PWR building shows indigenous capability, says Kakodkar

CHENNAI: India building an 80 MWe Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) at Kalpakkam near here “marks the beginning of its indigenous PWR capability,” Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Anil Kakodkar said on Sunday.

An identical PWR of the same capacity would propel the indigenous nuclear-powered submarine INS Arihant that was launched on July 26. The two PWRs were built by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). Enriched uranium would fuel them, and light water was both coolant and moderator. The Rare Materials Project at Ratnahalli, near Mysore, produced the enriched uranium. “For nuclear power generation also, the PWR technology is most popular worldwide,” Dr. Kakodkar said.

On Sunday, reporters were shown the PWR built on a beachhead at Kalpakkam. The reactor, built under a highly secretive project called Plutonium Recyling Project (PRP), has been operating from September 2006. The non-descript PRP building has the display of a sculpture of a dolphin outside.

The PWR, housed in a huge hall, has a massive pressure hull, a shielding tank with water and reactor inside, a reactor pressure vessel made of special steel, a control room and an auxiliary control room.

“The reactor is running now. All the safety related parameters are monitored in the auxiliary control room,” said A. Moorthi, scientific officer, BARC, who showed reporters round the reactor. The land-based reactor and the PWR that has been packed into Arihant’s hull are on a 1:1 scale.

Dr. Kakodkar said the PWR at Kalpakkam was an addition to the nation’s family of reactors. The Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs), which use natural uranium as fuel, “are world class.” “Our Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs) are globally advanced. Our Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is globally unique,” he added.

The FBRs would use plutonium-uranium oxide as fuel. The AHWR, to be built, would have thorium as fuel.

Srikumar Banerjee, Director, BARC, called the introduction of indigenous PWR technology in the country “a major step” in the activities of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). The BARC was mandated to develop a land-based prototype PWR and also a compact nuclear pack for submarine applications.

“The complexity increases manifold in a submarine due to the miniaturisation of the already complex systems,” Dr. Banerjee said. Besides, power should rise fast from 25 per cent to 100 per in a few minutes in the reactor of a nuclear-powered submarine. It should reach full speed in a few minutes. So, special attention had to be paid to the design of the reactor.

S. Basu, Director of BARC Facilities at Kalpakkam, said the successful operation of the PWR at Kalpakkam for the past three years generated data for the submarine version.

Arihant was a joint project of the DAE, the Navy and the DRDO. 

-The Hindu 

INS Arihant is an Indian design: Anil Kakodkar 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled the country’s highly classified nuclear powered submarine, INS Arihant. But no details were made available, either about the submarine or about its heart, the nuclear reactor, which powers this indigenous effort. India became the sixth country after Russia, America, France, the U.K. and China to have its very own nuclear submarine, an essential requirement for India’s second-strike capability. In an exclusive interview to Pallava Bagla, Science Editor for NDTV and correspondent for Science, Chief of India’s Atomic Energy programme Anil Kakodkar reveals how the “baby” reactor was put together. The reactor has been working for several years and has been in the making for more than a decade. But due to the secrecy of the project, it was kept under wraps.

This nuclear submarine for which the reactor has been made by your team, how significant an achievement is that?

Well, we have a compact propulsion reactor which has been tested at Kalpakkam for the last three years and this is an exact prototype of what has been installed in INS Arihant which was launched soon. So it’s a major achievement of new reactor technology which incidentally will also be required for the larger power programme because this is based on pressurised water reactors (PWR). So this signifies both. We have a compact power plant for propulsion but we also have PWR technology which can be used for electricity production through indigenous route in future.

So why should Indians be proud of this?

Well, one has to be proud because it has been done here, it has been done by Indians and this is something which is not available for the asking, whatever money you want to pay. There is no way to acquire that unless you do it yourself and not many countries have such a capability. So it is certainly a matter to be proud of.

So how different is a reactor in a nuclear submarine as compared to, say, a reactor you see at Narora or Kakrapar or by way of scale?

