Fuel Reserves and Research Capability
According to a report issued by the IAEA, India has limited uranium reserves, consisting of approximately 54,636 tonnes of “reasonably assured resources”, 25,245 tonnes of “estimated additional resources”, 15,488 tonnes of “undiscovered conventional resources, and 17,000 tonnes of “speculative resources”. According to NPCIL, these reserves are only sufficient to generate about 10 GWe for about 40 years. In July 2011, it was reported that a four-year-long mining survey done at Tumalapalli mine in Kadapa district near Hyderabad had yielded confirmed reserve figure of 49,000 tonnes with a potential that it could rise to 150,000 tonnes. This was a rise from an earlier estimate of 15,000 tonnes for that area.
Although India has only around 1–2% of the global uranium reserves, thorium reserves are bigger; around 12–33% of global reserves, according to IAEA and US Geological Survey. Several in-depth independent studies put Indian thorium reserves at 30% of the total world thorium reserves.
As per official estimates shared in the country's Parliament in August 2011, the country can obtain 846,477 tonnes of thorium from 963,000 tonnes of ThO2, which in turn can be obtained from 10.7 million tonnes of monazite occurring in beaches and river sands in association with other heavy metals. Indian monazite contains about 9–10% ThO2. The 846,477 tonne figure compares with the earlier estimates for India, made by IAEA and US Geological Survey of 319,000 tonnes and 290,000 to 650,000 tonnes respectively. The 800,000 tonne figure is given by other sources as well.
It was further clarified in the country’s Parliament on 21 March 2012 that, “Out of nearly 100 deposits of the heavy minerals, at present only 17 deposits containing about 4 million tonnes of monazite have been identified as exploitable. Mineable reserves are ~70% of identified exploitable resources. Therefore, about 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal is available for nuclear power programme.”
India is generally considered as the leader of thorium based research in the world. It is also, by far the most committed nation as far as the use of thorium fuel is concerned, and no other country has done as much neutron physics work on thorium. The country published about twice the number of papers on thorium as its nearest competitors, during each of the years from 2002 to 2006. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) had the highest number of publications in the thorium area, across all research institutions in the world during the period 1982-2004. During this same period, India ranks an overall second behind the United States in the research output on Thorium. Analysis shows that majority of the authors involved in thorium research publications appear to be from India. According to Siegfried Hecker, a former director (1986–1997) of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S., "India has the most technically ambitious and innovative nuclear energy program in the world. The extent and functionality of its nuclear experimental facilities are matched only by those in Russia and are far ahead of what is left in the US."
Read more about this topic: India's Three Stage Nuclear Power Programme
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