Winning Bizness Desk
Mumbai. Showing its strength in the field of power generation, India has also decided to build a small modular reactor nuclear plant floating in the sea like Russia and this has been announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the recently presented budget. Regarding the construction of a small reactor or nuclear plant floating in the sea, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that nuclear energy will play an important role in developed India and the government is taking three important decisions to kickstart this mega-plan. First, India will work with private companies to build small modular reactors. Countries like Russia are sharing technology with India for small modular nuclear reactors. Second, the government will spend Rs 1 lakh crore to promote research and development in the field of nuclear energy and third, the government will work on the goal of generating maximum electricity through nuclear energy.
Russia and China already doing this
Notably, at present there are only two countries in the world where such nuclear power plants are operational. First- Russia and second- China. Russia's plant generates 300 MW of electricity daily, while China's plant generates 210 MW. Apart from this, Argentina, South Korea and America are such countries where work is going on on this technology. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Department of the US Department of Energy has said in its report that work is being done on its licensing process. There is every possibility that America will prepare this reactor by 2035.
What is a small nuclear power plant?
According to experts, there are generally three types of nuclear power plants around the world. Micro reactor, small modular reactor and normal nuclear reactor. Small modular reactor nuclear plant is also called a floating nuclear power plant in common language, because it can be easily moved from one place to another. The modular used in it is usually much smaller than the modular of a large nuclear power plant. The cost of building the small nuclear reactor that has been announced to be built in India is about 8 times less than that of a large nuclear reactor. Along with this, this nuclear power plant can work continuously for 24 hours. It can also be deployed in hilly areas near the sea. The islands of Andaman-Nicobar Islands, the southernmost part of India, still have electricity supply from generators. Andaman has the only three-tier command of the Indian Army. It also has to resort to generators for electricity. Such power plants will prove to be very helpful for electricity in these places. The small modular reactor that Russia is using has many small micro reactors installed in it. Many micro reactors will also be used in the small reactor to be built in India.
India need to up green basket
Notably, till now the four most important means of generating electricity in India are coal, large water dams, solar energy and wind energy. The cost of generating electricity from all these means is very high. The electricity generated in this way also releases more carbon in our environment. The specialty of the small nuclear power plant is that electricity is generated in it through a chemical process using uranium. The cost of generating electricity in this way is low and the production is high. Uranium is so powerful that if it passes through a water pipe, the water in the pipe starts boiling. Boiling water produces water vapor and this water vapor is used to rotate the turbine of the power plant. This is how electricity is produced. Such a plant needs refueling once in 30 years.
