O. P. Sabherwal

Call it a quirk of history, or a unique confluence of two great personages at the dawn of Independence — India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the great nuclear scientist, Homi J. Bhabha. It was this rare combination that shaped India’s thrust into an area of frontier science, the nuclear realm, much ahead of India’s overall scientific and industrial growth. That was also the onset of the atomic era worldwide. Nehru’s strong tilt towards the development of science and technology in India provided the sinews, and Bhabha transformed this dream into a glowing reality. It is this picture of India’s nuclear capability that is now unfolding, amazing for the friend and the foe alike.

India’s path to the acquisition of nuclear capability has been distinct, with several features which mark it out from other countries opting for nuclear technology — whether for weapons or power generation. Britain and France had an early lead, in terms of resources and Western scientific collusion, and so they went ahead both as nuclear weapon powers and for electricity generation. China, on the other hand, focused overwhelmingly on weapon-making to the neglect of creating an infrastructure of research and development which resulted in tardy growth in indigenous peaceful applications, till the eighties and the nineties. India’s was the middle path — prioritising atomic power generation and other peaceful uses of nuclear technology, but at the same time keeping the weapon option open.

In the early sixties, Dr Bhabha told a special gathering of MPs in the Central Hall of Parliament: give me a month’s notice and you can have atom bomb. But focusing on weapons would be too costly for India; a country like ours should invest on nuclear science to combat poverty — for power generation, medicine, agriculture and other spin-off benefits. But with world realities being what they were, India had to keep the weapon option.

And thereafter Bhabha gave India a distinct choice — the weapon option as a byproduct of its development for power production, at incredibly small economic cost. Bhabha was able to chart this path for India — realised after his sudden death — because of a breakthrough in the advanced technology of reprocessing spent fuel for extracting plutonium. But there was a rider: this route to weapon option offered India a powerful nuclear deterrence but no more. It shunned the super power’s nuclear arms race.

The path to nuclear capability charted out by Dr Bhabha had two basic features. One, that Indian nuclear technology acquisition gives primacy to a long-term strategy for power generation, along with all-round growth in allied scientific knowledge, a spin-off for industry in metallurgy, and nuclear applications for agriculture and medicine. Weaponisation takes a low priority in this scheme of things. Had this priority for weapon-making not been low, India’s first Pokhran test might well have taken place in 1966 or 1967 rather than in 1974. India could then have been within the NPT’s burra sahib’s club. The terse reality is that the Indian breakthrough in spent fuel reprocessing in 1965 hastened the advent of the NPT, aimed specifically to keep India debarred from weapon status under the non-proliferation treaty’s rules.

The second basic feature of the Bhabha route to nuclear capability is stress on indigenous, self-reliant growth by laying a sound foundation. Which meant building an extensive infrastructure of research and development to achieve what in scientific jargon is called capability along the entire nuclear fuel cycle.

What does this underscore? Over the years, this concept and strategy has flowered into one of the largest R & D set-up under the umbrella of the Atomic Energy Commission, which in some segments matches the most advanced facilities in the West. It incorporates, among others, BARC, one of the world’s most extensive laboratories in advanced technologies; IGCAR (formerly the Reactor Research Centre) at Kalpakkam, with a fast breeder test reactor paving the way for the next generation Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), and the Kalpakkam Spent Fuel Reprocessing Plant — India’s third and most sophisticated plutonium extracting plant; the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which has helped build the world’s largest radioastronomy telescope near Pune; the Centre for Advanced Technology (CAT), Indore, high up on laser development; Ahmedabad’s fusion technology institute where the India Tokamak is already working, compiling know-how on this futuristic area; and a host of nuclear fuel, instrumentation and computer industries working under the care of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). This is the great legacy of Bhabha helping India achieve its goals in nuclear technology applications.

What then is the progress report on the main fronts of India’s nuclear capability acquisitions? The blaze of success to Indian nuclear science-technology in the recent weapon tests has been widely acclaimed; this is the sector which had a lower priority. Achievements in the priority sector — nuclear power production and allied fields, agriculture, industrial spin-offs, medicine and public health — appear less spectacular. And yet these are the areas where nuclear technology’s achievements bring greater glory to India’s nuclear scientists and institutions. Advances and achievements on the power sector, and in allied fields — metallurgy, computers, lasers — have led up to successes on weapon tests. As Dr Bhabha said, the reactor is more difficult to build than the atom bomb, for while the later allows the atomic chain reaction to explode, the reactor’s task is to control the chain reaction and harness it to give electricity.

