Go Green, Go Nuclear

DAE and private industry can together produce enough nuclear reactors for India’s clean energy

- Anil Kakodkar

COP26, now on at Glasgow, is seeing an intense debate thanks to seriously conflicting stakeholder interests. Only around 20% of the world population today has reached a respectable human development index (HDI) of around 0.9. India’s is still at around 0.645. Our energy consumption would need to increase by around five times to realise a quality of life comparable to the best in the world.

Achieving this along with elimination of carbon emission, given that around 96% of primary energy we consume comes from fossil fuels, will mean clean energy supply will have to go up by a factor of around 125.

Our significant clean energy sources are renewable energy (solar, wind and biomass), hydro and nuclear. While hydro has limited growth potential, the other two are large enough to fully meet our future needs.

Renewable energy deployment is progressing quite well. The growth of nuclear power however seems to be very slow in spite of it being the only large on-demand dispatchable source of clean energy. Many believe that we can meet all our requirements using renewable energy alone.

While this is true, studies done abroad (there are no such studies available in the country as yet), particularly the one done at MIT and reflected in the OECD report, suggest that under near-zero-emission conditions, without nuclear, the minimum average cost to consumers could be two to four times higher depending on the electricity region one is talking about. While the numbers for India could be different and need to be worked out, we can ill afford costlier electricity supply in India – simply because we ignored nuclear energy.