There are several very distinguishing features and very important challenges. First, it’s a moving system and particularly it’s a ship so we have to have a reactor which would work in spite of the different kinds of rolling, pitching motions. It could also be subjected to attacks supposing there’s a depth charge near by. It should be able to withstand the kind of acceleration loads that will be seen on the components. So this is one important challenge. We do design reactors for withstanding earthquakes. This is one, it has to be able to withstand motions and forces which are of a much larger magnitude. Then, the compactness is another feature within the space that you can occupy for a given power. A submarine reactor is extremely small compared to the corresponding case in a power station. Third is in terms of the energy density — again it arises out of the compactness but to be able to realise that, you should be able to exchange a large amount of power in a small volume in a small surface area. There are also requirements of the rapid response. In a land based reactor, we can live with a somewhat slower response in terms of change of power in a given time. But this being a propulsion system, particularly for the kind the navy people will be required to work on, you require a reactor which can have a very fast response. So that means the nuclear fuel has to be of that kind, the reactor systems have to be of that kind. So there are several such challenges which have been successfully overcome, quite apart from the fact that this is a PWR technology and that itself has its own challenges.

But people say or have constantly said that India doesn’t have the expertise in enrichment. So does this criticality of the ‘PRP,’ as it is called, lay to rest the controversy that India does not have the full capability of enrichment?

Yes, we have an enrichment plant at Mysore, the Rare Materials Plant and that plant has sufficient capacity to meet the requirements of this programme. This reactor is now running for three years. So obviously, we had got the fuel earlier than that.

Was this completely made in India?

Yes.

Designed, fabricated and executed in India?

Yes, that’s right, by Indian industries.

And by Indian scientists?

Yes.

At Vizag, the Prime Minister went out of the way and thanked the Russians, and the Russian Ambassador was also present. What was the role of the Russians? India had leased a Russian nuclear submarine?

I would also like to thank our Russian colleagues. They have played a very important role as consultants, they have a lot of experience in this, so their consultancy has been of great help. I think we should acknowledge that.

Consultancy for what?

For various things, as you go along when you are doing things for the first time — with a consultant by your side, you can do it more confidently and these are difficult time-consuming challenges. So you have to do this without too much of iterative steps and consultancy helped in that.

So this is not a Russian design?

It is an Indian design.

Indian design, made in India, by Indians?

Yes, that’s right.

You have had the system running here in Kalpakkam for several years. Has it functioned smoothly?

Yes, it is working extremely well.

No outages, no issues?

Well this is run in a campaign mode because this is run in the same way as one would expect in the real situation. So it is running in a campaign mode because I think the important thing is to be able to ramp up and come down and it is really doing extremely well.

It is believed that it will also carry some things which the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre has developed [the nuclear bombs]. So will it really give India the second strike capability because we have a no-first-use policy?

Yes that is the purpose of such a platform.

And this platform will ensure that?

Yes.

Are you confident of that?

Of course, I am confident. It has been designed with a lot of care.

I am told it is about ten times smaller than a normal power reactor, is that correct?

Well if you want to construct a power reactor of a similar power capacity, it would happen that way, yes.

So would it be fair to call it a baby reactor?

It is a small reactor compared to, say, for example a commercial power station, 1000 MW (electric) would generate more than 3000 MW of heat, which is about 30 times what we produce here. Of course, such reactors are huge in size and dimensions and all. But it is a small compact reactor. And that’s the challenge about it.

So, when can one expect to have criticality on the sea-based reactor in the INS Arihant?

This will be essentially decided by the Navy, as I said they have a fairly elaborate sequence of activities through these trials and whenever they are ready for going through the criticality, I am sure our people will facilitate that to happen quickly.

Nuclear reactors for submarines are used normally for increasing the endurance. What is the kind of endurance you are being able to provide to INS Arihant?

Well it will be, in fact, in terms of the actual use for a nuclear submarine. The endurance is dictated more by human endurance rather than the energy of the power pack endurance. Power pack endurance is usually much larger. So it’s the human endurance — it can remain submerged depending upon the human endurance.

And will this submarine leave radioactive trace behind it because you have some kind of shadow shielding?

No, none at all. Because that has been factored into the design and there will be absolutely no trace left behind.

So, once the vessel dives it can remain hidden from Vizag to Mumbai all through?

Yes, as long as it is submerged it will remain hidden and it can remain submerged for a long time.

Is the noise level comparable to other submarines of this class, since that is one way of detecting submarines?

Yes, I think so. You have seen the inside. Tell me if you felt some sound there?

Compared to a power reactor the sound was minimal.

Compared to machinery running in any other place, did you hear much sound? I think this is a very quiet system.

-The Hindu

Unveiled: Arihant’s elder brother

Kalpakkam, Aug. 2: Inside a cavernous, 20-metre-tall, light greenish building at the nuclear complex in Kalpakkam lies the elder sibling of India’s “secret weapon”.

