MV Ramana tells Forbes India that despite the Indian leadership being committed to nuclear energy, he is not optimistic about its future in the country
MV Ramana
Age: 45
Designation: Researcher at the Nuclear Futures Laboratory and Program in Science and Global Security at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and member of International Panel on Fissile Materials and Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Education: PhD in Physics, Boston University; IIT-Kanpur; post-doctoral fellow, University of Toronto and Center for International Studies, MIT
Career: Author of ‘The Power and the Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India’
Interests: Food, South India classical music
Q. You have a book on India’s nuclear energy prospects coming out this year. What’s the argument you’re making?
The book looks at the history of nuclear power in India. The Department of Energy had made a series of projections for how much nuclear power would contribute to India’s energy production over the past 60 years. These projections have not come through. I look at why projects have been delayed, what are the economics of nuclear power in India, the safety record and impact on health and the environment. It’s an assessment of how the nuclear program has fared so far.
Q. India’s leadership has said it is committed to nuclear energy despite Fukushima, and has set pretty lofty targets for making nuclear power a major source of India’s energy: 470 gigawatts by 2050. Do you think they’re likely to follow through?
No. The leadership is committed, but that’s been the case since the 1950s. Every group of leaders has been committed to nuclear power, given it unlimited budget allocations, and yet it hasn’t happened. There’s no reason to expect it will happen in the future.
Kudankulam is a good example, and something to learn from. If there is to be an expansion of nuclear power, there will have to be many new sites and reactors, which will come at a cost of land and water for other purposes. Since the 1980s, each new site has met with protest, and it is likely to become more intense.
Many of the projections of future nuclear capacity are based on a technology called breeder reactors, which has been pursued by many countries since the 1950s, and in each it’s been a failure. There is no reason to expect India will be different. This is an additional reason why achieving the nuclear power generation goals is unlikely.
The cost of generating nuclear power is higher than other energy sources. Historically, the nuclear establishment tried to compare itself with coal, and said that if you set up a power plant far from the coal mines, then you have to incorporate the cost of transporting coal. Once you do that, you find that the cost of a nuclear power is equal to that of a coal.
Initially, they said that if a coal mine was 600 km away, then nuclear plants are comparable in cost. By the 1980s, when the first plants were set up and generating, they said it would be 800 km. By the 1990s, it was 1,200 km from the coal mines.
(This story appears in the 14 September, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)