Long term impact of ''Balakot Strike", "Main bhi Chowkidar" campaign & '"Änti Satellite missile" test on Indian psyche

Dear bloggers....On perusal of various incidences occurred in India recently such as Balakot strike, main bhi chowkidar campaign and Anti-satellite missile testing, I strongly feel that these incidences will impact the long term psychology of Indian people.
     India was slaved  by foreign people for more than thousand years. It has badly impacted the psychology of Indian common masses. How  the mis- rule of  Britain has adversely affected every part of life is not hidden to every one such as Introduction of English in Indian education system has permanently affected the millions of children living in rural areas as English has spoiled their power to think innovatively as their minds are busy in translating their mother tongue to English. Several examples can be given on this pattern which indicates the adverse effect of slavery on long term basis. It has impacted the will power,morale and confidence of common masses.
    Now, the incidence such as Balakot strike by Indian Air force has led to the upliftment of confidence of common masses in their capability to defend their home. This feeling of confidence is a biggest gain of this incidence. Such successful action strengthen the morale of forces also.
   Further, the political movement of BJP "'Main bhi Chowkidar" has been misinterpreted by numerous people on the ground that PM is advocating to be Chowkidar in literal sense. I think such people are understanding it in a wrong way and in literal sense only. They have not gone deep in to the spirit behind such political movement. I think the main spirit behind this political movement is to unite the common masses of this country by being vigilant and attentive to their rights and duties. If everyone become attentive to their rights and duties, any wrong action/corruption/non performance/looting/rules violation etc by anyone will be identified easily. Wrong doers will be fearful and punished. Merely by making law will not eliminate corruption or ensure right and timely action on any thing. A public participation will definitely ensure such things. We have seen success of Swach Bharat mission in some areas just because every one became attentive on cleanliness. Now common attentive citizen is raising alarm on person who is throwing garbage on common places.Therefore,I believe that such slogan is raising the common conscience of people.
     Other than this, the test like Änti-satellite missile "' or Moon mission or Nuclear tests uplift the overall confidence of country. One can visualize easily that by sending man on moon by USA has grossly uplifted the scientific temper of school going children and students of USA. Similarly such scientific successful testing gives enough confidence to student to pursue science related courses in higher studies which will further boost the supply of quality scientist/teachers/PHDs and research papers.
 India is at cross road where We can afford such action to defend our mother land, to raise confidence and enhancement of scientific temper of Indian citizens. It takes full century to take out people from slave mentality once some country has been ruled by foreigners. So,I am very happy to see such indigenous movement in this country which will be  helpful for making India a developed Nation....keep on blogging.     

