India’s Atomic Power Regulatory Board (AERB) will enable the nation’s flagship 500-MWe/1,250-MWth prototype fast-breeder reactor (PFBR) in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, to strategy criticality.
The nuclear power security watchdog on July 30 granted state-owned Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd. (BHAVINI) permission to embark on the ultimate stage of core loading following assessments, in depth security critiques, and plant visitation. The motion responds to BHAVINI’s software for “first strategy to criticality,” together with loading gas within the reactor core and conducting “low energy” physics experiments. The permission marks a big step in direction of operationalization of [the] PFBR,” AERB stated in an announcement.
Main Step Ahead for India’s Nuclear Ambitions
Whereas the Indian authorities’s anticipated commissioning date stays unclear, the milestone marks one other step ahead for the venture that started development 20 years in the past.
The sodium-cooled, combined oxide–fueled, pool-type quick reactor venture was designed by India’s Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Analysis (IGCAR) based mostly on the success of IGCAR’s 13.6-MWe/40-MWth quick breeder check reactor (FBTR), an experimental sodium-cooled quick reactor that has operated since 1985 utilizing a gas mixture of plutonium carbide and uranium carbide.
The prototype FBR at Kalpakkam is an integral a part of India’s three-pronged nuclear program, which started within the late Sixties and was developed throughout the nation’s nearly 30-year isolation from worldwide nuclear commerce. This system envisions a phased strategy that makes use of all three most important fissionable supplies: uranium-235, plutonium, and uranium-233 (U-233).
The primary stage has concerned constructing indigenously engineered pressurized heavy-water reactors (PHWRs) and light-water reactors (LWRs) to supply plutonium. The second stage makes use of fast-neutron reactors fueled by plutonium to breed U-233 from thorium. Within the third stage, utilizing wholly indigenous expertise, together with its quick reactors, the nation plans to make use of superior heavy-water reactors fueled with U-233 obtained from the irradiation of thorium in PHWRs and quick reactors. The third stage envisions a sophisticated heavy-water reactor (AHWR) and accelerator-driven system (ADS).
India started gas loading in March 2024 on the PFBR website, which is positioned subsequent to the Madras Atomic Energy Station in Kalpakkam. The hassle marked a vital section for the second stage of this system. Whereas the PFBR at Kalpakkam will initially use uranium-plutonium combined oxide (MOX) gas, the uranium-238 “blanket” surrounding the gas core will endure nuclear transmutation to “breed” extra gas, India’s prime minister’s workplace stated in March. India additionally envisions utilizing thorium-232 as a blanket on this stage to create fissile U-233 by transmutation, which will likely be used as gas in this system’s third stage.
“Earlier this yr, the core loading exercise of the PFBR was initiated in a phased method, starting with the insertion of management sub-assemblies, adopted by blanket sub-assemblies with obligatory permissions from AERB,” the board confirmed on Tuesday.
Within the remaining stage of core loading the PFBR, “gas sub-assemblies could be loaded within the core of the reactor following which [the] fission course of will start,” it stated. “On attainment of sustained nuclear fission response, a phenomenon generally known as criticality of the reactor, numerous low-power physics experiments could be performed.”
The PFBR has gained vital new emphasis underneath India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, a 2020-founded coverage that upholds self-reliance. In accordance with the Bhabha Atomic Analysis Centre, the three-pronged technique has grown extra vital contemplating the nation’s meager uranium however considerable thorium reserves.
India’s PFBR within the Context of Worldwide Quick Reactor Growth
As soon as commissioned, India will likely be one in every of solely a handful of nations with an working industrial fast-breeder reactor (FBR). As POWER has reported, solely about 20 quick reactors have traditionally operated globally. Whereas France’s 1,250-MWe industrial prototype Superphenix ran from 1985 to 1998, Russia, in 2016, put on-line the 800-MWe (2,100-MWth), a sodium-cooled quick reactor venture, the BN-800 at its Beloyarsk nuclear plant. Alongside India’s PFBR, different fast-neutron designs, such because the U.S.’s Natrium and Canada’s ARC-100, are additionally advancing.
Rosatom’s BN-800 is being particularly a lot watched, given the reactor’s functionality to make use of and transmute a wider vary of nuclear supplies. The venture was absolutely loaded with uranium-plutonium MOX gas in 2022.
Throughout a latest scheduled refueling outage at Beloyarsk 4, Rosatom, for the primary time, loaded the BN-800 with lead-test assemblies of uranium-plutonium MOX gas that additionally comprise minor actinides, americium-241 and neptunium-237, which it famous are “essentially the most radiotoxic and long-lived elements from irradiated nuclear gas.” The assemblies will endure pilot operation on the BN-800 core throughout “three micro-campaigns” spanning a few yr and a half.
“The following micro-campaign of the BN-800 reactor ought to experimentally affirm the potential of minor actinides utilization at industrial mode. The chance to remove minor actinides is a bonus of quick neutron reactors, which permits lowering the amount of radioactive waste from the whole infrastructure of the nuclear gas cycle of NPP operation,” stated Ivan Sidorov, Director of the Beloyarsk plant on July 10.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