Here, 75km from Chennai, is located the prototype of the nuclear plant that powers the Indian Navy’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine, the Arihant.

While the sleek, 112-metre submarine was revealed to the world last week amid fanfare, the media today got their first glimpse of the top-secret project code-named — deliberately and misleadingly — Plutonium Recyling Project (PRP) since no plutonium is involved in the process.

This is where the first step towards building the nuclear plant for an Indian Navy submarine began in the late 1990s. Inside the hall, the land-based template of the Airhant’s nuclear reactor had been running smoothly since September 2006, churning out crucial readings that helped refine, design and fabricate the Arihant’s enriched uranium power plant at distant Visakhapatnam.

“In PRP we have what we call the ‘half boat’ in which the inner chamber of the rear half of a nuclear submarine is anchored to the ground. From its pressurised belly the 80MW nuclear plant operates,” explained PRP director S. Basu.

“The entire propulsion plant with primary, secondary, electrical and propulsion systems is packed into the half boat — measuring 42 metres in length and eight metres in diameter — and forms the heart of the nuclear submarine that powers its journey.

The navy sent its personnel here to be trained to operate the nuclear plant.

“This project saw India indigenously develop its first ever compact pressurised water reactor,” said Bhabha Atomic Research Centre director S. Banerjee.

“Although smaller and lighter, the plant generates power quickly, so essential for a submarine’s fast pick-up and quick manoeuvrability. For this the plant uses light water and enriched uranium unlike our land-based reactors that use heavy water and non-enriched uranium.”

Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said the light-water reactor had proved to be a technology demonstrator and given India a new capability, the marine propulsion reactor technology, to produce nuclear-powered submarines.

“This will help us explore (the possibility of) using these compact reactors for generating power in remote areas,” he said.

Asked when the nuclear reactor would achieve its first criticality (operational capability), Kakodkar said that before that the vessel had to go through the sequence of harbour and sea acceptance tests that would test the plant’s stability during a submarine’s journey.

Rear Admiral Michael Moraes, Flag Officer Commanding of submarines, said that ideally, the navy required another 13 nuclear-powered submarines.

“Even for us, the Arihant is a novel experience and in spite of the slightly higher noise levels of nuclear submarines, (acoustic) dampening features continue to give these submarines the much needed stealth advantage that makes them an ultimate secret weapon,” he said.

Asked if he was waiting to take the first dive once the Arihant was commissioned, Moraes quipped: “I am dying to, and I hope it happens soon.”

-Telegraph

Nuclear arm  

 With the launch of INS Arihant, India, which already can fire nuclear missiles from the ground and the air, completes its nuclear triad. 

The Pressurised Water Reactor that has been operating at Kalpakkam for three years. An identical reactor will power INS Arihant. 

THE tall S. Basu is a man who shuns the limelight and the big talk. To the outside world, he is the Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Facilities at Kalpakkam. What was kept a secret was that he was also the Project Director of the Plutonium Recyling Project (PRP) at Kalpakkam. The PRP was a facade behind which BARC, a facility of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), built India’s first indigenous Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). BARC also built another identical PWR, which is at the heart of India’s first nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant.

Both the PWRs can generate 80 MWe. Enriched uranium is the fuel that powers them. Light water acts as coolant and moderator. The Rare Materials Project (RMP) at Ratnahalli near Mysore, another DAE facility, produced the enriched uranium required for operating the two PWRs.

With the launching of INS Arihant on July 26, Basu is a proud man. “Working on the project and completing it has been a big achievement. As an engineer, this is the best possible thing I could have done in my life. The boat is an engineer’s dream which has become a reality,” he said.

July 26 was a historic day not only for Basu but for hundreds of personnel of the DAE, the Navy and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) when the sluice gates of the dry dock in the Ship Building Centre at Visakhapatnam harbour opened, sea water gushed in and INS Arihant started floating. The launch propelled India into an exclusive club of countries that possess their own nuclear-powered submarines, which already has five members – Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who launched the submarine, said, the occasion marked the culmination of “years of hard work, dedication and perseverance”.

The story of the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) programme, as the project to build the submarine was codenamed, is a remarkable one of coordination among the Navy, the DAE and the DRDO and of public-private partnership. The Prime Minister specifically thanked “our Russian friends for their consistent and invaluable cooperation, which symbolises the close strategic partnership that we enjoy with Russia”.