ALL ABOUT SUPER COMPUTERS

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the front line of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.
Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word "supercomputer"; a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word "computer". In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in a parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash". Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as Cray, IBM and HP, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience.
Common uses
Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems involving quantum mechanical physics, weather forecasting, climate research (including research into global warming), molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons, and research into nuclear fusion), cryptanalysis, and the like. Major universities, military agencies and scientific research laboratories are heavy users.
A particular class of problems, known as Grand Challenge problems, are problems whose full solution requires semi-infinite computing resources.
Relevant here is the distinction between capability computing and capacity computing. Capability computing is typically thought of as using the maximum computing power to solve a large problem in the shortest amount of time. Often a capability system is able to solve a problem of a size or complexity that no other computer can. Capacity computing in contrast is typically thought of as using efficient cost-effective computing power to solve somewhat large problems or many small problems or to prepare for a run on a capability system.
Hardware and software design
Supercomputers have been designed to do complex calculations at faster speeds than other computers. Its designers make use of 2 processes for the enhancement of its performance.The first method is called pipe lining.It does complex operations at the same time by grouping numbers which have the same order that it calculates and these are passed to the CPU in an orderly manner. The circuits in the CPU continuously perform the operations while data is being entered into it.
Another method used is called parallelism. It does calculations in a similar than orderly way. This is where it performs various datas at the same time and moves ahead step by step. A usual way to do it is connecting together various CPUs which does calculations together. Each of these CPUs do the commands it needs to carry out on every piece of information
All supercomputers make use of parallelism or pipelining separately or even combine them to enhance its processing speed. However,an increased demand for calculation machines brought upon the creation of the (MPP)massively-parallel processing supercomputers. It consists of various machines connected together to attain a high level of parallelism
Supercomputers using custom CPUs traditionally gained their speed over conventional computers through the use of innovative designs that allow them to perform many tasks in parallel, as well as complex detail engineering. They tend to be specialized for certain types of computation, usually numerical calculations, and perform poorly at more general computing tasks. Their memory hierarchy is very carefully designed to ensure the processor is kept fed with data and instructions at all times — in fact, much of the performance difference between slower computers and supercomputers is due to the memory hierarchy. Their I/O systems tend to be designed to support high bandwidth, with latency less of an issue, because supercomputers are not used for transaction processing.
As with all highly parallel systems, Amdahl's law applies, and supercomputer designs devote great effort to eliminating software serialization, and using hardware to address the remaining bottlenecks.
Supercomputer challenges, technologies
• A supercomputer generates large amounts of heat and must be cooled. Cooling most supercomputers is a major HVAC problem.
• Information cannot move faster than the speed of light between two parts of a supercomputer. For this reason, a supercomputer that is many meters across must have latencies between its components measured at least in the tens of nanoseconds. Seymour Cray's supercomputer designs attempted to keep cable runs as short as possible for this reason: hence the cylindrical shape of his Cray range of computers. In modern supercomputers built of many conventional CPUs running in parallel, latencies of 1-5 microseconds to send a message between CPUs are typical.
• Supercomputers consume and produce massive amounts of data in a very short period of time. According to Ken Batcher, "A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems." Much work on external storage bandwidth is needed to ensure that this information can be transferred quickly and stored/retrieved correctly.
Technologies developed for supercomputers include:
• Vector processing
• Liquid cooling
• Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)
• Striped disks (the first instance of what was later called RAID)
• Parallel filesystems
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SUPER COMPUTERS AND NORMAL COMPUTERS
Supercomputers, just like any other typical computer, have two basic parts. The first one is the CPU which executes the commands it needs to do. The other one is the memory which stores data. The only difference between an ordinary computer and supercomputers is that supercomputers have their CPUs opened at faster speeds than standard computers. This certain length of time determines the exact speed that a CPU can work. By using complex and state-of-the-art materials being connected as circuits,supercomputer designers optimize the functions of the machine. They also try to have smaller length of circuits connected as possible in order for the information from the memory reach the CPU at a lesser time.
Measuring supercomputer speed
The speed of a supercomputer is generally measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating Point Operations Per Second), commonly used with an SI prefix such as tera-, combined into the shorthand "TFLOPS" (1012 FLOPS, pronounced teraflops), or peta-, combined into the shorthand "PFLOPS" (1015 FLOPS, pronounced petaflops.).
Current fastest supercomputer system
On June 8, 2008, the Cell/AMD Opteron-based IBM Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was announced as the fastest operational supercomputer, with a sustained processing rate of 1.026 PFLOPS. However, Roadrunner was then taken out of service to be shipped to its new home.
India unleashes 4th fastest super computer
For the first time in recent years there is no made-in-India machine in the semi-annual ranking of the world's ``Top 500'' supercomputers. Constantly improving performance has shifted the entry point into the 500 fastest computers to 1 tera flop per second (TFLOP/s) or faster. A tera flop is a trillion, that is a million million, computations or floating point operations per second.
`Desi' machines such as the Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences' cluster-computer ``Kabru'' or the Pune-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing's (CDAC) ``Param'' were short of the teraflop mark when they made the Top 500 and have not upgraded their systems significantly since then.
However, India still plays host to 8 U.S.-made supercomputers in the list released by Mannheim University in Germany and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with the University of Tennessee, both in the U.S.: Of these a 2 teraflop Hewlett Packard cluster is housed in the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, while the others are HP or IBM machines operated by private IT players and geophysical exploration companies.
India has now official broke into top ten super computers in the world.
For the first time ever, India placed a system in the Top 10. The Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own innovative routing technology and achieved 117.9 TFlop/s performance.
The twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, already a closely watched event in the world of high performance computing, is expected to become an even hotter topic of discussion as the latest list shows five new entrants in the Top 10, which includes sites in the United States, Germany, India and Sweden.
OTHER Fastest Computers
USA - BlueGene/L - eServer Blue Gene Solution
Germany - JUGENE - Blue Gene/P Solution
USA - SGI Altix ICE 8200, Xeon quad core 3.0 GHz
India - Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband
Sweden - Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 2.66GHz, Infiniband

