Blog 171 - Marine Musings - India's Energy Needs - Woes and Conclusions - (Part 2 of 3) {may be 4}

INDIA’S ENERGY WOES:

Coal is a commodity that will trouble India in the near future. With about 70% of the total power generation depending on coal powered plants, India will be hard put to scale it down, especially in the light of the Glasgow Protocols.

A schematic of a coal burning unit generating power

Of all the energy giving entities, coal is the only product that India is nearly self sufficient. But the coal is of medium grade, found in Jharkand and Orissa. Lignite - a low calorific value coal, with high residues, is found in limited quantities in Tamil Nadu. High grade coal is imported. Coking coal - mostly required for our steel production - is mostly imported, with small quantities mined in Jharkand.

While boilers themselves achieve a high degree of efficiency (85%), what is fitted downstream reduces the plant efficiency to less than 40%. 

So, giving up coal for reduction of emission is, presently, a shooting-yourself-in-the foot reaction, until alternate sources are found.

Solar Energy, presently producing about 9% of the power on the national grid, is a may be ~ may not be a long term proposition due to the (presently) growing disadvantages in power production from solar panels. Firstly, it requires large tracts of land. Secondly, the array of solar panels need to be extensive to produce the required voltage for the high tension power lines, also requiring large capacity inverters to convert DC to AC. The same goes for smaller units that produce less.

Although domestically and privately used solar panels drastically reduces the overall power bills for a family, depending on them for national grids is a somewhat risky situation, due to the variable and fluctuating nature of light (heat) from the sun, the main power source.

Solar panels and inverters have, till now, been imported. The question of manufacturing the parts locally are being explored, but are being stymied due to the materials in their construction and the rare earths involved in the parts.

Hydro Power accounts for about 12% of the total power and is the cleanest form of energy so far, with no pollutants. But it comes with a price, an ecological and humanitarian one. The lake or reservoir that is formed by damming a river inundates sensitive forests, agricultural land and forces the migration of swathes of villagers and wildlife.

Elements of a hydro electric power plant.

A lot of soul searching has to be done prior building a dam. Once decided, it is foolish to be conservative, like our forefathers did in building dams. For example, the Three Gorges dam in China, the largest in the world, has a set of 34 turbines that produce a total of

22, 500 Mega Watts. The largest Indian dam, the Indra Sagar in Madhya Pradesh has 8 turbines and produces 1000 MW.

But, we are now in an age where building dams come with severe consequences. The Three Gorges Dam in China, for example, has shifted the Earth's axis, but by a microscopic amount. When its massive reservoir fills to 175 meters above sea level, it holds about 39 trillion kilograms of water. This redistribution of weight shifted the planet's axis by about 2 centimeters and lengthened each day by 0.06 microsecond 

The real danger that one can associate with dams is when the water level  reaches beyond the capacity of the structure. Water is then let out through all the gates, flooding the embankment and river side villages and towns. A burst dam can have disastrous consequences.

Wind Power which contributes about 6% of our total power production, has nearly the same characteristic as solar power. Storage through inverters, makes this class of power development dependent upon foreign, mostly Chinese, imports.

Nuclear Power presently providing less than 5% of India’s needs is an option worth studying, because the built in safety factors have increased tremendously over the last decade where, previously, the fear of radiation fallout nearly dumped an entire scientific power source into the annals of history.

France is the leading nuclear power source, as about 70% of France’s power is from nuclear power plants. 

India, although in its infancy in terms of nuclear power production, is now catching up fast in nuclear technology. One of the few countries to build, operate and bring to criticality a Fast Breeder Reactor, the next step to just pure fission plants, India joined an elite group in Fast Breeder technology in April 2026, when its plant in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu reached criticality.

Another set of reactors, pressurised water reactors, six of them, are being set up at Kudankulam,Tamil Nadu. The first two are already operational, producing 1000MW each.

Presently, all nuclear reactors in India use enriched Uranium 235, all imported, thus opening the country to the mercy of others and has probably been the factor reining in a boost to nuclear power production.

Fast Breeder Reactors have several distinct advantages.

Key Advantages

• High fuel efficiency. Extracts 60 times more energy from uranium, thereby making smaller for larger outputs.

• Fuel breeding. Generates extra plutonium from depleted uranium.

• Waste minimization. Burns long-lived radioactive actinide isotopes.

• Resource sustainability. Extends nuclear fuel supplies for centuries.

• Reduced mining. Minimizes the need for raw uranium extraction.

• Thorium utilization. Enables future use of India's abundant thorium reserves.

The few disadvantages of building and using nuclear power plants are 1. They require copious amounts of water and 2. They should not succumb to earthquakes and tsunamis. Any radiation leaks can affect large portions of the population and can be widespread depending on weather conditions.

When the Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered major damage, with resultant radio active fallout, the plant was 40 years old, running on old age principles.

