Group items tagged

It’d be hard to find a Russian who knows more about nuclear energy than Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov.  A renowned scientist, Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov’s former service as head of TENEX helped create a landmark treaty between the United States and Russia in which bomb-grade uranium was converted into usable nuclear energy.  As Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov’s work details, nuclear energy involves no smoldering smokestacks or polluting gasses; it releases nothing into the atmosphere: no carbon monoxide, no sulfur, no mercury.  It takes up very little land, and can power up to 2 million homes.  And with modern technology, spent nuclear fuel can be safely removed and reprocessed to yield new reactor fuel and drastically reduce the amount of waste needed at disposal. 

In November, a landmark law on energy efficiency was passed in Russia detailing the government’s strategy to encourage energy-saving in upcoming years.  There’s no better source than Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov to turn to during this key phase of Russia’s development.  Energy service companies are far and few between in Russia, but if Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov’s experience with TENEX is any indicator, these companies are in a good position to make profits and be of service to a region that’s quickly becoming green. 

Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union.   The chief obstacle to American acceptance of a nuclear-armed Japan was the Pentagon, where Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima remain as iconic symbols justifying American military supremacy.The only feasible channel for bilateral transfers then was through the civilian-run Department of Energy (DoE), which supervises the production of nuclear weapons.

Camp David Go-Ahead   The deal was sealed on Abe's subsequent visit to Washington. Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon's fall from grace, Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never been revealed, not even in vague outline.   As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is the world's finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during the enrichment process.

The flow of coolant water into the storage pools ceased, quickening evaporation. Fission of the overheated cores led to blasts and mushroom-clouds. Residents in mountaintop Iitate village overlooking the seaside plant saw plumes of smoke and could "taste the metal" in their throats.   Guilty as Charged   The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough to damage Fukushima No.1. The natural disaster, however, was vastly amplified by two external factors: release of the Stuxnet virus, which shut down control systems in the critical 20 minutes prior to the tsunami; and presence of weapons-grade nuclear materials that devastated the nuclear facility and contaminated the entire region.   Of the three parties involved, which bears the greatest guilt? All three are guilty of mass murder, injury and destruction of property on a regional scale, and as such are liable for criminal prosecution and damages under international law and in each respective jurisdiction.

An unannounced reason for Cheney's visit was to promote a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The four cornerstones - the US, Japan, Australia and India - were being called on to contain and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia.. From a Japanese perspective, this grand alliance was flawed by asymmetry: The three adversaries were nuclear powers, while the U.S. was the only one in the Quad group.   To further his own nuclear ambitions, Abe was playing the Russian card. As mentioned in a U.S. Embassy cable (dated 9/22), the Yomiuri Shimbun gave top play to this challenge to the White House : "It was learned yesterday that the government and domestic utility companies have entered final talks with Russia in order to relegate uranium enrichment for use at nuclear power facilities to Atomprom, the state-owned nuclear monopoly." If Washington refused to accept a nuclear-armed Japan, Tokyo would turn to Moscow.

Throughout the Pantex caper, from the data theft to smuggling operation, Bush and Cheney's point man for nuclear issues was DoE Deputy Director Clay Sell, a lawyer born in Amarillo and former aide to Panhandle district Congressman Mac Thornberry. Sell served on the Bush-Cheney transition team and became the top adviser to the President on nuclear issues. At DoE, Sell was directly in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which includes 17 national laboratories and the Pantex plant. (Another alarm bell: Sell was also staff director for the Senate Energy subcommittee under the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who died in a 2010 plane crash.)   An Israeli Double-Cross   The nuclear shipments to Japan required a third-party cutout for plausible deniability by the White House. Israel acted less like an agent and more like a broker in demanding additional payment from Tokyo, according to intelligence sources. Adding injury to insult, the Israelis skimmed off the newer warhead cores for their own arsenal and delivered older ones. Since deteriorated cores require enrichment, the Japanese were furious and demanded a refund, which the Israelis refused. Tokyo had no recourse since by late 2008 principals Abe had resigned the previous autumn and Bush was a lame duck.

