A photograph of Dhirendra Sharma (right) holding hands with A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

With the passing away of Professor Dhirendra Sharma (1932-2024) in Dehradun this week, a highly contested and sensational chapter in the history of nuclear technology development in India has ended. Prof. Sharma was the first intellectual to publicly criticise the nuclear programme in India and lead a campaign against nuclear power. Though the government did not roll back its nuclear energy development efforts, Prof. Sharma’s relentless campaign on the safety and techno-economic issues forced long-term systemic changes in the field. He did all this as a public policy expert working in a public university – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi – and ended up paying a price for raising uncomfortable questions.

Armed with a doctorate in philosophy from the University College London and a decade-long teaching experience in American universities, Prof. Sharma was appointed an associate professor in the newly established JNU in 1974. He was a member of the founding faculty of the Centre for Studies in Science Policy at the School of Social Sciences. The centre was headed by B.V. Rangarao — a pharmaceutical industry expert — and Prof. Sharma succeeded him. 

Inside view of the nuclear establishment

The period coincided with several political and technological changes in India and worldwide: the oil shock, the ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’ (PNE) at Pokhran, the emergency, and the emergence of the Janata Party regime. The nuclear power programme, by this point, was more than two decades old and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was drawing up ambitious plans for generating commercial nuclear power. Against this backdrop, Prof. Sharma decided to focus on the study of nuclear and energy policies in India but within the ambit of the academy. He began by studying the sociology of science and organised lectures on energy policy and writing research papers and monographs on energy policies with a focus on nuclear energy.

In one such paper, Prof. Sharma warned of “a great danger of our energy policy becoming the captive of the nuclear technological elite”. He argued: “Our national energy planning and our military and defence interests would be better served by developing solar technology” and not nuclear energy and the bomb. To achieve the target to produce 10,000 MW of nuclear electricity by 1990, he estimated India would require 2,000 tonnes of heavy water every year to run 44 reactors with 230 MW capacity each, an army of trained personnel, and massive investments. It was the first-ever critical evaluation of nuclear power in India.

With his experience of participating in antiwar, anti-nuclear, and civil rights movements in the U.K. and the U.S. while being in academia, Prof. Sharma took the next step: he organised the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (COSNUP) in June 1981, the first such civil society body in India. The committee issued a statement signed by eminent citizens, including former diplomat and Mr. Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, expressing concerns over the emergence of a nuclear bomb lobby in India and calling for a rethink.

All this did not go well with the establishment. JNU formed a nine-member panel headed by none other than Raja Ramanna, the ‘father’ of the PNE and soon to be the head of the DAE, to review the working of the science policy centre chaired by Prof. Sharma. As expected, the panel recommended the centre’s closure and said science policy research should focus on topics like the law of the seas, science education, etc. and that this did not warrant a dedicated centre. The centre was not shut but Prof. Sharma remained the target of the university establishment.

In a landmark book, ‘India’s Nuclear Estate’, released in May 1983, Prof. Sharma gave an inside view of the nuclear establishment and pointed to several holes, like the lack of an independent regulatory authority and any plan for safe disposal of nuclear waste. The book was based on information he collected during the Janata Party regime (1977-1979), when he was allowed to visit nuclear installations, meet scientists and access internal records.

The access was facilitated by Atma Ram, former director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and scientific advisor to Prime Minister Morarji Desai. When the book came out, some people wanted Prof. Sharma arrested for flouting the secrecy clauses of the DAE Act. He was not arrested but transferred to the School of Languages in December 1983, and the science policy centre became dormant. His transfer became international news when Noam Chomsky and British labour politician Tony Benn wrote to Indira Gandhi about Prof. Sharma’s harassment.

Friendship with Abdul Kalam

Prof. Sharma became interested in science communication when he realised the difficulties of explaining scientific terms like radiation and nuclear safety to villagers in local dialects during his campaign. He joined the Indian Science Writers Association (ISWA) and was elected its president in 1988 and again in 1992 and 1993. After a few years of his retirement, he settled down in Dehradun and remained an active member of the social and scientific community there.

