Essays

India has strived for self-reliance in nuclear power and has made a massive financial investment in nuclear fuel facilities as well as reactors. Twenty to twenty-five per cent of the country's research and development spending has gone on nuclear research. Nevertheless, nuclear power is not yet a major energy source in India, and self-reliance has not yet been achieved.

Without an enrichment plant India is still dependent on the USA for fuel supplies for the Tarapur reactor. And until the technical problems with the novel heavy water plants are solved, heavy water too will have to be imported. It is likely that India can become self-reliant in the end — the knowledge and capability are there —but at what economic cost? ....

A detailed economic analysis of India's power reactors indicates that nuclear electricity generation has no advantage over hydro or coal-fired generation. Indeed the latter two are considerably cheaper unless the electricity must be transmitted 800 km or more. Taking into account all the reasons enumerated here, and some more reasons explained in the body of the text, it appears that nuclear power will not be a significant source of electricity in India for at least the next twenty years. Who knows what will happen in the energy scene over the next twenty years? ... Would it perhaps be most sensible for India to diversify her R & D, rather than concentrating on one energy source for such a very long period of time?

It has been clear that one motivation behind India's nuclear power programme has been the desire to stay abreast of modern developments in science and technology. Yet this might more surely have been achieved by spreading funding across a number of different scientific areas and disciplines. When biogas production has ceased, a nitrogen-rich material is left behind. This is suitable for use as a fertiliser. Since the manufacture of artificial fertilisers is an energy-intensive activity, this 'by-product' of biogas production may represent a substantial way of saving energy.

If economic considerations are overridden by Third World nations and they go ahead with substantial nuclear power programmes, they are likely to find, in the end, that its contribution to development has been small. Electricity in general, and nuclear power in particular, is not a resource of much interest to the impoverished city dweller or to the rural masses since it is sold at a price far beyond their means and requires all kinds of capital investment on their part to be actually useful.

It is difficult to forecast the future of energy demand in the industrialised countries, even though these are the countries where most researchers are based and on which most research is done. How much more difficult is it then to forecast energy demand in the Third World, and to plan for an appropriate supply?

In particular, is it justified to project future Third World energy requirements on the basis of the rich countries' energy demands at the present time? On the one hand, on the grounds of fairness and justice it might seem essential to allow under-developed countries the freedom to rise to the rich countries' level of energy use. But on the other hand, perhaps developed word's level of energy use is simply wasteful, and further perhaps they could not afford to use energy the way they do if they did not extract resources from the Third World to pay for it. On this latter view, the prospect of the whole world using energy as the developed countries do now is a mirage.