The PWR on board the submarine will be started up after about a year. By that time, the boat will be fitted with all equipment. Subsequently, it will undergo harbour acceptance and sea acceptance trials, before it is declared operational within two years from now. The submarine is about 111 metres long, 11 m broad and about 15 m tall. It has a surface displacement of 6,000 tonnes.

What will make Arihant a lethal platform is that it will be armed with K-15 ballistic missiles, which will be fired from under water. A booster will erupt into life under water and this will drive the missile to surface, then it will climb 20 km into the air, cut a parabolic path and hit targets on land. The K-15 missiles, developed by the DRDO, are already under production. The DRDO has test-fired them several times from submerged pontoons off the coast of Visakhapatnam. They can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. They are 10.4 metres tall and weigh 6.3 tonnes each. They have a range of 700 km. Their warheads weigh about a 1,000 kg.

The significance of the deployment of K-15 missiles on board the Arihant is that it will complete India’s nuclear triad. It already can fire missiles (surface-to-surface) with nuclear warheads from the ground; it can deliver nuclear weapons from aircraft; and now it can launch missiles with nuclear warheads from under water.

While the Navy designed and built the boat at Visakhapatnam and BARC provided the nuclear propulsion, the DRDO also made important contributions to the project. 

M. Natarajan, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and Director-General of the DRDO, said, “While a number of DRDO laboratories made their own contribution [to the ATV programme], I must acknowledge the bigger role played by the naval scientists and engineers working with the ATV project and the submarine design group. The funding of the ATV programme was through the DRDO.” 

While the Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), Kochi, contributed sensors to Arihant, special acoustics were done by the Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL), Visakhapatnam. Other DRDO laboratories developed “the submarine’s control systems, not the entire systems, but certain modules,” said Natarajan.

W. Selvamurthy, Chief Controller, R&D (Life Sciences and Human Resources), DRDO, called the launching of INS Arihant “a major milestone in building India’s strategic defence and second strike capability”. Building the boat was a demonstration of India’s scientific prowess, its technical skills and a dynamic programme of managing a huge team of hundreds of persons who worked in this massive project. “It is a demonstration that we can undertake such major technological initiatives,” Dr. Selvamurthy said.

Srikumar Banerjee, Director, BARC, called the boat of this type “a major technology in itself”. He added, “The whole platform is a very complex combination of various technologies. That is why we are happy that it has reached fruition.”

An important advantage of a nuclear-powered submarine is that it can lurk under water for long durations unlike its conventional diesel-electric counterparts, which have to come to the surface periodically to recharge their batteries. This makes the latter vulnerable to attacks by the enemy. Nuclear-powered submarines are faster than diesel-electric boats. Besides, their ability to promenade the sea far and wide provides blue-water capability to the navy that possesses them.

Rear Admiral Michael Moraes, Flag Officer Commanding (submarines), said, “Any strong nation would like to have a submarine fleet because they can go anywhere in the world.” A nuclear-powered submarine has unlimited endurance. It is fast. The only limiting factor is the crew’s endurance and psychology. Moraes was sure the design of Arihant was “quite good”. The crew needed to man Arihant had already been trained. For submarines to survive, “It is a constant battle between stealth technology and detection technology,” he said. Modern submarines had a lot of “quieting features”. India had 16 conventional submarines. More would be built. It would be ideal for India to have four SSBNs and nine SSNs. (Here SS denotes submersible ship; B, ballistic missile; and N, nuclear-powered.)

The significance of BARC developing the PWRs was, in the estimate of Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, “a demonstration that we have our own indigenous PWR technology”. Kakodkar, who is also Secretary, DAE, was one of the original designers of the PWR. He said, “This PWR technology is very complex. You have to make it extremely compact and pack it in the cramped space of the submarine’s hull. It was a big challenge.”

Kakodkar said BARC developing this PWR was an important development because it “marks the beginning of the indigenous PWR capability”. The PWR technology was most popular worldwide for electricity generation. India building this PWR acquired significance in the context of it planning to import PWRs from France, Russia and the U.S. for electricity generation. Kakodkar said India already had a family of a variety of reactors. It had built 15 “world-class” Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) that generated electricity. These PHWRs used natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as both coolant and moderator, he said. India was building the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam, which was “globally advanced”, and its breeders would use plutonium-uranium oxide as fuel.