The Japanese nuclear developers, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, had no choice but to enrich the uranium cores at Fukushima No.1, a location remote enough to evade detection by nonproliferation inspectors. Hitachi and GE had developed a laser extraction process for plutonium, which requires vast amounts of electrical power. This meant one reactor had to make unscheduled runs, as was the case when the March earthquake struck.   Tokyo dealt a slap on the wrist to Tel Aviv by backing Palestinian rights at the UN. Not to be bullied, the Israeli secret service launched the Stuxnet virus against Japan's nuclear facilities.   Firewalls kept Stuxnet at bay until the Tohoku earthquake. The seismic activity felled an electricity tower behind Reactor 6. The power cut disrupted the control system, momentarily taking down the firewall. As the computer came online again, Stuxnet infiltrated to shut down the back-up generators. During the 20-minute interval between quake and tsunami, the pumps and valves at Fukushima No.1 were immobilized, exposing the turbine rooms to flood damage.

The Texas Job   BWXT Pantex, America's nuclear warhead facility, sprawls over 16,000 acres of the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo. Run by the DoE and Babcock & Wilson, the site also serves as a storage facility for warheads past their expiration date. The 1989 shutdown of Rocky Flats, under community pressure in Colorado, forced the removal of those nuclear stockpiles to Pantex. Security clearances are required to enter since it is an obvious target for would-be nuclear thieves.   In June 2004, a server at the Albuquerque office of the National Nuclear Security System was hacked. Personal information and security-clearance data for 11 federal employees and 177 contractors at Pantex were lifted. NNSA did not inform Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or his deputy Clay Sell until three months after the security breach, indicating investigators suspected an inside job.

The White House, specifically Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators in the DoE, hold responsibility for ordering the illegal removal and shipment of warheads without safeguards.   The state of Israel is implicated in theft from U.S. strategic stockpiles, fraud and extortion against the Japanese government, and a computer attack against critical infrastructure with deadly consequences, tantamount to an act of war.   Prime Minister Abe and his Economy Ministry sourced weapons-grade nuclear material in violation of constitutional law and in reckless disregard of the risks of unregulated storage, enrichment and extraction. Had Abe not requested enriched uranium and plutonium in the first place, the other parties would not now be implicated. Japan, thus, bears the onus of the crime.

The International Criminal Court has sufficient grounds for taking up a case that involves the health of millions of people in Japan, Canada, the United States, Russia, the Koreas, Mongolia, China and possibly the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Fukushima disaster is more than an human-rights charge against a petty dictator, it is a crime against humanity on par with the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Failure to prosecute is complicity.   If there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, it's that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami saved the world from even greater folly by halting the drive to World War III.

India, another potential nuclear boom market, is discovering a different set of headaches: effective local opposition, growing national wariness about foreign nuclear reactors, and a nuclear liability controversy that threatens to prevent new reactor imports. India was supposed to bring the first of two Russian-designed reactors online this year in tsunami-prone Tamil Nadu state. Following Fukushima, though, local residents staged a series of starvation strikes, and the plant’s opening has now been delayed. More negative antinuclear reactions in the nearby state of West Bengal forced the local government to pull the plug on a major Russian project in Haripur. It’s now blocking an even larger French reactor-construction effort at Jaitapur.

These nuclear setbacks come as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is straining to reconcile India’s national nuclear-accident-liability legislation with U.S. demands that foreign reactor vendors be absolved of any responsibility for harm that might come to property or people outside of a reactor site after an accident

n the United States, new-reactor construction has also suffered—not because of public opposition but because of economics

persuade his Parliament to cap foreign vendors’ liability to no more than $300 million (even though Japan has pegged Fukushima damages at no less than $64 billion).