He was a great advocate of South Asian solidarity and wrote extensively about the need to develop the ‘third pole’ – the Himalaya – as a zone of peace and scientific research. All his life, Prof. Sharma stood for the core values of peace, harmony, democracy, transparency, academic freedom, and openness in public life. Once he wrote: “If I had my time again, I would confront the challenges with even greater vigour.”

His friendship with A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, dating back to the 1980s, continued despite their differences of opinion on nuclear and missile development. Prof. Sharma used to describe Dr. Kalam as a “scientist-sage” and prodded him to promote spinoffs from missile development for social good. Prof. Sharma was a keen adventurer and went on regular hiking expeditions in the Himalaya and the Alps until he was in his early 80s. He was in the contingent that went to Kailash Mansarovar in 2005 and swam in the freezing waters of the lake.

Prof. Sharma’s body was donated to the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences (popularly called Jolly Grant Hospital) as he had willed. His wife Nirmala passed away two months ago and her body was also donated to the same teaching hospital.

Dinesh C. Sharma is a columnist and author based in New Delhi. He was associated with Vigyan Prasar as the founding Managing Editor of India Science Wire (ISW) from 2017 to 2019.

On March 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the start of the process of core-loading the indigenous prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) at the Madras Atomic Power Station in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. A statement from his office called the occasion “a historic milestone in India’s nuclear power programme”.

What is the PFBR?

The PFBR is a machine that produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes. Its core-loading event is being hailed as a “milestone” because the operationalisation of the PFBR will mark the start of stage II of India’s three-stage nuclear power programme.

In the first, India used pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and natural uranium-238 (U-238), which contains minuscule amounts of U-235, as the fissile material.

In nuclear fission, the nucleus of an atom absorbs a neutron, destabilises, and breaks into two while releasing some energy. If the destabilised nucleus releases more neutrons, the reactor’s facilities will attempt to use them to instigate more fission reactions.

The heavy water in PHWR – water molecules containing the deuterium isotope of hydrogen – slows neutrons released by one fission reaction enough to be captured by other U-238 and U-235 nuclei and cause new fission. The heavy water is pressurised to keep it from boiling. The reactions produce plutonium-239 (Pu-239) and energy.

Only U-235, not U-238, can sustain a chain reaction but it is consumed fully in stage I. In stage II, India will use Pu-239 together with U-238 in the PFBR to produce energy, U-233, and more Pu-239. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) set up a special-purpose vehicle in 2003 called Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam, Ltd. (BHAVINI) to implement stage II.

In stage III, Pu-239 will be combined with thorium-232 (Th-232) in reactors to produce energy and U-233. Homi J. Bhabha designed the three-stage programme because India hosts roughly a quarter of the world’s thorium. The three stages are expected to allow the country complete self-sufficiency in nuclear energy.

Why was the PFBR delayed?

The PFBR saga in India has been associated with numerous delays, cost overruns, and broken promises, and has accrued many critics.

The fast breeder test reactor (FBTR) at Kalpakkam is a testing ground for PFBR technologies. It was built by 1977 but sanctions against India’s ‘Smiling Buddha’ nuclear test forced the use of a mixed carbide fuel over enriched uranium (which France was to deliver). The former lowered the power output and changed operating conditions.

By the time the Indian government green-lit the PFBR in 2003, most people who worked on the FBTR were also nearing or had completed retirement.

The Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam, designed the PFBR. Its original cost was Rs 3,492 crore and the original deadline, 2010. Six years later, the DAE sought more funds and an extended deadline, which the government granted in 2012: Rs 5,677 crore and commercial operations by March 2015.