It would soon start building the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), which was “globally unique”, Kakodkar said. The AHWR would use thorium as fuel. BARC was also developing the Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) to split hydrogen from water. Hydrogen would be the fuel of the future. On August 2, the DAE lifted the veil of secrecy that it had thrown over its PRP, which developed the PWR that powers INS Arihant. Reporters were shown the facility at Kalpakkam that houses the PWR. It is a nondescript building, situated on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. Except for the manicured lawns and a sculpture of a dolphin drenched by a fountain, no aesthetic sense is evident.

Inside a huge hall sits the PWR. There is a big pressure hull, a biological shielding tank with the reactor core inside surrounded by water, a reactor pressure vessel with fuel inside, steam generator, heat exchangers, a control room and an auxiliary control room. It is called pressure hull because it enables the boat to withstand the pressure exerted on it by sea water on all sides when it dives into the sea. The reactor was running when reporters went around the plant. The turbine was rotating at 120 revolutions per minute, enough to provide a speed of 12 knots an hour to Arihant.

“The land-based PWR and the submarine version are on a 1:1 scale. This shore-based reactor has been running smoothly for the past three years,” said A. Moorthi, Scientific Officer, BARC.

For Basu, the D-day was September 22, 2006, when the shore-based PWR started operating. “All aspects of the project were done for the first time by us. We operate this reactor to generate data to be used for the sea-going version. We are doing a lot of research and development [R&D] that will go into future PWRs,” he said.

Banerjee explained the several challenges the designers faced in developing a reactor for submarine application. It was a different ballgame altogether to build a nuclear-powered pack for a submarine than building one on the shore. The first and foremost was that it should be compact enough to be packed into the cramped space inside the boat. Its weight should be minimal. Another requirement was that the power in the reactor in a submarine should rise fast – from 25 per cent to 100 per cent within a few minutes. “It is this attribute that gives the submarine its capability of attaining full speed from its cruising speed within a short time,” he said.

A submarine is a moving platform. It is submerged in water too. It undergoes pitching and rolling and other motions. The boat also faces the danger of being ripped apart from depth-charges. “Against these odds, we have designed and developed this reactor. It is a major achievement,” said Banerjee. The PWR in Arihant is designed for fast manoeuvres and a rapid speed pick-up.

There are novelties not only in its design but in its manufacturing. The steam generator, which produce super-heated steam to drive the turbine, is a novelty in itself. There are also novelties in the design and manufacture of heat exchangers, control rod mechanisms, pressurisers and so on.

Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission. 

 

Safety was the foremost consideration in building this PWR because a submarine operated in an isolated condition, without having any support from outside, said Banerjee. The vessel is designed in such a manner that it releases no radioactivity into the surroundings in the submerged condition.

Asked whether the Russians helped in designing and building the PWR, Kakodkar, Banerjee and Basu were emphatic that BARC developed it on its own. Banerjee said: “The Russians were consultants. The consultancy was done for the whole submarine, not for the power part alone.” Basu asserted, “Everything is totally indigenous [in this PWR]…. We developed it. It is our own reactor. We did not take it from anybody else.”

M.R. Srinivasan, former AEC Chairman, was also emphatic that the DAE developed the reactor on its own. While building the reactor “was always a part of the DAE’s activity”, the Navy’s role was to design and build the submarine, he said. So it was a joint DAE-Navy project. Srinivasan said, “The naval personnel had some assistance from Russia in designing the submarine, but the reactor is a totally Indian effort. The reactor, its components including the pressure vessels, and its fuel were made in India by Indian industry.”

The ATV programme has a chequered history. According to Srinivasan, the idea of building a nuclear-powered submarine took shape about 25 years ago. If India’s nuclear weapons had to survive a first strike, they should either be kept in silos or deployed in submarines. Since India had accepted the principle of “no first use”, that is, it will not use nuclear weapons first, it decided that its nuclear weapons should be made secure not only in land-bases but in submarines.

The decision that the DAE should build the propulsion for a nuclear-powered submarine was taken during Indira Gandhi’s time and it was followed up during Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership. While the earlier view was to use plutonium as fuel for the nuclear propulsion, it was later decided that India should use enriched uranium, produced at the Rare Materials Plant, to fuel the reactor.

Srinivasan called the launching of Arihant “a creditable achievement”. “It took time, but a lot of technologies had to be developed in the country. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the Indian industry have done a very good job,” he said.

While Larsen & Toubro did the tough job of building the hull, there were contributions from Walchandnagar Industries Limited and others.

 -Frontline