UNDERSTANDING INDIA'S NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAMME PART-2

India drew its three-stage nuclear power programme because of insufficient uranium reserves estimated in the region of 73,000 tonnes for the overall power generation plan. Curiously, all the three are in operation, though in different stages.
To understand better the linkage between the three stages, one should know about the fuels. The materials that one comes across as fuels for atomic power plants are U235, U238, U233, plutonium and thorium.

Says Dr S M Lee, director, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR): Natural uranium has two isotopes: U238 (99.27 per cent) and U235 (0.72 per cent). Only U235 can sustain a fission chain reaction and is called fissile material. Two other fissile materials that can fuel nuclear reactors are plutonium and U233, which are manmade and not available in the nature.

Plutonium is created when U238 is irradiated in a nuclear reactor where it absorbs neutrons and part of it is transmuted into plutonium. Similarly, U233 is created when thorium is irradiated in a nuclear reactor, where it absorbs neutrons, which transmutes a part of the thorium into U233.

Thus U238 and thorium are also valuable nuclear resources, called fertile materials, as they can be converted into fissile material for fuelling nuclear reactors and generate power.

With the available uranium reserves around 20,000 mw can be generated for 30 years. In order to utilise the abundance availability of thorium (3.6-lakh-tonne reserves) and to be able to generate nuclear power beyond 30 years, India drew up a three-stage atomic power programme.

The first stage is the setting up of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR). India has 12 such reactors and several more are being planned. The readily-available natural uranium in India will be entirely committed to these reactors over their lifetime, says Lee. Besides generating power, PHWRs will convert a part of U238 in natural uranium into plutonium, which is separated from the spent fuel in plutonium reprocessing plants.

The second stage of fast breeder reactors (FBR), which will come into operation largely from 2020, will be fuelled by plutonium (obtained from the first stage PHWRs) and U238. The fast breeder reactors will fission plutonium for power production and at the same time breed more plutonium from the U238.

The surplus plutonium from each FBR can be used to set up additional FBRs and grow the nuclear capacity in tune with Indias needs. The uranium resource position is such that with FBRs a nuclear electric base of as much as 350 GW appears technically feasible.

Consolidation and further growth of the nuclear electric base is planned to by means of thorium breeders, which will form the third stage of the programme, which is several decades away. But this will set the stage for adequate power for the next couple of centuries. As mentioned earlier, thorium when irradiated in a nuclear reactor gets converted into U233, a fissile material.

The third stage use of thorium for power generation has already begun. A prototype 30 kv reactor at IGCAR called Kamini for thorium separation, irradiation in reactor, reprocessing for separation of U233, neutron radiography and activation analysis have been commissioned successfully.

Following the success Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is developing an advance heavy water reactor that will use both thorium U 233 and thorium plutonium-mixed oxide as fuel. It also incorporates several advanced safety features, such as heat removal by natural circulation. Thorium fuel bundles have also been successfully used in the PHWR for flux flattening. Construction is expected to start during the 10th Plan period.

