Some of the hoopla around the US firm Holtec being cleared by its government to build small modular reactors (SMR) in India, may be rather over the top. The fact is Holtec is yet to build an SMR!
“Holtec is not that well known,” said Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, “and though they have been in manufacturing, they have not done any work in the primary nuclear reactor or nuclear segments although in back-end activities such as fuel storage and lower level of safety, they have done some work.”
Holtec’s website acknowledges this reality, saying that Holtec’s SMR300 is part of “Mission 2030 … to build America’s first small modular reactor”. The project is coming up in Michigan and is expected to be completed in five years.
The website says two SMR300s are planned for the Michigan site with the target for “a 10-gigawatt fleet of SMR300s in North America through the 2030s”.
When Holtec has not built or commissioned any SMRs, and there is no track record, then what does India gain?
“They are not Westinghouse or GE,” Kakodkar told StratNewsGlobal, “to that extent it is a bubble, a gamble but the fact that Holtec wants to set up a design and manufacturing office is fine. In principle, rather than getting a ready made product where value addition happens abroad, having design and value addition happen in country is a good thing, so in terms of international cooperation, this is better.”
In other words, a foreign collaborator could help speed up the design and construction process for the much talked about Bharat Small Reactor (BSR) at a time when only Russia and China are known to operate an SMR each.
Reports in February suggested Russia’s Rosatom was ready to transfer SMR technology to India. France was also named as a possible collaborator. If this is a race, clearly America’s Holtec seems to have first mover advantage, although one will have to wait and see how this advantage fructifies.
Dr Kakodkar believes that the Holtec design cannot be the basis for the Bharat SMR.
“I’m not sure it is decided, but they will look at possibilities since there are many SMR designs, so some prototype or initial designs may be looked at,” he said.
The other issue is whether the Holtec design meets the requirements of India’s safety regulations. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), the apex body overseeing nuclear safety in India, will not talk to Holtec but only to the utilities that will deal directly with Holtec.
Dr Kakodkar was also clear that “Our energy needs are far too urgent compared to the time this process (designing, building SMRs) will take. It’s an inflection in the right direction although it will not solve the energy issues of 2047 Viksit Bharat, that is far away.”
In his view, there are no buyers for SMRs in India yet and the buyer must comply with the Atomic Energy Act or the new requirements if it is amended. The buyer and Holtec must agree on configuration and cost, then apply to the AERB for design approval, which takes years, then finalising the design, certifying the design followed by construction.
Clearly, there is a lot of talk about SMRs but somebody will have to build and demonstrate, and that is yet to happen. As for India, when the country has designed, built and commissioned 80 megawatt nuclear reactors for submarines, are we making too much noise about international collaboration for SMRs.
