Indian designed and domestically fuelled nuclear reactor sets world record for continuous operation.

[Anik101]

Kaiga Atomic Power Station sets world record for break-free power production
By Arunkumar Huralimath| Express News Service | Published: 25th October 2018 09:53 AM

KARWAR: The indigenously developed Kaiga Atomic Power Station (KAPS) has set a new world record among pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) with one of its units operating uninterrupted for more than 894 days as of Wednesday. The previous record for continuous operation was held by a unit of Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (PNGS) of Canada which operated continuously for 894 days and a few hours. Officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) are expected to make a formal announcement on Thursday after the completion of the 895th day of operation.

The Unit-1 of KAPS equalled the world record at 9 am on Wednesday. Located 56 km from Karwar, the Kaiga plant has four units. Each unit generates 220 MW power. The power generated here is supplied to Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Karnataka’s share is 33 per cent.

“The 220 MW capacity Unit-1 has been operating since May 13, 2016, without a break. It is an indigenous PHWR fuelled by domestic fuel (uranium) and started to operate in 2000. So far, the unit has generated about 2,644 crore units of electricity. During its continuous operation of 894 days, the unit generated about 470 crore units of electricity,” a spokesperson for Kaiga plant told The New Indian Express.

“On Wednesday around 9 am, KAPS’s Unit-1 completed continuous operation of 894 days and it equalled the record of Canada’s PNGS unit. On Thursday, the Kaiga unit will formally stand at first place among PHW reactors. Kaiga Unit-1 also stands at second position among all types of nuclear power reactors in the world, which include advanced gas-based reactors (AGRs),” he explained.

Four months ago, the same unit of Kaiga had set a national record for continuous operation of 766 days and it was second in the world among PHW reactors. “With this achievement, other developed countries including the US and the UK, which have not achieved such a record, are now looking at India,” the official added.

After the Pokhran nuclear test in 1998, the United States and other developed countries imposed harsh sanctions on India. During that time, an indigenous technology was used to set up the Kaiga nuclear power generating station.

Unit-1 in good condition
The working condition of all units is monitored by Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Officials and cross-check the condition of the units. If the unit requires maintenance, they order shutdown for a few days. In September, the officials visited Kaiga and gave their nod for continuous operation for next few months.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Indian-reactor-breaks-operating-record


http://www.newindianexpress.com/sta...d-for-break-free-power-production-1889802.amp

 

[Anik101]

Now that proves the reliability of Indian designed PHWRs. GoI has already given go ahead for construction of 10 indigenous PHWRs.
India Will Be the Second Country in the World To Use a Novel Nuclear Technology
https://futurism.com/india-will-be-...-world-to-use-a-novel-nuclear-technology/amp/

India’s Thorium Dream is True
http://www.illustratedcuriosity.com/technology/technology-energy/indias-thorium-dream-is-true/

 

[prashantazazel]

Man, I have been looking forward to thorium based reactors since I first read about them at the age of 14.

 

[Tshering22]

Man, I have been looking forward to thorium based reactors since I first read about them at the age of 14.

I read about FBRs only a couple of years back, as a result of scanning some threads here. Any ideas how much longer it would take for us to go full-scale commercial with this?

Also, how secretive is the project, considering that many energy suppliers may feel the heat from India's self reliance and may try to sabotage our research?

If we pull this off, it is bye-bye to coal, oil, natural gas and all other fossil fuel imports.

Middle East will suffer a devastating blow.

 

[Type59]

I read about FBRs only a couple of years back, as a result of scanning some threads here. Any ideas how much longer it would take for us to go full-scale commercial with this?

Also, how secretive is the project, considering that many energy suppliers may feel the heat from India's self reliance and may try to sabotage our research?

If we pull this off, it is bye-bye to coal, oil, natural gas and all other fossil fuel imports.

Middle East will suffer a devastating blow.

They will still have higher HDI then India.

 

[Nilgiri]

Kaiga being talked about in this article is of course a CANDU-derivative.....reversed engineered, indigenized and more optimised for India.

I read about FBRs only a couple of years back, as a result of scanning some threads here. Any ideas how much longer it would take for us to go full-scale commercial with this?

Also, how secretive is the project, considering that many energy suppliers may feel the heat from India's self reliance and may try to sabotage our research?

If we pull this off, it is bye-bye to coal, oil, natural gas and all other fossil fuel imports.