UNDERSTANDING INDIA'S NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAMME PART-1

India's
Nuclear Power
ASSISTING ENERGY INDEPENDENCEOR A DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT?
by Avilash Roul
Narora Atomic Power Station, Units 1 & 2220 Megawatts each, Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh(map of all India's nuclear installations)
Editor's Note: According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power is now used in 37 countries. As a huge, technologically advanced country, soon to be the most populous nation on Earth, it should be no surprise that India has a long-standing nuclear power industry.
In 1954, India's First Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said "It is perfectly clear that atomic energy can be used for peaceful purposes," as India even then was developing nuclear technology. In 1969 after years of effort, India's first atomic power station went critical, in Tarapur, Maharashtra. Five years later, India tested an atomic bomb (list of nuclear club members).
There are 440 land-based nuclear power reactors today in the world (table of world's reactors). They produce 16% of the world's electricity, or put another way, at capacity world nuclear power generates an impressive 370 gigawatts of electric output. In the world today there are another 232 nuclear power stations either under construction or proposed, which in sum would add another 186 gigawatts to world output.
But as a share of total world energy consumption, of which electricity is only a part, that's still small potatoes. What isn't generally acknowledged is the proportion nuclear power stations contribute to overall world energy production is minute. If every current and proposed nuclear power station on earth operated at maximum output for an entire year (impossible), they would generate an estimated 556 gigawatt years of energy. Since it takes 33.5 gigawatt-years to equal the same amount of energy as one quadrillion BTU's - these "quads" are how energy economists measure all energy production on earth - this means nuclear power, using a totally unrealistic best case, will eventually add 17 quadrillion BTU's of energy per year to total world output. This is barely 4% of the energy we use now, since all of human civilization in 2006 will produce about 400 quadrillion BTU's of energy.
In reality, nuclear power today provides barely 2% of the world's total energy. This means nuclear fuel will remain relatively abundant unless nuclear power plants are constructed at a rate many times current production, and the economics of incrementally adding nuclear capacity will continue to appeal to nations that have already invested in a nuclear infrastructure. Obviously the French, with 59 operating reactors providing over 80% of their electricity, have decided nuclear power works for them.
What powers the world, overwhelmingly, is coal and petroleum. The fondest imaginings of nuclear power advocates will not change that proportion through nuclear power. Should nuclear power still be used? It can be economical and technically it is safer now than it has ever been. There is reason to believe nuclear technology will continue to advance. India has invested decades in nuclear industry, and with these massive investments made, can now develop nuclear power at a cost lower than ever before. Is it worth it? What's worse, hydro-electric or nuclear? And aren't both of those energy sources emissions-free?
Still usually missing from today's energy production projections is any major ascendancy for renewables. For example, India's photovoltaic industrial potential could be significant. Even if nuclear power continues to be developed in India, renewables are still going to be the only way off the coal & oil treadmill. - Ed "Redwood" Ring
India's Nuclear Power - Assisting Energy Independence or a Dangerous Experiment? by Avilash Roul, September 9, 2006
Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, Units 3 & 4220 Megawatts each, Chittorgarh, Uttar Pradesh(map of all India's nuclear installations)
With a growing economy, an increasing population, mounting energy demand, limited availability of conventional sources, and a strong consensus for environmental protection, India is harnessing energy ranging from jatropha biodiesel to atomic power.
Efficient, reliable and environmentally sustainable energy supplied to each household at the least possible cost is a dream of India's government. While successive federal governments have been seeking energy security by 2012 for India, the current Scientist-President Abdul Kalam goes further to prescribe "Energy Independence" by 2032.
