'Trailblazer for future achievements': Nuclear power has its Aatmanirbhar moment with Kakrapar-3

Nearly two and a half decades after the last unit was commissioned at the Kakrapar Atomic Power Plant, criticality of its third unit, entirely indigenously developed, has been achieved by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called “a trailblazer for many such future achievements.” 

The development of Kakrapar-3 is a capstone in India's push to expand its nuclear energy capabilities, with the unit being the nation's first 700MWe (megawatt electric) unit, and the largest indigenously developed model of the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PWHR). Prior to the operationalisation of Kakrapar-3, India's biggest, indigenously designed, PHWR reactors were located in Tarapur, Maharashtra, with capacities of 540 Mwe.  

The development of Kakrapar-3 has huge significance in that it marks India's first success in up-scaling its technology. The 700MWe is reported to have an increased thermal margin i.e. the difference between the operating temperature of the reactor and its maximum operating temperature. It is also the first of four 700 MWe units (others include Kakrapar-4 and Rawatbhata-7 and 8) to have achieved criticality, said to become the mainstays of India's new nuclear reactor fleet, sanctioned for financing and development in 2017. 

India currently produces under 2 per cent of its electricity through its nuclear power plants, but it has set a goal to increase its nuclear power generation three-fold within the next decade, as per the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). 

India's nuclear power capacity i.e current nuclear capacity, stood at at 6,780 megawatt (MW) in January, just 1.84 per cent of the total installed capacity of 3,68,690 MW. Earlier this year, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for the DAE, said that the DAE was looking to expand its the nation's nuclear capacity to 22,480 by 2031. 

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) had originally awarded the contract for the development of Kakrapar-3 and Kakrapar-4 to Larsen and Toubro (L&T) at a value of Rs 844 crore in 2010, yet it is believed that some esclation in costs has taken place since then. 

Kakrapar-3 also, reportedly, uses the latest PWHR technology to solve a number of inherent safety issues. For instance, the unit's PHWR design used thin walled pressure tubes to replace the large pressure vessels used in previous variants, yielding a distribution of the pressure boundaries, and reducing the risk of a rupture. The unit is also fitted with a 'Passive Decay Heat Removal System,' that enables it to shed decay heat (resulting from decay of radioactive substances) automatically. 

The expansion of India's civilian nuclear programme, in the view of many experts, is critical to the nation's quest to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, and facilitate a seamless transition towards sustainable energy technologies. 

The seeds of India's nuclear programme were sown in the late 1960s with the construction of the nation's first PWHR reactor in Rajasthan which had a capacity of 220 MWe. Another landmark moment arrived in 2006, when India signed a civil nuclear deal with the US that granted it entry into the nuclear trading market.