 The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster caused massive evacuations, psychological trauma, and long-term environmental and economic fallout, though zero deaths or cases of radiation sickness were directly recorded from radiation exposure. Over 100,000 residents were displaced, and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on cleanup and compensation. 

As in maritime shipping, several safeguards were put into place after the disaster. Looking at the safeguards, one wonders why such basic safeguards had been neglected any time during the building of the plant and subsequent annual inspections for 40 years.

Physical and Technical Upgrades

• Mobile Emergency Equipment: Plants worldwide added portable diesel generators, high-capacity water pumps, and extra hoses stored off-site to restore core cooling during total power loss.

• Filtered Containment Vents: Passive venting systems that operate without external electricity were made mandatory to release pressure safely and trap radioactive particles before they escape.

• Hydrogen Control: Passive autocatalytic recombiners were installed to prevent explosive hydrogen gas build-up inside reactor buildings.

• Spent Fuel Pool Protections: Independent water injection lines and dedicated level-monitoring tools were added to pools holding spent nuclear fuel.

Oil, gas and bio fuels form a very small percentage of India’s  power production circuit, but we rely on oil for nearly all of our transportation and domestic cooking needs. 

Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), the underlying staple of India’s domestic kitchens comes from two sources - from the Natural Gas (LNG) wells (60%) and the rest from the fractional distillation process of crude oil. India refines huge quantities of crude oil and also imports vast quantities of LPG, as well as LNG.

CONCLUSIONS DRAWN:

India’s dependence on imported fossil fuels - crude oil, coal - has hit us in our underbelly as the closure of Hormuz Straits (2026) has shown. So we have been forced to look for ways to solve and reduce our dependence on crude oil. We will also need to consider the fact that oil based power plants, though much less of a pollutant than coal, is also a pollutant in the background of regulations for global warming and polluting of the environment and will, eventually, need to be phased out.

Coal dependency has to reduce, to stay within the guidelines of emissions and environmental matters. This blocks out nearly 75% of our total power production.

We have no alternative but to increase production through Nuclear Power Plants.

The Fast Breeder Reactor is a step in that direction. Uranium, the main constituent in Nuclear Reactors, is a commodity that we have to depend on other nations, having no uranium deposits in our country.  Supply of uranium can get cut off instantly, depending on trade deals and diplomacy.

Fast Breeder Reactors act a bridge to the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel. Acceptable limits of Thorium content in a mineral known as monazite has been found on the beaches of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which will serve as a buttress for the expansion of nuclear power in the very near future.

Given the limitations of the surety of supply of crude oil, the limitations of power generation through solar and wind power, mostly due to the components of the rectifiers and inverters needed to connect to the national grid, nuclear power is almost the only option, were India to succeed in manufacturing the power needed for the progress planned.

While the maximum power generation capacity of the whole of India is 552 Gigawatts (GW), for practical use only about 330 GW will be available, taking breakdowns, maintenance etc into consideration.

This summer, the peak load was 272 GW, leaving only a small fraction of reserve power, which could have led to dangerous events, such as shut down of entire portions of the grid.

We have no alternative but to increase our power output through the use of nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants, moreover, while having high initial costs, significantly bring down the long-term cost of production per KwH, down to as little as Rs 1 / KwH. This will come as a relief to the domestic consumer, who is presently overburdened with high electricity tariffs. 

What is India doing to increase power production?

Of late, rapid industrialisation, electrical vehicles, data centres and increasing use of Air Conditioners and electrical appliances have increased consumption manifold. If India were to survive and progress further, there is no alternative to continuously increase power production.

The word ‘decarbonisation’ has always been part of a Marine Engineer’s lexicon, ever since the steam boiler and internal combustion engine came into the marine industry. But in the recent past, it has been usurped by the environmentalists to mean reduction of or elimination of carbon from the atmosphere, for environmental clean up purposes.

India plans to expand its total installed power generation capacity from roughly 520 GW to over 1,121 GW by 2035–36 to meet rapidly surging electricity demands. 

Renewable Energy

• Solar and Wind: India aims to reach 500 GW of non-fossil/renewable capacity, driven heavily by solar PV investments. Programs like PM Surya Ghar accelerate rooftop solar expansion.

• Green Hydrogen and Alternative Fuels: Investments are scaling up in green hydrogen, ammonia, and ethanol to transition industrial sectors and reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Nuclear Energy

• Capacity Expansion: India plans to scale its nuclear power capacity significantly, targeting 100 GW by 2047 under the Nuclear Energy Mission.

• Advanced Reactors: Growth includes new indigenous 700 MW and 1000 MW reactors, small modular reactors (SMRs), and fast breeder tech.

Traditional and Flexible Backup Spheres

• Coal: India will continue relying on coal through the 2030s and 2040s for base load stability while applying efficiency standards.

• Gas and Hydro: These sources are projected to constitute about 20% of grid capacity to provide flexible peaking power and backup support.

AR