Energy independence is now India's first and highest priority. To address this critical challenge, the base of the country's energy supply system has steadily shifted from non-renewable to renewable sources as well as towards development of nuclear energy sources. Is India taking the right path to meet the energy requirements by emphasizing nuclear energy? Without nuclear energy, are there enough alternative energy sources to limited fossil fuels to meet future demand?
India, hosting fifteen percent of the world population and on track to replace China as the most populous country on Earth, ranks sixth in the world in terms of energy production. Experts believe demand for energy will soon surely be a defining characteristic of Indias life in the new millennium as India's economy continues to grow at an average of 8 percent per year.
Though commercial primary energy consumption in India has grown by about 700 percent in the last four decades, India's present level of energy consumption, by world standards, remains very low. The current per capita commercial primary energy consumption in India is about 350 Kilograms of Oil Equivalents per year (kgeo/yr) which is well below that of world average of 1,690 kgeo/yr. By 2010 per capita energy consumption is expected to increase around 450 kgoe/yr. Compared to this, the energy consumption in China is 1,200 kgeo/yr, Japan is over 4,050 kgeo/yr, South Korea is 4,275 kgeo/yr, the US is 7,850, and the OECD countries together average 4,670.
INDIA'S PRESENT ENERGY BASE
Coal has been and is the primary energy source in India as it accounts for 55 percent of India's energy production (see Table-1). This abundant fossil fuel, which within India accounts for 247.85 billion tonnes of reserves as of 2005, can last for some 80 years at the current level of consumption. If domestic coal production continues to grow at the current rate of 5 percent per year, however, India's total extractable coal reserves would run out in around 40 years.
Table 1: INDIA'S ENERGY CONSUMPTION (HISTORY)
(Data units "million tons equivalent in oil" or "MTEO")Source: BP Statistical Year Review 2005
With only half a percent of global reserves within India, oil nonetheless constitutes over 35 percent of the primary energy consumption in India. India's present level of oil consumption is about 114 million metric tons of oil equivalent out of which India produces 25 percent i.e., 29 million metric Tons (MMT). India's per capita consumption of oil and gas is one-third the global average. The reserves of crude oil are merely 739 MMT, which can sustain the current level of production for 22 years.
India's Production of natural gas, which was almost negligible at the time of independence in 1949, in 2006 is at the level of around 87 million standard cubic meters per day (MMSCMD). Natural gas constitutes about 9 percent of India's energy production, as compared to about 25 percent in the world. India already imports 20 per cent of its natural gas and this is predicted to go up to about 75 per cent by 2020.
INDIA'S ENERGY FUTURE
To encourage next generation fuels and increased use of renewable sources of energy, India is probably the only country in the world with a full-fledged ministry dedicated to the production of energy from renewable energy sources, the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (http://mnes.nic.in/). As prescribed by the President of India, power generated through renewable energy technologies is targeted to reach 20 to 25 percent of total energy generated compared to the present 5 percent (See Table-2). The government is promoting the use of ethanol made from sugar cane and bio-diesel extracted from trees that are common in many parts of India, such as Jatropha, Karanja and Mahua. India's Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources has put forward a goal for the nation to produce 60 million tons per year of bio-fuel.
Table 2: INDIA'S ENERGY CONSUMPTION (PROJECTION)
(Data units "million tons equivalent in oil" or "MTEO")Source: Draft Report of the Expert Committee on IntegratedEnergy Policy, Planning Commission, Government of India
India to-date has a total installed capacity of 870 megawatts based on biomass combustion, gasification and biomass cogeneration. Over 55 megawatts of the total was set up in the country just in 2005. India's government is already promoting biomass based technologies in selected villages for meeting energy requirements, such as cooking, motive power and electricity generation under various schemes. Biomass gasifier based electricity generation projects adding a total capacity of 423 megawatts were sanctioned during 2005-06 to states like Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Paradesh, and Pondicherry under the Biomass Gasification Programme.
