The government of India has stated that it plans to increase the number of nuclear power plants it operates in order to increase the amount of clean energy the country produces. Jitendra Singh, the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, stated that the government has, in principle, given consent for the construction of nuclear power plants at five more places in the future. The statement made by Singh was presented in the form of a written response to a question that was posed in the Lok Sabha, which is the more representative chamber of the Indian Parliament.
The government has granted administrative and financial authorisation for the construction of 10 domestically designed pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) in fleet mode. These reactors will use heavy water as their coolant. The construction of these PHWRs is scheduled to take place over the course of the subsequent three years. The capacity of each PHWR will be 70MW, which will result in a total capacity of 700MW. Uranium is used as the reactor’s fuel in PHWRs, and heavy water is used as the moderator.
The government of India is in the process of constructing 11 reactors, which would have an aggregate capacity of 8.7 gigawatts (GW). The cost of conventional power sources such as thermal power and nuclear power, which are both used to generate electricity, are equivalent to the cost of nuclear power. There are now 22 nuclear reactors operating in India, with a combined capacity of around 6.7 gigawatts (GW). In addition, a reactor with a capacity of 700 MW, known as KAPP-3, has been wired into the national grid. According to Mint’s research, India’s nuclear power plants are the country’s fifth-largest source of electricity production, after thermal, hydroelectric, and renewable sources.
The Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), which is a government-owned company, is the organization that is accountable for the planning, construction, commissioning, and operation of nuclear power reactors in India. The Department of Atomic Energy of the Indian government is the organization that NPCIL reports to (DAE). At the beginning of this year, an Indian energy company called Azure Power signed an expression of interest (EoI) with the government of the state of Karnataka to create 1.7 gigawatts worth of renewable power. The company anticipates that the development of the projects, which will include solar, wind, and hybrid energy assets, will require a total investment of Rs133 billion ($1.7 billion).