Farms on costal Land? Interesting, in countries like Germany, they can be built whereever there is enough wind, which includes sea area (if shallow enough). For example, you could hypotetically produce enough electricity for the whole E.U. by using just 5 % of the North and Baltic Sea. I'm sure that India has got plenty areas with low population and high wind speeds. The decentrality and cheapness of wind power is a big plus, and a medium wind farm can be set up in a single year while a nuclear power plant needs *at least* 10 years. Oh, and wind power plants have a lifetime of ~25 years, after which the can very easily exchanged. Try to exchange (or even completely remove) a nuclear power plant. For providing non-stop power, biomass power plants are an ideal extension. Wind Power also is renewable, which nuclear power isn't. Uranium will become more and more rare and thus expensive, just like Oil now.

"Safe waste disposal"? Ahahaha. For Maybe 50 years or something. But what do you do with it for the rest of the 10000 or 100000 years it is dangerous? Can you tell me that?

Does India really need a catastrophe like Tschernobyl to realize how dangeorus nucelar power is?

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Uranium is not the only nuclear fuel. If it becomes scarce enough we will simply have to switch to Thorium which is quite abundant and has cool abilities of its own. After that we can simply re-process spent fuel from light water reactors (whose fuel is still quite reactive) and squeeze out the energy from that as well. We've got plenty of fuel.

And Chernobyl would not be held in anywhere near the same reverence if the reactor vessel had a containment building. But the disaster at Chernobyl was *not* a nuclear explosion. A nuclear core cannot detonate into a nuclear yield, otherwise the atomic bomb would have been ready years earlier as scientists would have merely had to assemble enough weapons-grade fuel and not had to bother with the precise calculations and machining required.

The explosion at Chernobyl occurred due to the operators (who were not very well trained at all) taking the reactor into an incredibly unstable condition and then causing a severe power transient. This transient caused the water coolant to vaporize, causing a severe pressure transient and steam explosion that blew apart the reactor core and ejected parts of the fuel (including the radioactive spent wastes) into the atmosphere and surrounding areas.

Because the moderator which allows the reaction to proceed was graphite the sudden inrush of air caused the very hot graphite to ignite, sparking many intense fires. In short, both design and operator error led to the disaster at Chernobyl.

To contrast what would have happened at a Western-style reactor, simply take Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania USA. It was a pressurized water reactor (much more passively-safe designs now exist). A fault caused the cooling for the reactor to go offline, which initiated emergency core cooling as it was supposed to. Unfortunately an equipment malfunction with a pressure relief valve caused a continuous loss of coolant, which due to the location of the relief valve caused the operators to think that the primary system was being overfilled with water. So they stopped the emergency core cooling system. This is simplified a lot but eventually the combination of operator and design error in this case led to a core meltdown. However no one died or was even injured. Radiation exposure was minimal, especially to non plant workers offsite. And a meltdown really is the worst case scenario here, which *happened* and caused no fatalities or injuries.

The U.S. Navy has safely operated nuclear reactors for greater than 50 years now and many countries have safely operated nuclear plants with no thanks (except for protestors). :)

So don't be so quick to completely eliminate nuclear energy from your power generation options as I'm pretty sure solar + biomass + wind will not cover all of the energy generation needs.

- mpyne

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Sorry, i may be misinformed here, but i've only heard of wind power plants in coastal states in india. But i do not see Wind, Biomass has *efficient* sources of energy. With worldwide Oil resources set to deplete in next ~50 years, and India running on the industrial growth track, i see nuclear power as the strongest contender. I hope the research on Fusion reactor yields something positive.

And dont get me wrong there. I love green earth as much as everyone else does. I'm sure indian reactors are in safe hands and we wont see a Chernobyl disaster here.

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Although as soon as I saw the story header about nuclear I knew you'd get the (inevitable) NUKE BAD response I see that you're already fair well informed so I'm impressed.

Just keep in mind that even if India adopts nuclear power (or decides to more pervasively employ it), it will take some time to actually get such plants built and operational. In addition there's different types of nuclear plants to choose from, such as the standard pressurized water (which requires enriched fuel), Canada's CANDU type (which uses natural fuel, does not need a large pressure vessel, but requires expensive "heavy water") and more exotic types such as pebble bed reactors which have the promise of being damn near immune to overheating.

Also you'll need to have a steady source of water for cooling (although it sounds like you have that figured out right now. ;) and a way to handle the waste (sounds like you've also got that figured out). Nuclear power can be safely used as proved by many nations but don't give up on renewable energy as monocultures are bad practically wherever they're found. I would agree that nuclear power is a great replacement for the base electricity loads typically carried by oil or coal fired plants.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, I'm a nuclear-trained (and close to nuclear engineer-qualified) officer on a nuke submarine.

- mpyne

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I saw this good article presenting the report of a respected authority on the pros and cons of renewables/nuclear/fossilfuels. Actually features some logic, numbers and balance.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/

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Didn't expect you to comment here. But you are far more knowledgable about this topic than all of us here, I guess, so its only fair and logical that you comment.

Btw, whom were you referring to about being "well informed" here? Gnurag or the anonymous guys from France/Austria ?

So what do you think about this deal/treaty? The political parties here have just found something to squabble about. Mostly lead by CPI ( communist party of India ) who don't like anything American in first place. They somehow fear that we are going to compromise National Security and such. They are threatening to pull out support away from the coalition government on this issue which they might just do even. Anyway, would like to know your opinion about this issue.

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Pradeepto, I was referring to Gnurag when talking about being well-informed.

As far as the deal goes to be honest this is the first I've heard of it. So I'm not sure what the US would be providing to India or what would be required of India.

I will say just in general that assuming the deal is fair nuclear energy is not something to just arbitrarily throw out the window. It has pros and cons that need to be considered, preferably with some of the smart nuclear engineers that I'm sure India has. Really I don't think there's anything special about nuclear power generation that would require American technical assistance so I'm initially unclear as to the purpose of the treaty. Perhaps it's just to assist in getting export permits for a Westinghouse or GE nuclear reactor?

Even if American interaction were politically not desired though France, Canada, etc. have good nuclear programs that could be modeled after. Just make sure whatever solution is chosen actually works and is not just snake oil is all I'll say.

- mpyne

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India is mainly a PHWR country, with a couple of WWER reactors coming up. Most of the nuclear establishments also have Heavy water production plant too(Infact india exports Heavy water as well).

India also has one of the largest reserves of monazite ore, thus paving way for more research on energy production with thorium. The work on Fast breeder reactors has'nt gone far, but i hope everything falls well in place before we hit energy crisis in a growing economy.

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