By mid-2005, India's installed capacity of wind power had reached 3,740 megawatts. The present exploitable potential has been estimated at 14.5 gigawatts, when taking into consideration the grid constraints in the potential states. India's wind power projects are mostly set up as commercial projects through private investments. According to a report by the American Wind Energy Association (http://www.awea.org/) India currently ranks fifth in wind energy production, which is first place among developing countries. Under the wind resource assessment programme of the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, so far a total of 211 sites have been identified in 13 States and Union Territories that are considered suitable for setting up wind power projects.
India is endowed with enormous economically exploitable hydro potential, assessed at about 84 gigawatts. To-date only around 18 percent of India's hydro-electric potential has been harnessed. The sharply falling share of hydro in total energy production - from 46 percent in the 1970s to about 25 percent today - is cited as a serious problem confronting future development of hydro power. Opposition to large hydro infrastructure projects has been intensified because of the Indian government's poor track record of resettlement and rehabilitation of the people displaced by these projects. Currently this opposition has effectively put a halt to future projects.
Rajasthan Atomic Power StationNew Units Under Construction
NUCLEAR POWERIN INDIA
While India is amongst the top 10 countries of the world in terms of production of electricity by hydro, coal, oil and gas, it is nowhere near the top 10 with respect to nuclear power generation.
In spite of India becoming the sixth nation to become armed with nuclear weapons, after the 1998 nuclear tests, the contribution of nuclear power to India's overall power generation is negligible, even less than what wind energy generates.
Since the much debated high profile July 18 2005 Indo-US Joint Statement on civilian nuclear cooperation in Washington last year, there has been a renewed interest on nuclear energy put forward by the pro-nuclear lobby in India.
From the perspective of India's government, Indo-US cooperation will give new life to its nuclear program that has been handicapped by limitations of technology and fuel. While Western countries - with the exception of France which is unabashedly pro-nuclear power - are hesitantly moving towards further development of nuclear energy, the developing countries, especially India and China, are quickly gearing up to add nuclear energy to feed their rapidly growing economies. According to official announcements, China will be adding 40 gigawatts of nuclear power in the next 20 years while India adds 20 gigawatts.
"It is perfectly clear that atomic energy can be used for peaceful purposes."Jawaharlal Nehru (on right), 1954
Historically, development of India's nuclear technology has treaded carefully between the elusive thin line of civilian and military purposes.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India said in Lok Sabha (India's Lower House of Parliament) on May 10, 1954, "It is perfectly clear that atomic energy can be used for peaceful purposes...it may take some years before it can be used more or less economically." Experts believe that nuclear power, theoretically, offers India the most potent means to achieve long-term energy security. In practical terms, however, nuclear power may lack the logical preconditions, at least for India, to become their major source of independent energy.
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), (http://www.dae.gov.in/) under the direct control of the Prime Minister of India has formulated an approach and perspective on the nuclear energy resource. Their three stage nuclear program calls for setting up of natural uranium fuelled Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) in the first stage, Fast Breeder Reactors utilizing a uranium-plutonium fuel cycle in the second stage, and Breeder Reactors utilizing thorium fuel in the third stage. India's natural uranium deficiency has resulted in a commitment to this ambitious, technically challenging three-stage program designed to exploit the country's thorium reserves, which at an estimated 290,000 metric tons are the second largest in the world.

