Climate-friendly power strategy

Nuclear power development must become a major element in India's climate strategy

The 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has just concluded. The main source of contention in the negotiations was the reduction of fossil fuel use.  The final outcome on global stocktaking states that the national efforts of countries must lead to “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner”. It also includes a commitment on “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible”.

This is the first time there has been a clear reference to the future of all fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) in a COP text. This broadens the emphasis of transition from electricity (the main user of coal) to transport (a major user of petroleum). However, the main transition mechanism in transport is electric vehicles and their carbon impact depends on how power is produced. Hence, the transformation of the electric power system becomes the most important dimension of the agreement.

Another factor that requires a quicker transition in the power sector is that all assessments show an increasing risk of global temperature rise, and its undesirable consequences happening sooner, surpassing the Paris Agreement target of 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius. What this means is that mitigation targets for 2030 and 2050 have to be raised and made more reliable.

The promotion of solar and wind based renewable energy supply is a crucial component of the present strategy to reduce carbon emissions in the power sector. However, it poses problems for base-level power supply because of the episodic nature of solar and wind availability. In India, during 2022-23, a kilowatt (kW) of solar power provided about 1517 kWh of power supply over the year, and wind power provided about 1,676 kWh. This is significantly lower than the supply from a kilowatt of coal-based power (5,620 kWh) and nuclear power (6,755 kWh). Even with improvements in power storage measures, one doubts whether power supply based predominantly on renewables is viable.

Given that coal power has to be phased out sooner or later, there must be a willingness to explore an alternative base load power supply option that is essentially carbon-free. I submit that this requires the inclusion of nuclear power development as an important part of the carbon mitigation strategy. In fact, a major achievement at the COP28 meeting was the announcement of a commitment by 21 countries led by the United States for a threefold increase in nuclear power by 2050.

What is surprising is that India did not join in this announcement, even though the government had already announced about a year ago its plan to nearly triple its nuclear capacity from the present 7,480 megawatt to 20,000 megawatt by 2030. With the reactors already being built and planned to be built, our nuclear power capacity will go up, perhaps not to the target announced

but closer to the projection of 15,480 megawatt, according to an

April 2023 government report. Incidentally, the same report also gives a conservative scenario estimate of 12,080 megawatt, assuming the historically experienced 12-year period of construction!

India faces a high rate of growth in the demand for electricity, not just because of economic growth but also due to electricity replacing fossil fuels in transport and other applications. Green hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels will also generate a sharp rise in power demand. Power demand in India in 2022-23 amounted to 1.5 trillion units and is expected to rise to around 6 trillion units by 2050.

The historical experience of nuclear power development may be too conservative a basis for projection of possibilities because there are three changes that could expedite the creation of nuclear capacity. The first is the nuclear accord negotiated by India, which has opened it up for engagement with foreign nuclear technology suppliers, though it has been constrained by the supplier liability law passed by Parliament. The second is the partnership between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), which can bring to bear on nuclear plant construction the better capacity of NTPC for timely project implementation. The third expediting factor could be the growing interest in small modular reactors (SMR), which are small reactors (30-300 megawatt), pre-made in factories and assembled on site. In fact, NTPC, in addition to cooperating with NPCIL in implementing the larger projects, is thinking of retro-fitting SMRs into decommissioned coal plants, and has a target of 20 to 30 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2040,

There are three arguments that are usually given to question the viability of relying on nuclear power: The cost of nuclear energy, the challenge of disposing of nuclear power waste and the high safety risks of nuclear power plants. On the cost issue, the Department of Atomic Energy asserted in November 2023 that one of the cheapest sources of energy being produced in India today is by the 1964 commissioned Tarapur nuclear power plant (Rs 0.92/unit). Note also that the cost of power from the recent addition of nuclear capacity, the Kudankulam unit, is also competitive (Rs 3-4 per unit). On the waste issue, the argument is that in India the quantity of waste from nuclear power plants is much smaller due to our adoption of the closed fuel cycle where the plutonium from the first-stage reactor waste is used in the second-stage fast breeder reactors (one of which has been commissioned for research at Kalpakkam), and the waste from this will fuel a third stage, which will be based on thorium, which India has in large quantities. Incidentally this three-stage policy that connects nuclear power plants is a factor that may limit the scope for the private sector.

Ensuring the safety of nuclear plants is important, given what has been experienced, for instance, in the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima plants.   In India, the heavy-water reactors that are part of the three-stage strategy are safer. Moreover, the design of the plants includes redundancies, which raise the investment cost but reduce the safety risks. Yet, the location of nuclear plants will have to take the risk factor into account.

India should include nuclear power development in its climate change programme with as much emphasis as it has placed on renewable energy. Such a renewables plus nuclear strategy will require a very different mix of public and private investment than the present emphasis on renewables. It will also require a transmission system that can meet the requirements of both centralised and decentralised generating stations and a power marketing system that would be uniform for private and public suppliers.

At COP28, a 12-year-old Indian girl marched up to the podium and held up a sign saying, “End fossil fuels. Save our planet and our future”.  The promotion of nuclear energy can help us to do just that.

desaind@icloud.com. The writer was under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs  in the United Nations