A worldwide shortage of uranium could cripple India’s ambitious plan for generating 100GW of nuclear power by 2047! While India’s nuclear establishment has not publicly commented, the reports about a growing uranium deficit have acquired a disturbing urgency.
According to the World Nuclear Association, uranium production is heavily concentrated in just three countries: Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia that accounted for 2/3rds of global output in 2022.
But Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, which is the world’s largest producer of uranium (11,373 tons in 2022), signalled last year that production this year would be less because of a shortage of sulphuric acid (which is used to leach and recover uranium from raw ore).
Canada-based Cameco had also flagged lower production while Australia produced a little over 4,000 tons in 2022 from three mines currently in operation. But that amount was less than the 6,000+ tons it produced in 2020.
At the same time, the International Energy Agency says that more nuclear reactors are being built (63, mostly in Asia) than ever before. India too is not only building ten 700MW reactors in “fleet mode”, the government wants five Bharat Small Reactors by 2033.
“All this requires more uranium and new mines will have to be opened for mining yellow cake,” says Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. “But new mines have a gestation period whereas demand may pick up in five or 10 years.”
Investing in a new mine entails risk, he warned. Financial closure is always a tricky issue requiring due diligence about the size of the actual reserve that lies deep underground.
“Even oil exploration is the same story,” he pointed out, “some data is there but there’s risk involved in how the mine has to be developed, what is the time frame, and the financial performance depends on production and sales, so there are crucial decisions to be made.”
India’s target of 100GW of nuclear power by 2047 would mean something like 40% of current production. The big question is whether in drawing up these plans, India has done adequate homework.
In Dr Kakodkar’s view, India should seize this opportunity to “shift to thorium since we have the largest reserve and in the long run the plan is to move to thorium. We should do this as early as possible since that is where our energy security lies.”
India has a 3-stage nuclear power programme as envisaged by the late Dr Homi Bhabha: natural uranium used in Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors with plutonium as byproduct; in stage 2 this plutonium is used along with uranium in fast breeder reactors to breed more plutonium and eventually U-233 from thorium; in the final stage thorium is converted into U-233 and used as fuel.
The problem is in the second stage where the 500MW fast breeder test reactor at Kalpakkam near Chennai, is expected to attain criticality only in March next year. Once criticality is achieved and the technology is proved, the atomic energy establishment hopes to move onto the final stage and free India from external dependence.
