Blog 172 - Marine Musings - Graphs and summaries of India's Power needs - A Call for Nuclear Power (Chapter 3 of 4)

To Summarise: (AI Generated Details and Graphs) (with my son’s help)

India Power Sector: 10-Year Historical Review and 10-Year Capacity Outlook

 Verification and methodology notes

• Historical data cover FY2015-16 through FY2024-25. Forward capacity projections cover FY2026-27 through FY2035-36. 

• Installed capacity is a power rating (GW), while generation and consumption are annual energy quantities (TWh). Graph 1 uses a two-panel layout. 

• Graph 2 shows percentage shares of actual utility electricity generation, not shares of installed capacity. 

• Hydroelectric in Graph 2 refers to conventional hydro. Small hydro remains within the RES category and is not double-counted here. 

• Hydro in Graph 3 refers to Large Hydro, matching CEA's projected capacity table. 

• FY2024-25 electricity consumption is marked provisional by CEA.

CONCLUSIONS DRAWN:

India’s dependence on imported fossil fuels - crude oil, coal - has hit us in our underbelly as the closure of Hormuz Straits has shown. So we have been forced to look for ways to solve 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 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. In my opinion, it is not nearly enough.

• 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, till other sectors start producing more.

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

  
  

Options for the Future :

Which way should we go? Do we continue to depend on the vagaries of other nations and their conflicts that dynamically produces disruptions to our supply chains or do we try to gain self sufficiency in energy related routes?

From the population angle, China is a comparable case study in their approach to energy needs. Coal is also their prime mover of energy, with solar and wind power coming a distant second. Hydro power leaped by quite a few percentage points after the Three Gorges dam came on line. 

But they have a composite distribution problem. Their solar and wind power is produced thousands of miles away - in the far northern and western sectors - from where it is needed, the Three Gorges dam being nearly as far. They have turned heavily to the Himalayan sector to build dams in ecologically dangerous areas, places where the glacier ice can break or melt, with disastrous consequences down stream.

Which way should we go in the race to clean energy? 

Till we achieve a measure of statistical and procurement superiority and independence in other forms of clean energy, we have no alternative to coal being the prime fuel for our power needs for the very near future.

I feel we have maxed out on hydro power, as we have dams across all major rivers in the country.

Despite the vagaries of the wind and weather, wind power and solar power are increasing, although it comes at a cost, the parts needing to be imported, the supply chain being weak. Unless India tends to be innovative in being self reliant, I feel this sector may need to be phased out in the coming decades, as it depends heavily on lithium - ion imports, rather than any local source. It may be wishful thinking, but the only way out is innovation using local resources. 

That leaves us with nuclear power.

We have had more downs than ups in the production of nuclear power reactors, the cause being the total imports of uranium. All through the 1980s, 1990s and till 2008, there was a total ban on India buying uranium from the world market. The global ban preventing India from buying uranium was lifted on September 6, 2008, when the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) granted India a historic, country-specific "clean waiver”.

This waiver allowed the 45-member cartel to engage in civil nuclear trade with India, making it the only country in the world permitted to buy uranium and nuclear technology despite not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The present 5% production of power through nuclear means , in the last few years, has been piggybacked on the few handouts of uranium from the west. 

Looking ahead - maybe a decade - this dependence on imported uranium is likely to be reversed, with the possibility of thorium (extracted from monazite) replacing uranium 235 as the primary fuel. This is because of the abundance of monazite found on coasts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Once we are able to further the Fast Breeder technology to work on thorium inputs, our tie up and dependence to a fragile foreign uranium supply will dwindle and we will be able to increase power production through nuclear technology.

In the steps to search for this independence, the reaching of criticality of the Fast Breeder reactor in Kalpakkam in April 2026 is an important step.

Had it not been for one man, Dr. Homi Bhabha, we would be still floundering around with blue prints and plans for the next step of technology. 

(Dr. Homi Bhabha was killed in a suspicious air crash - Air India, Mont Blanc, 1965 - in which 47 members of a crew for a ship were also travelling). (I mention the ship’s crew as they were flying to West Germany to take over a new ship, the Chennai Perumai. I mention the ship’s name, as it became my first ship at sea 5 years later, in 1970).

The three stages of nuclear reactors, which Dr. Homi Bhabha had drafted out, forms the basis of the present templates, blueprints and plans for the nuclear future of India.

Except for the Modular Fast Breeder reactor at Kalpakkam, all other reactors in India are 1st stage reactors.

AR