The bottom line is that in 2007, U.S. utilities applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 28 nuclear-power plants before 2020; now, if more than three come online before the end of the decade, it will be a major accomplishment.

France—per capita, the world’s most nuclear-powered state. Frequently heralded as a nuclear commercial model for the world, today it’s locked in a national debate over a partial nuclear phaseout.

his Socialist opponent, François Hollande, now well ahead in the polls, has proposed cutting nuclear power’s contribution to the electrical grid by more than a third by 2025. Hollande is following a clear shift in French public opinion, from two thirds who backed nuclear power before Fukushima to 62 percent who are now favoring a progressive phaseout. In addition, the French courts just awarded Greenpeace €1.5 million against the French nuclear giant EDF for illegally spying on the group. Public support of this judgment and the French Socialist Party’s wooing of the French Greens makes the likelihood of Hollande backing off his pledge minuscule.

VZCZCXRO8369 RR RUEHBC RUEHDBU RUEHDE RUEHDIR RUEHKUK RUEHLN RUEHPOD RUEHSK RUEHVK RUEHYG DE RUEHMO #0851/01 0930402 ZNR UUUUU ZZH R 030402Z APR 09 FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2715 INFO RUEHSF/AMEMBASSY SOFIA 0616 RUEHKV/AMEMBASSY KYIV 0335 RUEHSK/AMEMBASSY MINSK RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS 0286 RUEHTRO/AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI RUEHUM/AMEMBASSY ULAANBAATAR 0304 RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE RUEHII/VIENNA IAEA POSTS COLLECTIVE RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE RHMFIUU/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC RUEANFA/NRC WASHDC RUEHLN/AMCONSUL ST PETERSBURG 5295 RUEHVK/AMCONSUL VLADIVOSTOK 3181 RUEHYG/AMCONSUL YEKATERINBURG 3534

SUBJECT: RUSSIA'S ATOMSTROYEXPORT CANNOT FULFILL EXISTING INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ENERGY CONTRACTS, BUT SEEKS NEW ONES REF A: ANKARA 111, REF B: 08 YEREVAN 1049, REF C: 08 MOSCOW 908 MOSCOW 00000851 001.2 OF 003

¶1. (SBU) Summary: Russian policymakers are relying on Russia's competitive advantage in civilian nuclear power to help it diversify its natural resources-based economy. Atomstroyexport, Russia's international nuclear power plant constructor is diligently pursuing construction contracts for 11 new nuclear reactors in India, Iran, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. It is in active discussions on another six reactors (two in China and a Build-Own-Operate plant with four reactors in Turkey). At least four other countries have stated their interest in having Russian-design reactors as their entry into the nuclear power arena. However, the crunch on credit, insufficient machine-building infrastructure, and a paucity of trained specialists make it unlikely that Atomstroyexport will be able to realize all of these plans soon. End Summary.

This kind of open-market assurance would lessen the perceived need for a country to develop its own suite of nuclear fuel facilities as Iran has done. Chu said Iran has a choice: "it can comply with its obligations and restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities, or it can face deepening isolation and international censure." He praised the IAEA board for referring the status of nuclear programs in Iran, Syria and North Korea to the UN Security Council.   Chu's statement contained a message from President Barack Obama: "The tragic events at Fukushima make clear that nuclear energy, which holds great promise for global development and as a carbon-free source of power, also brings significant challenges to our collective safety and security... We must aim for a future in which peaceful nuclear energy is not only safe, but also accessible by all nations that abide by their obligations."

And Ahmad Al-Malabeh, a professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department of Hashemite University, adds: "Jordan is rich not only in solar and wind resources, but also in oil shale rock, from which we can extract oil that can cover Jordan's energy needs in the coming years, starting between 2016 and 2017 ... this could give us more time to have more economically feasible renewable energy."

