As pointed by The Indian Express over the past few months, the operating capacities of a large number of nuclear power plants in the country had been progressively going down over the past two years because of what the DAE describes as a ‘mismatch’ in the demand and supply of uranium fuel.

For an installed capacity of 4120 MWe, of which about 3800 MWe comes from PHWRs, between 550 and 600 tonnes of uranium fuel are required every year. Against this, the current annual production barely touches 300 tonnes. As of now, there are five functional uranium mines, but just one processing mill working in Jadugudda in Jharkhand. Supplies from this one mill are not sufficient to run all the nuclear plants at their full capacities. The situation is likely to improve once another mill starts operating later this year.

While complimenting the Heavy Water Board for stockpiling enough heavy water, the other raw material used in nuclear power plants, to ensure that the planned PHWR programme did not suffer for want of heavy water, the report said that the policy of not stockpiling uranium fuel needed to be reviewed in the context of the current fuel crisis.