"All the exploratory uranium mines of the department should be converted into commercial mines without any delay in order to boost the Indian nuclear power industry which is currently running at 50 per cent capacity inspite of Nuclear Power corporation of India limited, a PSU of the DAE that had achieved a 95 per capacity of their plants since late 1990s, " department's spokesperson and Head, Public Awareness Division, S K Malhotra told PTI.
Both State and Central government should help in carrying out this commercialisation of the exploratory mines without any more delay, he said.
"Even if the ores that are available from the existing mines in Jharkhand are processed in the upcoming mill at Turamdih as well as the existing mill at Jaduguda, the mismatch could only be reduced to some extent," he said.
The department will be doing exploratory mining of 1,41,000 metres across the country for uranium during the 11th five year plan and is looking for private partners, Malhotra said adding, "even if we succeed in getting some promising sites, we do not know how long it will take those exploratory mines to become commercial."
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Already the department has established a resource of one lakh tonne of Uranium oxide (U2O8) which could generate 10,000 Mw of electricity. But it has utilised only 45 per cent of established resource so far and the remaining 55 per cent has to be commercialised, he said.