Nuclear power plants

Among all the developing nations, India is the only one to have generated electricity using indigenously developed, demonstrated, and deployed nuclear reactors. India ranks 3rd in terms of electricity production worldwide.

India also stands at 7th position in terms of the number of nuclear reactors, with over 23 nuclear reactors in 7 power plants across the country. 

POINTS IN FAVOUR OF NUCLEAR ENERGY

• Nuclear is a zero-emission clean energy source: It generates power through fission, which is the process of splitting uranium atoms to produce energy. The heat released by fission is used to create steam that spins a turbine to generate electricity without the harmful byproducts as emitted by fossil fuels. 

Fig: A comparison of direct GHG emission (red bars) and full life cycle emissions (blue bars)

• Nuclear energy’s land footprint is small: Despite producing massive amounts of carbon-free power, nuclear energy produces more electricity on less land than any other clean-air source. A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate which is 360 times less than wind plant and 75 times less than solar plant.
• India has one of the world’s largest reserves of monazite sands located on the coasts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which are a rich source of Thorium. This thorium can be exploited to produce nuclear power. 
• Nuclear energy produces minimal waste: Nuclear fuel is extremely dense. It’s about 1 million times greater than that of other traditional energy sources and because of this, the amount of used nuclear fuel is not as big as you might think. 

POINTS AGAINST NUCLEAR ENERGY: 

• A typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive for a quarter of a million years.
• The mining, milling and enrichment of uranium into nuclear fuel are extremely energy-intensive and result in the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
• Estimated “energy recovery time” for a nuclear power plant is about 10 to 18 years. This means that a nuclear power plant must operate for at least a decade before all the energy consumed to build and fuel the plant has been earned back and the power station begins to produce net energy. By comparison, wind power takes less than a year to yield net energy, and solar or photovoltaic power nets energy in less than three years.
• Thermal pollution from nuclear power plants adversely affects marine ecosystems.