this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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NPCI is building two 700MW pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR), including Units 3 and 4 at Kakrapar, where there are two 220MW power plants. Officials say that in July, the fourth unit recorded 97.56% progress.

Wonder why they're building these instead of thermal coal plants

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 56 points 2 years ago (14 children)

The important bit:

NPCI also plans to build a total of 16 700MW of nuclear plants at Rawatbhata, Rajasthan and Gorakhpur, Haryana.

The Indian Government has further approved the construction of ten indigenously built PHWRs across the four states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

The plan is to ramp up the present nuclear capacity from 7.48GW to 22.4GW by 2031.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (8 children)

The important bit:

Is that India has limited uranium but lots of thorium...

And their over all strategy to get around that includes "coincidentally" making a shit ton of weapons grade plutonium...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme

That plan from decades ago was to make a few of these so they dont burn through their uranium before they have enough plutonium to start using the thorium.

What Modi is doing doesn't make sense for that plan, he's moving to fast and investing too heavily in phase 1.

It only makes sense if he didn't care about long term nuclear power, and just trying to make as much plutonium 239 as possible. Which would be worth an absolute shit ton of you have no ethics on who you sold it too...

And Modi has spent the last couple years openly saying he doesn't give a shit about other countries and is fine doing business with anyone.

[–] spauldo@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'd be surprised if India had trouble finding someone to sell them uranium. Thorium is still a generation away.

[–] roguetrick@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Fast breeder reactors with on site fuel reprocessing are still not economical. Thorium is more than a generation away.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago
  1. I think you drastically underestimate what "long term" means when talking about nuclear power

  2. The entire reason for India using this method that coincidentally makes weapon grade plutonium is energy independence.

I'd say maybe I didn't do a good enough job in my summary, but you can just read that linked article if I'm the issue, so I won't try again

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