Fast breeders: tall promises, poor performance

By M.V. Ramana

I would like to respond to the article ``Need for fast breeder reactors'' by S. B. Bhoje (The Hindu Friday, June 15, 2001, replying to my article in The Hindu of May 28, 2001), since it is misleading on many counts.

The history of fast breeders has been one of tall promises and poor performance. The French Superphenix is an excellent example. Built on the basis of experience with both a test and a demonstration reactor, the Superphenix became critical in September 1985 but went into commercial operation only in April 1987. In May 1987, it was shut down due to a sodium leak. Full power operations resumed only in June 1989; but in October 1989, the reactor was again shut down due to impurities in the primary circuit. It was restarted in April 1990 and resumed full power operations in June 1990. In July 1990, the reactor was again shut down due to impurities in the primary circuit. In December 1990, the roof over the turbine hall collapsed due to heavy snowfall! The reactor restarted only in August 1994 but at low power. It was only in September 1996 that the power was raised to 90% of full power but the reactor was again shut down in December 1996. (This chronology is from the March 1997 issue of Nukem, a standard nuclear industry journal.) Given this troubled history, the June 1997 announcement by the French Prime Minister that the project would be abandoned should be no surprise.

In the face of this, Mr. Bhoje's claim that ``In its 11 years of existence, the reactor operated for four-and-a-half years, producing 7.9 billion kwh'' makes sense only if operations at low power are included. Just how low is apparent even from the figure of 7.9 billion kwh that Mr. Bhoje has cited. The Superphenix had a power rating of 1240 MWe. Thus 7.9 billion kwh produced over 11 years is equivalent to just 0.73 years of full power operations, which is a mere 16% of the 4.5 years of ``operations''. Over the 11 years, it had a capacity factor of about 6.6%.

In trying to make the case that nuclear power is competitive, Mr. Bhoje cites generating cost figures for U.S. nuclear plants of ``1.83 cents per kwh compared to 2.07 cents per kwh for coal- fired plants, 3.18 cents per kwh for oil, and 3.52 cents per kwh for natural gas''. This is highly misleading. These figures are just the costs for operations & maintenance (O&M) and fuel, and do not include capital costs. It is well-known that nuclear power is capital-intensive. Indeed, including capital costs as estimated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the costs for nuclear, coal and gas-generated power (the OECD does not consider oil since it is a relatively small contributor) are 4.60 cents per kwh for nuclear power, 3.87 cents per kwh for coal and 4.19 cents per kwh for natural gas. (Source: Uranium Information Centre, http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm) In other words, nuclear power is more expensive than other major sources.

In addition, it is worth pointing out that the question of economic competitiveness of nuclear power in general has little bearing on the cost of electricity from breeder reactors. Fueling, operating and especially capital costs in the case of breeder reactors will be much higher than, for example, heavy water reactors. This was the reason for bringing up the point about safety issues in fast breeder reactors in my article. As Mr. Bhoje himself says, these plants require ``multi-level safety features'' - it should not be surprising to anyone that including these features drives up both capital and maintenance costs.

Mr. Bhoje's claim that ``fuel cycle cost in FBR is 10 per cent of the generation cost in comparison to 20 per cent for PWR'' is disingenuous. Fuel cycle costs are a relatively smaller fraction of the costs of the generating costs of nuclear power. The fact that fuel cycle cost fraction in FBR is smaller than that of PWRs only demonstrates that the capital costs of FBR are much higher than those of PWRs.

Mr. Bhoje also asserts that the cost of the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) ``is comparable to PHWRs''. This is highly unlikely. As mentioned earlier, FBRs have much higher capital costs, especially when the high cost of the initial loading of plutonium is included. The necessary reprocessing and fuel fabrication facilities are also expensive.

Further, the design costs, unfortunately, are not at all reliable when it comes to the actual costs of nuclear power in India. Even if the cost overruns of the first few nuclear power plants are attributed to initial learning, the experience with the later nuclear plants suggest what one can expect from the PFBR. The initial estimate for the Narora Power Plant was Rs. 209.89 crores, but the final cost was Rs. 745 crores.

Similarly, the Kakrapar Power Plant was initially projected to be Rs. 382.50 crores but the eventual cost was Rs. 1,335 crores. The Kaiga Power Plant went from Rs. 730.72 crores to Rs. 2896 crores, and Rajasthan Power Plants 3 & 4 went from Rs. 711.57 crores to Rs. 2440 crores. (Source: Department of Atomic Energy, Performance Budget 1999-2000, p. 90.)

Mr. Bhoje's statements about renewable energy are again mistaken. For example, he says: ``It is clear that solar and wind cannot contribute in supply of industrial level electricity generation... Wind energy is being used for last few centuries, but has not contributed even a few per cent of electricity in any country of the world''.

In Denmark, wind energy contributes over 10% of the power, and this has been increasing. The installed capacity for wind energy in Germany is over 6000 MW. In our country itself, about 1000 MW of wind energy capacity has been installed over the last decade.

The Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources estimates that India has a gross wind energy potential of 45000 MW. It is worth recalling that after over 50 years of large investments in atomic energy, the installed nuclear power capacity is only 2720 MW, less than 3% of India's electricity capacity.

Mr. Bhoje dismisses the fact that many countries have given up FBR programmes due to ``political reasons''. These cancellations came about largely due to public debates, which called to question the economics of breeder programmes. Since it was convincingly demonstrated that such programmes were uneconomical, these countries decided to abandon FBR programmes. Despite all the evidence so far, if the DAE does feel that FBRs do indeed provide cheap power for India, then it should substantiate this claim by presenting its analyses with full details about the methodology used and the assumptions made. This could provide the basis for a much needed healthy and open debate.

(The writer is at Princeton University, U.S.)

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