Finance, rather than Fukushima, may delay South Africa's nuclear plans, which were approved just five days after the Japanese disaster. South Africa remains resolute in its plans to build six new nuclear reactors by 2030. Katse Maphoto, the director of Nuclear Safety, Liabilities and Emergency Management at the Department of Energy, says that the government conducted a safety review of its two nuclear reactors in Cape Town, following the Fukushima event.

The Ninh Thuan nuclear plant would sit 80 to 100 kilometres from a fault line on the Vietnamese coast, potentially exposing it to tsunamis, according to state media. But Vuong Huu Tan, president of the state-owned Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission, told state media in March, however, that lessons from the Fukushima accident will help Vietnam develop safe technologies. And John Morris, an Australia-based energy consultant who has worked as a geologist in Vietnam, says the seismic risk for nuclear power plants in the country would not be "a major issue" as long as the plants were built properly. Japan's nuclear plants are "a lot more earthquake prone" than Vietnam's would be, he adds.

Larkin says nuclear energy is the only alternative to coal for generating adequate electricity. "What other alternative do we have? Renewables are barely going to do anything," he said. He argues that nuclear is capable of supplying 85 per cent of the base load, or constantly needed, power supply, while solar energy can only produce between 17 and 25 per cent. But, despite government confidence, Larkin says that a shortage of money may delay the country's nuclear plans.

The government has said yes but hasn't said how it will pay for it. This is going to end up delaying by 15 years any plans to build a nuclear station."

Vietnam's nuclear energy targets remain ambitious despite scientists' warning of a tsunami risk. Vietnam's plan to power 10 per cent of its electricity grid with nuclear energy within 20 years is the most ambitious nuclear energy plan in South-East Asia. The country's first nuclear plant, Ninh Thuan, is to be built with support from a state-owned Russian energy company and completed by 2020. Le Huy Minh, director of the Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Centre at Vietnam's Institute of Geophysics, has warned that Vietnam's coast would be affected by tsunamis in the adjacent South China Sea.

Undeterred by Fukushima, Nigeria is forging ahead with nuclear collaborations. There is no need to panic because of the Fukushima accident, says Shamsideen Elegba, chair of the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa. Nigeria has the necessary regulatory system to keep nuclear activities safe. "The Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority [NNRA] has established itself as a credible organisation for regulatory oversight on all uses of ionising radiation, nuclear materials and radioactive sources," says Elegba who was, until recently, the NNRA's director general.

Vietnam is unlikely to experience much in the way of anti-nuclear protests, unlike neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines, where civil society groups have had more influence, says Kevin Punzalan, an energy expert at De La Salle University in the Philippines. Warnings from the Vietnamese scientific community may force the country's ruling communist party to choose alternative locations for nuclear reactors, or to modify reactor designs, but probably will not cause extreme shifts in the one-party state's nuclear energy strategy, Punzalan tells SciDev.Net.

But the government adopted its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for 2010-2030 five days after the Fukushima accident. Elliot Mulane, communications manager for the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, (NECSA) a public company established under the 1999 Nuclear Energy Act that promotes nuclear research, said the timing of the decision indicated "the confidence that the government has in nuclear technologies". And Dipuo Peters, energy minister, reiterated the commitment in her budget announcement earlier this year (26 May), saying: "We are still convinced that nuclear power is a necessary part of our strategy that seeks to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through a diversified portfolio, comprising some fossil-based, renewable and energy efficiency technologies". James Larkin, director of the Radiation and Health Physics Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, believes South Africa is likely to go for the relatively cheap, South Korean generation three reactor.

In the meantime, the government is trying to build capacity. The country lacks, for example, the technical expertise. Carmencita Bariso, assistant director of the Department of Energy's planning bureau, says that, despite the Fukushima accident, her organisation has continued with a study on the viability, safety and social acceptability of nuclear energy. Bariso says the study would include a proposal for "a way forward" for the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear reactor in South East Asia at the time of its completion in 1985. The $2.3-billion Westinghouse light water reactor, about 60 miles north of the capital, Manila, was never used, though it has the potential to generate 621 megawatts of power. President Benigno Aquino III, whose mother, President Corazon Aquino, halted work on the facility in 1986 because of corruption and safety issues, has said it will never be used as a nuclear reactor but could be privatised and redeveloped as a conventional power plant.

