The country plans to have a nuclear power generation capacity of 63,000 Mw in the next 20 years as atomic power is advantageous in terms of transportation and storage, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said today.
"India plans to have a total installed nuclear capacity of 63,000 Mwe (megawatt electric) by the year 2032 both by indigenous technology and the imported reactors as additionalities," he said while addressing a seminar at India International Nuclear Symposium.
"Nuclear technology has several distinct advantages - it is compact and highly manageable in terms of handling, transportation and storage of the fuel," he said, adding that it is greener than all other technologies of power generation.
Nuclear power generation falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Atomic Energy, a wing of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
International cooperation, including Indo-US nuclear deal, on civil nuclear collaboration is a significant move for the expansion of India's nuclear power programme.
Highlighting the challenges in the conventional power generation, Shinde said, "The thermal technologies have the problems of greenhouse gas emissions, fly-ash and handling, transportation, storage problems of large quantities of fuel as well as availability of coal."
Even though hydro power is considered as a cleaner source of energy, hydro technology has problems of submergence and geological surprises, he said.
The wind and solar power technologies are seriously limited by site specific and season specific nature of their availability, he added.
At present, 20 nuclear power reactors are in operation and seven reactors are under construction, including a 500 Mwe fast breeder reactor.
Total nuclear capacity of the country stands at about 4,800 Mw.