Then the nuclear power establishment pushed the 2014 deadline to the next year, then the year after that, and so on until by March 2020, the new deadline to commercialise was October 2022. Even by 2019, its cost had also ballooned to Rs 6,800 crore.

In a 2014 audit, the Comptroller and Auditor General found BHAVINI had fumbled the procurement of some PFBR components by becoming inordinately dependent on the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd. The result: the placement of a hundred purchase orders had a “median delay” of 158 days per order.

Other causes of delay included technical difficulties with the reactor coolant.

How does the PFBR work?

PHWRs use natural or low-enriched U-238 as the fissile material and produce Pu-239 as a byproduct. This Pu-239 is combined with more U-238 into a mixed oxide and loaded into the core of a new reactor together with a blanket. This is a material the fission products in the core react with to produce more Pu-239.

A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that produces more fissile material than it consumes. In a ‘fast’ breeder reactor, the neutrons aren’t slowed, allowing them to trigger specific fission reactions.

The PFBR is designed to produce more Pu-239 than it consumes. It uses liquid sodium, a highly reactive substance, as coolant in two circuits. Coolant in the first circuit enters the reactor and leaves with (heat) energy and radioactivity. Via heat-exchangers, it transfers only the heat to the coolant in a secondary circuit. The latter transfers the heat to generators to produce electricity.

In a 2020 paper, former IGCAR scientist R.D. Kale wrote about several issues with getting this system to work as expected. For example, according to him, personnel working with the PFBR had expected the reactor vessel could be preheated to 150 degrees C in about a month based on theoretical calculations and tests with a mock-up. But the process took more than a year in reality.

What role can SMRs play?

The delays brooked another potential complication in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactor designs have a maximum capacity of 300 MW, require less land, and accommodate more safety features.

“Several countries are developing SMRs to complement conventional [facilities] since SMRs can be installed at reduced cost and time by repurposing … infrastructure in brownfield sites,” R. Srikanth, a professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, told The Hindu. He added SMRs can work with low-enriched uranium, which India can import from the U.S. via its 123 Agreement.

According to him, increasing SMRs’ contribution would require, among other things, amendments to the Atomic Energy Act (1962) “and other related statutes” to allow private sector participation “under the oversight of the AERB, with both nuclear fuel and waste controlled by the DAE” according to international safeguards.

What is the value of stage II?

The PFBR has a capacity of 500 MWe. In 2019, the DAE proposed building four more fast breeder reactors (FBRs) of 600 MWe capacity each – two in Kalpakkam from 2021 and two from 2025, with sites to be selected. Experts have said the best way to moot work on stage II technologies is to press the reactors into commercial service.

The delays haven’t helped, however. In 2003, renewable sources of energy were a blip on the horizon. Today, the tariff for solar electricity is under Rs 2.5/kWh whereas nuclear electricity costs around Rs 4/kWh. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster also shifted public opinion worldwide against nuclear power, slowing work on new facilities.

Today nuclear power has a new lease of life thanks to the pressure on India to decarbonise, reduce its import of fossil fuels, and give its renewables sector some breathing space. In December 2023, NPCIL chairman B.C. Pathak told The Hindu the corporation plans to “commission a nuclear power reactor every year” from 2024.

What are the challenges of stage II?

On the flip side, bigger challenges await. FBRs are harder to handle than other reactor designs, whereas the DAE has acquired an unfavourable public reputation over its often heavy-handed response to safety concerns.

Further, the civilian nuclear programme’s nodal regulatory body, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Body (AERB), was set up by executive order and reports ultimately to the DAE secretary. In 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency urged India to set up an independent statutory atomic regulator instead.

The DAE had responded to similar concerns with the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill. It sought to replace the AERB with the NSRA. But it was criticised for allowing the Union government too much control over the NSRA’s composition.

Finally, among other products, the thorium fuel cycle produces caesium-137, actinium-227, radium-224, radium-228, and thorium-230, which are all radioactive in ways that complicate their handling and storage.