Middle East will suffer a devastating blow.

@anant_s made some great informative posts on this subject, lets get his opinion on commercial viable time frame.

A lot will depend on how PFBR project (succesor of FBTR - which did validate the fundamentals of Thorium cycle by placing Thorium-232 in the reactor to "breed" U-233 with the neutron environment) goes which is planned to be in operation from next year:

http://www.efn-uk.org/nuclear/nuc-lib/reactor-reports/index_files/India-PFBR-design.pdf

It will use more proven MOX-fuel instead of U-233 (from thorium cycle)...but will validate much of the underlying technology and viability.

Upcoming AHWR will be the first to sustainably validate use of thorium cycle for production of power I believe.

http://www.anilkakodkar.in/kakodkar_pdf/journal_003.pdf

 

[Aryan0395]

They will still have higher HDI then India.

And higher relevance than u and ur entire country. Stay on topic, other know how to roast as well.

Now coming back to topic, even i have been looking forward to us developing thorium based reactors since we have good reserves of thorium but from what i have read it is difficult to develop and operate those reactors and technology isnt still mature enough.

 

[anant_s]

@Tshering22 @Nilgiri
Quoting my post from an old thread where we discussed in detail. Hope it answers your questions.
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PFBR is designed as a commercial technology demonstrator and proposed to put following design concepts into practice:
1. Use of Metal oxide fuel (UO2+PuO2) inside ferrite Stainless steel clad sheaths.
2. Qualification and reliable running of liquid Sodium piping including valves, EM pumps and Heat Exchangers.
3. Post irradiation fuel analysis.
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With your permission, i would like to write a bit about fuel configuration.
Breeder reactors are called so because they have excess neutrons (n) which is significantly larger than what you get from thermal reactors (v (average number of neutrons generated per fission): 2.91 for fast reactors against 2.4-2.5 for thermal reactors)
Now we require one n per fission reaction to be available for next generation fission and effectively what it means is for fast fission we have 1.91 additional n available for non fission use and ~1.4-1.5 n in thermal regime.
These additional n can then be used for either converting or breeding fuel. the difference here is if same fuel is generated, the assembly is called Breeder (example if 94Pu239 is used as fuel and 94Pu239 is produced using 92U238) or Convertor if a different fuel is produced (example 94Pu239 is used as fuel and 92U233 is produced from 90Th232) or Burner if the reactor burns (reduces radio toxicity) of long lived actinides wastes.
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Now coming back to your query.
FBTR was designed as a Metal carbide assembly to study and develop components (metallurgical part), controls (software included), in core flux monitoring and overall steam cycle structure.
With good experience gained, the design of assembly is extrapolated and a metal oxide assembly with 500 MWe net output is developed. this initial reactor is called Prototype fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) and it is a precursor for 600 and later Metal fuel 1000 MWe assemblies.
PFBR

The basic migration philosophy is that when you use a metal oxide in a core, number of fissile (94Pu239) and fertile (92U238) atoms are lower (other being oxygen atoms), so the additional neutrons available would have a lower statistical probability (expressed as capture cross section area, measured in Barns 1 barn = 10e-24 sq cm) of striking an atom of Plutonium to undergo fission or get radiatively captured in U238 to form Plutonium. So a metal fuel has better characteristics as far as neutron use economy is concerned. Further to this, a term used a s doubling time is used which expresses time in years for a reactor to generate a mass of fuel equal to that of its original feed inventory. metal reactors have lower doubling time as compared to oxide or carbide fuel and hence metal is preferred.
Challenge:
As you know, oxides of metal have a higher melting point than pure metals, the basic engineering challenge is to set the safety limits with metal fuel. As i said above metal fuel is better but owing to lower melting point, poses chalenge to set power limits in design.

Future

It is planned to upgrade the design to first 600 MWe and then to 1000 MWe in steps. in future we will have large capacity 1000 MWe designs operating in India.
@PARIKRAMA @Abingdonboy @ @nair @SpArK @ @ranjeet
Whether the proposal for next FBR has been put up

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https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/made...d-support-systems.172935/page-43#post-8428905

@Spectre You are an authority on these matters, i hope you can share a bit more information.

Kaiga Atomic Power Station (KAPS)

A bit of nitpicking brother, but its called KGS (Kaiga Generating Station)