India's Coalition for NuclearDisarmament & Peace
According to the Indian government's official view, nuclear power for civil use is well established in India. Its civil nuclear strategy has been directed towards complete independence in the nuclear fuel cycle. This self-sufficiency extends from uranium exploration and mining through fuel fabrication, heavy water production, reactor design and construction, to reprocessing and waste management. The Atomic Energy Establishment was set up at Trombay in 1957 and renamed as Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) (http://www.barc.ernet.in/) ten years later. The first PHWR, the Rawatbhata-1 that had Canada's Douglas Point reactor as a reference unit, was built as a collaborative venture between Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (http://www.aecl.ca/site3.aspx) and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) (http://www.npcil.nic.in/). It commissioned in 1973 and was duplicated Subsequent indigenous PHWR development has been based on these units. The Rawatbhata-2 that commissioned in 1981 was also built by Canada. The NPCIL is responsible for design, construction, commissioning and operation of thermal nuclear power plants. The ten 220 MWe PHWRs (202 MWe each) were indigenously designed and constructed by NPCIL, based on Canadian design.
Table 3: INDIA'S NUCLEAR REACTORS - CURRENTLY OPERATING
Today 3,360 megawatts of India's electricity capacity is nuclear.Source: Nuclear Power Corporation of India
There are 15 nuclear power reactors in operation in India, 13 of which are PHWRs (See Table-3). Since 1969, when India's first nuclear reactor was commissioned for power generation, the total amount of power generation till 2005 is peeked at 3,360 megawatts. Among these PHWRs, the RAPS-1 reactor in Rajasthan has been virtually non-operational since its commissioning in December 1973. In addition, eight nuclear power reactors are currently under construction, five of which are PHWRs (See Table-4). Their total amount of power generation is expected to be 3,920 megawatts. There are 8 reactors to be established in the near future adding another 6,800 megawatts of capacity (See Table-5). Between 2010 and 2020, construction of four 220 megawatt PHWRs, ten 700 megawatt PHWRs, three 500 megawatt FBRs and up to six 1,000 megawatt VVERs is projected, adding about 20,000 megawatts, half from PHWRs. India has achieved maturity in the first stage of this program, construction of PHWRs. The beginning of the second stage of the program has been made with the commencement of construction of a 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu in 2003. The third stage of the program will be launched after a sizeable base capacity has been built of the second stage reactors.
The two Tarapur 150 megawatt Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) built by GE on a turnkey contract before the advent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty were originally 200 megawatts but were de-rated due to recurrent problems. They have been using imported enriched uranium. However, late in 2004 Russia deferred to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and declined to supply further uranium for them. Then in March 2006 Russia agreed to resume providing a fuel supply.
Table 4: INDIA'S NUCLEAR REACTORS - UNDER CONSTRUCTION 2006
India is adding 3,128 megawatts of nuclear power, nearly doubling their output.Source: Nuclear Power Corporation of India
Russia is supplying the country's first large nuclear power plant, comprising two VVER-1000 (V-392) reactors, under a Russian-financed US$ 3 billion contract. The units are being built by NPCIL. Russia will supply all the enriched fuel, though India will reprocess it and keep the plutonium. The first unit is due to be commissioned late in 2007. These are apart from India's 3-stage plan for nuclear power and are simply to increase generating capacity more rapidly.
In 2005 four sites were approved for eight new reactors. Two of the sites - Kakrapar and Rawatbhata, are to have 700 megawatt indigenous PHWR units, another is to have imported 1,000 megawatt light water reactors alongside the two being constructed by Russia at Kudankulam, and the fourth site is greenfield for 1,000 megawatt LWR units - Jaitapur in the Konkan region. Acquisition of any further light water reactors depends upon international political approvals.
Table 5: INDIA'S NUCLEAR REACTORSNEW SITES APPROVED 2006
India has already approved construction of newnuclear reactors adding another 6.8 gigawatts.Source: Nuclear Power Corp., India
India's long-standing civilian nuclear plans call for extensive reprocessing of spent fuel from current reactors to harvest plutonium. The plutonium would then be used in a new generation of reactors to breed uranium-233 from blankets of thorium that would surround the plutonium fuel. Many decades into the future, the dream is to have a thorium-based fuel cycle that would ensure India's energy independence into the distant future. However, anti nuclear experts believe that the long-term nuclear energy strategy is so technologically and economically dubious that no outside observers think it is viable.
Despite concerns against nuclear energy coming from the anti-nuclear establishment as well as civil society organizations in India, today there is a consensus across the major political parties that given India's existing and future energy needs, nuclear power provides a potentially attractive alternative. But nearly 60 years after its inception, the nuclear establishment in India has failed to deliver what the pro-nuclear lobby had promised. At this point, even if a 20-fold increase takes place in India's nuclear power capacity by 2031-32, the contribution of nuclear energy to India's energy mix is, at best, expected to be 5-6 percent.
In 1954, India's Atomic Energy Commission declared that nuclear plants would provide 8,000 megawatts of electricity by 1980-81. Yet by 1970, only 420 megawatts of electricity were coming from nuclear plants. In 1971, Vikram Sarabhai, the chairman of India's Atomic Energy Committee sought to bring Indian nuclear planning down to earth and scaled back projections, saying that by 1980-81, India would be producing 2,700 megawatts of electricity from nuclear plants. Thirty-five years later Indian nuclear plants are producing roughly 3,360 MW of electricity. But undaunted, the Indian pro-nuclear lobby now proclaims that India will produce 24,000 MW of nuclear power by 2010 and 50,000 MW of electricity from nuclear plants by the year 2030!
Nuclear Fuel Bundles
The fact remains that despite its great size, India has the misfortune to have been poorly endowed with natural uranium. It has been estimated that these modest reserves of about 70,000 metric tons will suffice to produce no more than approximately 420 gigawatt-years of electric power, if used in the PHWRs currently operating or under construction. On the other hand people won't let the government dig new uranium mines, so even these modest reserves may never be fully exploited.
India still faces severe challenges regarding the operational safety of all kinds of nuclear installations, from uranium mines to nuclear power stations. While the government boasts that the management and disposal of waste has been carried out fairly satisfactorily, there remain severe criticisms on the over all activities of nuclear energy. Public protests against Uranium Corporation of India Ltd's (UCIL) (http://www.ucil.gov.in/) have prevented it from opening up any new mine since 1985.
In last six months in 2004, UCIL has tried thrice to set up new uranium mines in Andhra Pradesh, Meghalaya and Jharkhand but hasn't got permission anywhere.

The Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya governments have agreed to UCIL's proposal in principle, but have withheld permission because of public pressure and nuclear activist campaigns focusing on UCIL's poor safety record in Jaduguda in Jharkhand.
Independent studies have alleged that irresponsible handling of uranium ore had put some 50,000 people in Jaduguda at risk and caused genetic deformities in the area. Though Domiasat village in Meghalaya's West Khasi Hills contains India's largest and richest uranium reserve, UCIL officials are not welcomed by the indigenous communities in the Domiasat.

There are also serious problems to do with treating and disposing of the large volumes of highly radioactive waste generated not only by nuclear reactors but also by plants that extract plutonium or produce nuclear fuel. There is also the question of cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors after their useful life. Safety of nuclear reactors has also become an issue of concern.
The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) (http://www.aerb.gov.in/) had revealed about 130 incidents where safety had been compromised in various nuclear reactors, particularly Narora 1 and 2 and Kaiga. Also, there is a tremendous pressure on nuclear reactors safety from outside like terrorists attacks.
The Coalition of Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) (http://www.cndpindia.org/), a coalition of scientists, educationists, human rights activists, civil society organizations and so on, constituted in 2000 in response to nuclear weaponisation by India and Pakistan, calls for total nuclear disarmament in India as well as in the rest of the world. The CNDP does not accept the argument for nuclear energy put forward by atomic scientists as well as decision makers. While the option for nuclear energy is very expensive, the Indian government has restored faith in the DAE by allocating huge investment by ignoring various social issues like education, health etc.
President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (2nd from left),visiting an IITF exhibit in New Delhi in 2003.
Developing nuclear energy will be a slow, expensive and uncertain challenge at best. To increase the potential of nuclear energy, India has to look into outside help. Foreign involvement in nuclear power plant construction will diminish India's ambition of energy independence if India takes the path of nuclear.
The real solution to India's energy needs can come only when opting for energy sources that have low-impacts on the environment, low costs, and are easily available. Renewable energy has the potential to fulfill these critera. Renewable energy has the potential to bring true energy independence to India.
About the Author: Avilash Roul has been writing, advocating, researching, and creating knowledge on Environment and Development in various English Daily media since 2000. He has worked with Down To Earth (fortnightly magazine published in New Delhi, India) for the last three years. He has also contributed a Sunday column in New India Express on the environment and development. Right now Mr. Roul is working as an Assistant Coordinator for the Bank Information Center (www.bicusa.org), an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization that advocates for the protection of rights, participation, transparency, and public accountability in the governance and operations of the World Bank, regional development banks, and the International Monetary Fund.