India will build a fleet of small nuclear reactors based on a class of 220-megawatt pressurized heavy water reactors like this one based at Rajasthan Atomic Power Station

In an effort to meet net-zero targets, India plans to build a large fleet of small nuclear reactors to power hard-to-decarbonize industries like steel and cement.

During her budget speech in July, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman unveiled plans to develop the 220-megawatt Bharat Small Reactor (BSR) in partnership with private industry. Then in late August, Amit Sharma, CEO of Tata Consulting Engineers, told local media that the company was collaborating with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) on the BSR project, with plans to deploy 40 to 50 of these new reactors over the coming decade.

The reactors will be a redesigned version of India’s 220-MW pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR), which has been in operation since the early 1980s. The program came about following requests from domestic heavy industries looking for ways to reduce their climate impact, says Anil Kakodkar, former chairman and current member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission.

“Industry players have been expressing a lot of interest in having a captive nuclear power plant for their use,” Kakodkar says. “Sensitivity about carbon emissions has gone up, and companies whose emissions are hard to abate are particularly conscious of it, because it’s going to hurt them if they cannot bring down the carbon footprint of their products.”

Industry Turns To Small Nuclear Reactors

Diminutive reactors have become fashionable in recent years, with the global nuclear industry promoting “small modular reactors” (SMRs) as a cheaper and safer alternative to large nuclear power plants. With capacities below 300 MW and a standardized, modular design that allows the bulk of the reactor to be prefabricated in a factory, SMRs are billed as quicker and less expensive to build. Developers also frequently claim they will be safer than previous generations of nuclear reactors.

Despite the supposed benefits, the idea hasn’t yet translated into real-world deployments. Last year the first planned SMR in the United States was cancelled due to rising costs and lack of customers.

But India’s BSR program has little in common with SMRs being developed elsewhere, says Kakodkar. Most of the world’s SMR projects involve designing brand new reactors, which is inevitably expensive and can lead to unexpected setbacks and delays. India’s BSR program differs in that it is simply an update of the already mature 220-MW PHWR technology, of which there are already 14 units operating at five sites around the country, says Kakodkar. (India also has an SMR development program.)

“In terms of capital cost per megawatt, [PHWRs] are very competitive,” Kakodkar adds. “And in terms of safety, some of these reactors have, in fact, made a world record at times for longest uninterrupted operating run. Their performance has been excellent.” A 220-MW reactor at India’s Kaiga power station held the world record for the longest run until 2020.

BSR Reactors To Reduce Carbon Emissions

In redesigning these plants, the DAE and Tata are primarily focused on improving the safety of the reactor so that the exclusion zone—an area around the reactor that must be left free of development to lessen the impact of any accident—can be reduced. Currently, this zone has a radius of 1 kilometer, making it difficult to install nuclear reactors on existing industrial sites. Existing reactors have a double containment system consisting of a pre-stressed concrete reactor building surrounded by an additional reinforced concrete structure. To shrink the exclusion zone, Tata plans to add a metallic liner to these safeguards.

Modularization is not a particular focus of the project, says Kakodkar, though he points out that most reactors feature some amount of modularization. “It is not an exclusive feature of SMRs,” he says. “Even in the large nuclear power plants, there are several levels of modularization done where you try to enhance the factory production and minimize the work to be done at the site.”

Perhaps the biggest change the BSR program will bring about is the increased involvement of private industry in India’s highly regulated nuclear sector. Currently, reactors are financed by the government and designed, constructed, and operated by the government-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), with private companies involved in supplying components and manufacturing. The BSR program envisages private companies financing and constructing reactors to power energy-intensive industrial processes like steel or cement making, says Kakodkar, though they would still be operated by NCPIL.

Saurabh Todi, a policy analyst at the think tank Takshashila Institution, says the demand for captive nuclear power is there. With the European Union due to implement carbon tariffs in 2026, and other developed economies discussing similar policies, Indian exporters are looking for ways to reduce their emissions.

But allowing more private involvement in the industry will require changes to India’s Atomic Energy Act, which could take time. It’s also unclear how much control the country’s nuclear establishment is willing to cede. “If there are a lot of restrictions and it is not sufficiently deregulated we might not see as much adoption as we are expecting,” says Todi. “We might not reform enough for it to be attractive.”

India’s Nuclear Plan For Net Zero

India has regularly over-promised and under-delivered on nuclear roll-outs, most recently claiming that nuclear plants would be producing 20,000 MW by 2020, but the country currently produces just over 8,000 MW. Likewise, the scale and timeline of the new BSR deployments don’t seem feasible, says M V Ramana, a professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia who specializes in nuclear energy. “The nuclear industry has always promised large numbers of reactors,” says Ramana. “That’s the only way they can keep themselves in the public consciousness.”

More importantly, small reactors tend to cost more per unit of power than larger ones, he adds, because they can’t take advantage of economies of scale. That’s why most countries’ nuclear programs, including India’s, have progressively increased the capacity of their reactors.

But greater involvement of the private sector could help drive down costs and speed up delivery, says Kakodkar. Standardization of the reactor design, the use of newer construction techniques, and better project management are likely to improve on what is already a mature and commercially successful reactor design, he says. “Their economic performance is very good, and the tariffs are competitive,” he adds. “If the project implementation becomes more efficient, it will become even more competitive.”

(With Inputs From IEEE Spectrum)