India's Three Stage Nuclear Power Programme - Origin and Rationale

Origin and Rationale

See also: Thorium fuel cycle

Dr. Homi Bhabha conceived of the three-stage nuclear programme as a way to develop nuclear energy by working around India's limited uranium resources. Thorium itself is not a fissile material, and thus cannot undergo fission to produce energy. Instead, it must first be converted into the fissile isotope uranium-233 by transmutation in a reactor fueled by other fissile materials. The first two stages, natural uranium-fueled heavy water reactors and plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactors, are intended to generate sufficient fissile material from India's limited uranium resources, so that all its vast thorium reserves can be fully utilised in the third stage of thermal breeder reactors.

Bhabha summarized the rationale for the three-stage approach as follows:

The total reserves of thorium in India amount to over 500,000 tons in the readily extractable form, while the known reserves of uranium are less than a tenth of this. The aim of long range atomic power programme in India must therefore be to base the nuclear power generation as soon as possible on thorium rather than uranium… The first generation of atomic power stations based on natural uranium can only be used to start off an atomic power programme… The plutonium produced by the first generation power stations can be used in a second generation of power stations designed to produce electric power and convert thorium into U-233, or depleted uranium into more plutonium with breeding gain… The second generation of power stations may be regarded as an intermediate step for the breeder power stations of the third generation all of which would produce more U-233 than they burn in the course of producing power.

In November 1954, Bhabha presented the three-stage plan for national development, at the conference on “Development of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes” which was also attended by India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Four years later in 1958, the Indian government formally adopted the three-stage plan. Indian energy resource base was estimated to be capable of yielding a total electric power output of the order shown in the table below. Indian government recognized that thorium was a source that could provide power to the Indian people for the long term.

Energy resource type	Amount (tonnes)	Power potential (TWe-year)
Coal	54 billion	11
Hydrocarbons	12 billion	6
Uranium (in PHWR)	61,000	0.3–0.42
Uranium (in FBR)	61,000	16–54
Thorium	~300,000	155–168 or 358