EDITORIALS
Our policy is to reprocess all the fuel put into a Nuclear reactor.
Mr. Sekhar Basu Responded about the Nuclear waste to the hindu executive.
Sekhar Basu :
1. Director of Bhabha Atomic Research centre (BARS)
2. Executive of Nuclear Recycle Board.
3. He is responsible for the design, development, construction and operation of Nuclear recycle plant.
4. He has designed and built Reprocessing plants fuel storage, nuclear waste treatment facilities at trombay, tarapur and Kalpakkam.
5. Now he is in the process of designing first Integrated Nuclear Recycle Plant.
Difference between coal power plant and Nuclear Power Plant
1. In Nuclear Plant the amount of fuel that we input will be utilised and only a few waste will be generated. 97% of the waste that is generated contains uranium and Thorium which will be reused in the reactor and only 3% waste will be left out.
In the case of coal plant all the amount of coal that we push in will amount to waste such as ash and other emission.
Notes: on Nuclear Reactors waste
2. The amount of fuel input will be 30,000 times less in Nuclear power plant. Because very little uranium is sufficient to produce energy but the level of coal required in more.
Nuclear waste problems
1. Nuclear waste are radioactive in which the waste can be divided into two parts.
Part I – 99% waste will become non radioactive in 300 years.
Part II – the 1% waste will be radioactive even after 300 years.
2. The pilot plant to separate the waste will be set up at Tarapur, Mumbai.
3. This will be the large plant and will reprocess 600 tonnes of spent fuel
4. The waste is first vitrified in the vitrification plant. Then it will be put in steel canisters which in turn will be put in steel over packs. Over packs will again be put into steel casing, which will finally put into a concrete building. This will be the procedure for the 99% waste that will become non – radioactive in 300 years.
5. 1% waste that will be radioactive : has to be kept inside a repositories. These repositories can be set up in places with granite rocks.
The other alternative for these radioactive wastes are to bombard the waste with high energy neutrons to kill or burn radio active elements this is called transmutation.
Transmutation is the way of handling actinides that have long half lives. This system can be implemented where neutrons of high energy are used or accelerated driven system (ADS)
The ADS system is being implemented in the 12th plan. The ADS programme will be implemented at Visakhapatnam within 15 to 20 years. (2020)
6. The capacity to reprocess waste has be increased in Kalpakam plant which will reprocess fuel from all the plants of South India and will be in operation from 2014.
Topics to be covered from Hindu Paper dated on Monday October 29th
Topic
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Page No.
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‘Our policy is to reprocess all the fuel put into a nuclear reactor’
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11
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In post – war Jaffna, a slow piecing back of life
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11
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Traditional dilemma of the central banker
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15
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