But Mark Cojuangco, former lawmaker, authored a bill in 2008 seeking to start commercial nuclear operations at the Bataan reactor. His bill was not passed before Congress adjourned last year and he acknowledges that the Fukushima accident has made his struggle more difficult. "To go nuclear is still the right thing to do," he says. "But this requires a societal decision. We are going to spark public debates with a vengeance as soon as the reports from Fukushima are out." Amended bills seeking both to restart the reactor, and to close the issue by allowing either conversion or permanent closure, are pending in both the House and the Senate. Greenpeace, which campaigns against nuclear power, believes the Fukushima accident has dimmed the chances of commissioning the Bataan plant because of "increased awareness of what radioactivity can do to a place". Many parts of the country are prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters, which critics say makes it unsuitable both for the siting of nuclear power stations and the disposal of radioactive waste.

In Kenya, nuclear proponents argue for a geothermal – nuclear mix In the same month as the Fukushima accident, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency approved Kenya's application for its first nuclear power station (31 March), a 35,000 megawatt facility to be built at a cost of Sh950 billion (US$9.8 billion) on a 200-acre plot on the Athi Plains, about 50km from Nairobi

The plant, with construction driven by Kenya's Nuclear Electricity Project Committee, should be commissioned in 2022. The government claims it could satisfy all of Kenya's energy needs until 2040. The demand for electricity is overwhelming in Kenya. Less than half of residents in the capital, Nairobi, have grid electricity, while the rural rate is two per cent. James Rege, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Communication and Information, takes a broader view than the official government line, saying that geothermal energy, from the Rift Valley project is the most promising option. It has a high production cost but remains the country's "best hope". Nuclear should be included as "backup". "We are viewing nuclear energy as an alternative source of power. The cost of fossil fuel keeps escalating and ordinary Kenyans can't afford it," Rege tells SciDev.Net.

Hydropower is limited by rivers running dry, he says. And switching the country's arable land to biofuel production would threaten food supplies. David Otwoma, secretary to the Energy Ministry's Nuclear Electricity Development Project, agrees that Kenya will not be able to industrialise without diversifying its energy mix to include more geothermal, nuclear and coal. Otwoma believes the expense of generating nuclear energy could one day be met through shared regional projects but, until then, Kenya has to move forward on its own. According to Rege, much as the nuclear energy alternative is promising, it is extremely important to take into consideration the Fukushima accident. "Data is available and it must be one step at a time without rushing things," he says. Otwoma says the new nuclear Kenya can develop a good nuclear safety culture from the outset, "but to do this we need to be willing to learn all the lessons and embrace them, not forget them and assume that won't happen to us".

Will the Philippines' plans to rehabilitate a never-used nuclear power plant survive the Fukushima accident? The Philippines is under a 25-year moratorium on the use of nuclear energy which expires in 2022. The government says it remains open to harnessing nuclear energy as a long-term solution to growing electricity demand, and its Department of Science and Technology has been making public pronouncements in favour of pursuing nuclear energy since the Fukushima accident. Privately, however, DOST officials acknowledge that the accident has put back their job of winning the public over to nuclear by four or five years.

It is not only that we say so: an international audit came here in 2006 to assess our procedure and processes and confirmed the same. Elegba is firmly of the view that blame for the Fukushima accident should be allocated to nature rather than human error. "Japan is one of the leaders not only in that industry, but in terms of regulatory oversight. They have a very rigorous system of licensing. We have to make a distinction between a natural event, or series of natural events and engineering infrastructure, regulatory infrastructure, and safety oversight." Erepamo Osaisai, Director General of the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC), has said there is "no going back" on Nigeria's nuclear energy project after Fukushima.

