Fast Reactors and Accelerator Driven Systems Knowledge Base

Conference Article: The Indian perspective on thorium fuel cycles

Balakrishnan, K.; Majumdar, S.; Ramanujam, A.; Kakodkar, A. (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai (India))

Abstract

India is a country with limited deposits of uranium and large deposits of thorium. This fact ensures that India's nuclear power program cannot be totally uranium based the way it today is in most countries that have gone for nuclear power. Therefore, almost from the beginning of India nuclear power program, some effort has always been expended towards developing the technology of the thorium cycle. This has included fuel cycle studies, technology development, inpile irradiations and health physics aspects. A complete study of thorium cycles in various reactor types led to the conclusion that heavy water reactors were second only to molten salt reactors in this respect. HWR then, was the natural option for India. Currently India is working on the design of an advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR), specially designed with thorium in mind. In this paper, the results of a few interesting studies involving the recycling of plutonium with thorium in PHWR are presented.

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key words: energy policy; india; nuclear power plants; phwr type reactors; thorium cycle; thorium reserves
Reference:
Proceedings of three IAEA meetings held in Vienna in 1997, 1998 and 1999
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)
IAEA-TECDOC--1319, pp:257-265