The Bhabha-prescribed route for natural uranium-fuelled pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) in the first generation, followed by plutonium-fuelled advanced reactors, such as fast breeders, in the second generation has been steadfastly pursued with the objective of activating India’s vast thorium reserves. The string of PHWRs under operation has meant greater perfection in indigenous design, the latest being the Kakrapar-II reactor, incorporating several safety features and automation-based controls that heighten the safety and operational efficiency in this standardised Indian design, far ahead of the Canadian RAPS-I model that became the starting point for PHWRs subsequently constructed in India. Consequent upon the upgrading of reactor design and operational efficiency, the charge that Indian PHWRs have low operational efficiency has been mitigated, with the latest Kakrapar reactors generating electricity at as much as 90 per cent capacity.

Currently, four 220 MWe PHWRs are under construction — Kaiga I & II, and RAPS III & IV. Simultaneously, construction on the first 500 MWe PHWRs has begun at Tarapur. Another notable aspect is that R & D for the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor is complete, and design and development of this advanced reactor which will hasten the induction of thorium in the fuel chain is already at an advanced stage. The year 1997 also denoted a milestone in the power production strategy with the first breeder reactor, the FBTR commencing steady electricity generation which is being fed into the Tamil Nadu grid. The FBTR’s success story sets the pace and long-term perspective for India’s power programme. Decks are being cleared for the 500 MWe prototype fast breeder reactor whose construction is set to commence in 1999.

A retrospective look shows that the Bhabha strategy of indigenous self-reliant nuclear development has paid India rich dividends. Breaking the cordon sanitaire imposed by the West of the last three decades on nuclear exports to India, Indian nuclear scientists have maintained a steady and exacting upward march, combining the priorities as they have been set, for peaceful applications as well as the targets of weapon tests.

Several landmarks have been created in this process. The building of the Spent Fuel Reprocessing Test Plant at BARC by scientists and engineers headed by Dr Homi Sethna in 1965 was indeed a milestone. It was from the plutonium obtained from reprocessed spent fuel at this test plant that the Indian test at Pokhran in 1974 became possible. The Pokhran test was the cheapest first detonation anywhere in the world. Following this Indian scientists have built a full-scale reprocessing plant at Tarapur, while the test plant at BARC has been expanded and upgraded. A third reprocessing plant — the most sophisticated of Indian plutonium extracting plants — has been commissioned this month at Kalpakkam. A fourth reprocessing plant has been conceptualised for a site in North India for futuristic plutonium needs.

Indian scientists’ grip over plutonium technology has placed India among the elite top four nations in nuclear technology. This has its impact on both sectors — peaceful applications in fabricating plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel for fast breeders and other advanced reactors — as well as for the weapon option. Bypassing the enormously costly uranium enrichment route, India is now a weapon state without imposing any burden on the Indian economy. The limitation, of course, is that India cannot and need not indulge in a nuclear arms race and must depend on a nuclear deterrent based on its weapon grade plutonium pool.

On this score, the construction of the neutron flux research reactor Dhruva in 1985 was an outstanding event. It tied up India’s needs of weapon grade plutonium for nuclear deterrent strength. This indigenously designed and constructed high flux research reactor in which over 300 experts of BARC took part is indeed a pride and flagship of India’s indigenous nuclear capability. The Dhruva’s spent fuel when reprocessed gives weapon grade Pu-239, whereas reprocessed fuel from power generating reactors produces reactors grade plutonium in which Pu-240 is predominant.

The country is witnessing the upcoming of another landmark at Kalpakkam with the fast breeder technology being harnessed for one of the most advanced breeder reactors in the world — 500 MWe PFBR. The stringent needs of quality and materials purity which go with the highly reactive sodium liquid metal coolant used in PFBR sets exacting tasks for metallurgists, engineers and scientists working at Kalpakkam. Dedicated scientists and metallurgists headed by Dr Placid Rodriguez and Dr Baldev Raj are the men on the job. And the work on the PFBR is in an exciting and promising phase.

The induction of light water reactors which Russia is to provide under an Indo-Russian $3 billion agreement adds diversification and enrichment to Indian reactor technology. The two 1000 MW reactors which are to be constructed at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu will help achieve the atomic energy production targets. The Russian reactors will also give Indian scientists and engineers experience of a new reactor design and technology. India is among the few countries which can accept some $10 billion worth of reactors of French and American design — a unique opportunity and a challenge to these Western countries as well as India for a detente on India’s rights and duties as a nuclear weapon state.

DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy: The Tribune: 31 August, 2019