Nigeria is likely to recruit the Russian State Corporation for Atomic Energy, ROSATOM, to build its first proposed nuclear plant. A delegation visited Nigeria (26- 28 July) and a bilateral document is to be finalised before December. Nikolay Spassy, director general of the corporation, said during the visit: "The peaceful use of nuclear power is the bedrock of development, and achieving [Nigeria's] goal of being one of the twenty most developed countries by the year 2020 would depend heavily on developing nuclear power plants." ROSATOM points out that the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and regulates power plant construction in previously non-nuclear countries. But Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), said "We cannot see the logic behind the government's support for a technology that former promoters in Europe, and other technologically advanced nations, are now applying brakes to. "What Nigeria needs now is investment in safe alternatives that will not harm the environment and the people. We cannot accept the nuclear option."

Thirsty for electricity, and desirous of political clout, Egypt is determined that neither Fukushima ― nor revolution ― will derail its nuclear plans. Egypt was the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to own a nuclear programme, launching a research reactor in 1961. In 2007 Egypt 'unfroze' a nuclear programme that had stalled in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. After the Egyptian uprising in early 2011, and the Fukushima accident, the government postponed an international tender for the construction of its first plant.

Yassin Ibrahim, chairman of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority, told SciDev.Net: "We put additional procedures in place to avoid any states of emergency but, because of the uprising, the tender will be postponed until we have political stability after the presidential and parliamentary election at the end of 2011". Ibrahim denies the nuclear programme could be cancelled, saying: "The design specifications for the Egyptian nuclear plant take into account resistance to earthquakes and tsunamis, including those greater in magnitude than any that have happened in the region for the last four thousand years. "The reactor type is of the third generation of pressurised water reactors, which have not resulted in any adverse effects to the environment since they began operation in the early sixties."

Ibrahim El-Osery, a consultant in nuclear affairs and energy at the country's Nuclear Power Plants Authority, points out that Egypt's limited resources of oil and natural gas will run out in 20 years. "Then we will have to import electricity, and we can't rely on renewable energy as it is still not economic yet — Egypt in 2010 produced only two per cent of its needs through it." But there are other motives for going nuclear, says Nadia Sharara, professor of mineralogy at Assiut University. "Owning nuclear plants is a political decision in the first place, especially in our region. And any state that has acquired nuclear technology has political weight in the international community," she says. "Egypt has the potential to own this power as Egypt's Nuclear Materials Authority estimates there are 15,000 tons of untapped uranium in Egypt." And she points out it is about staying ahead with technology too. "If Egypt freezes its programme now because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster it will fall behind in many science research fields for at least the next 50 years," she warned.

The opposition has focused mainly on imported reactors, the designs of which are untried. "The French reactor offered to India is not working anywhere in the world and the Russian reactor had to undergo several design changes before we accepted it," says Annaswamy Prasad, retired director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai. "If any accident happens in India it will be in imported reactor and not in our home-made pressurized heavy water reactors" (PHWRs), he adds.

Ideally, says Prasad, India should boost its nuclear capacity by building more PHWRs fuelled by natural uranium, instead of importing reactors that require enriched uranium. Although the foreign vendors have agreed to supply fuel for the lifetime of their reactors, overreliance on imports will derail India's home-grown programme, the Bhabha scheme, he warns.

The Bhabha scheme involves building PHWRs, which would produce enough plutonium as a by-product to fuel fast-breeder reactors that would in turn convert thorium — which is abundantly available in India — into fissile uranium-233. In the third and final phase, India hopes to run its reactors using the 233U–Th cycle without any need for new uranium. Gopalakrishnan says that building indigenous reactors is not enough: the country must also invest in renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power. But a survey by Subhas Sukhatme, a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, warns that India's renewable energy sources, even stretched to their full potential, can at best supply 36.1% of the country's total energy needs by the year 2070. The balance would have to come from fossil fuels and nuclear energy.