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Economics of Electricity from Fast Breeder Reactors

Researcher:  M. V. Ramana, in collaboration with J. Y. Suchitra

The aim of this project has been to use CISED’s estimates of the cost of reprocessing spent fuel to calculate the costs of producing electricity at the 500 Megawatt Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), which is under construction at Kalpakkam and which is to be the first of hundreds of breeder reactors that are projected for the next few decades in India.

These breeder reactors will use plutonium as a fuel; their attractiveness stems from their ability to produce more plutonium than they consume while operating. Our preliminary results suggest that breeder reactors will be more uneconomical than the Department of Atomic Energy’s heavy water reactors, (earlier work done at CISED had shown that even the heavy water reactors were uneconomical), and that this will continue to be the case till uranium prices increase several fold. Two important reasons for the increased costs are the range of safety measures required in breeder reactors to avoid catastrophic accidents, driving up their construction costs, and the expensive security features required to fabricate plutonium, which is far more radioactive than uranium, into fuel.  

 

OUTPUTS

Suchitra, J.Y. and M.V. Ramana, 2007, "Fast breeder of expenditure?", Hindustan Times ePaper, October 23, also available at http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=23_10_2007_013_003&typ=1&pub=264

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