India is facing a severe uranium crunch — one in the short term and another in the long term. The short-term crunch affects the operation of the India-designed and built Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR). The PHWR capacity is now about 3500 MW and will go up to about 4500 MW by the end of 2008.

India began exploring for uranium about 50 years ago and mining activities have been going on for some 40 years. In the early years of the programme, India’s uranium needs were modest; it was required to fuel the research reactor CIRUS and Rajasthan reactors 1 and 2. Uranium production was in excess of our needs and so a stockpile got built up. When new power reactors were built at Kalpakkam, Narora, Kakrapar, Kaiga and elsewhere, the stockpile of uranium was drawn down.

In the period 1985 to 1995, the India-built PHWRs were going through a learning curve process and so operated at low capacity factors. As a result of intensive efforts put in by the engineers and scientists of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and other units of the DAE, our PHWR units operated, during 1995-2005, at 85 to 90 per cent capacity factor. In fact, the two units at Kakrapar registered the best capacity factors globally, being around 95 per cent. This situation required availability of uranium annually, at a rate much higher than what was being mined in the country.

During the latter half of 1980s, the DAE had commenced work on new uranium mines beyond the first one at Jadugudda. However, some complacency seems to have set in, during the early 1990s, on the urgency of opening up new uranium mines. The leadership of DAE may have taken an accountant’s view of the uranium inventory that was continuing to be held.

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