The Nuclear Special – Issue #80
The global shift toward decentralised energy systems might challenge the need for extensive nuclear reactor fleets. However, India remains optimistic about this nuclear push.
The Big Picture
Over the last ten days, CarbonCopy has published a two-part series on India’s latest nuclear push.
In brief, we want to treble our installed large nuclear reactor capacity – and are exceedingly bullish about small and modular reactors (SMRs).
The country has failed to meet older targets for nuclear expansion, and so, this time around, its new push diverges from its predecessors in two striking ways. The focus on SMRs is one. Another is the decision that instead of erecting nuclear plants on its own, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) will partner with sister PSUs like National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and build nuclear plants in fleet mode.
The first part of our series laid out this context. The second part looked at the assumptions underlying this belief that SMRs and JVs like NTPC-NPCIL can make nuclear power competitive again. Do read these reports if you haven’t yet.
In this newsletter, we want to make a couple of additional points. India is not the only country prematurely extolling the virtues of untested, unproven SMRs. Much of the world, especially developing countries, is being courted by SMR makers. As this newsletter gets written, also comes news that the US wants to triple the world’s production of nuclear power by 2050 – a target that will help manufacturers of both small and large reactors.
What does one make of this renewed global push for nuclear – especially since opinion is split on whether the world needs nuclear power to decarbonise? In The New Climate War, scientist Michael Mann says we should just double down on renewables, saying these can meet 100% of the world's energy demand by 2050 (Uruguay, incidentally, has just run four straight months only on renewables). In tandem, if speculation about Reliance’s RE plans is anything to go by, the company wants to replace the existing arrangement of centralised power generation and distribution companies with decentralised generation and distribution via a network of micro-grids. If the world heads in that direction, it will not need fleets of nuclear reactors to replace all the coal plants getting decommissioned.
In the meantime, however, something unscrupulous seems to be unfolding. The west is willing to share technology for SMRs with India. Have we seen similar levels of enthusiasm when it comes to other tech transfers? India – and the rest of the third world – needs to be a bit sceptical of these offers.
At this time though, Indian administrators are anything but sceptical.
Cheating apathy
Last week, this newsletter had a minor epiphany.
A botanist friend working in the western ghats narrated a puzzling recent observation. In the rainforests he studies, older trees – the ones large enough to rise above the canopy -- seem to be dying faster. Rising heat might be a reason, he mused. Unlike their counterparts in deciduous forests, rainforest trees don’t shed leaves. Could they be losing too much water through their leaves – evaporation loss -- and dehydrating all the way to death?
For now, he is checking if similar patterns are showing up elsewhere in his study sites. We will update you on his findings in a few months. In the meantime, a larger point must be made.
Watching climate change play out in real-time, the botanist is gripped by urgency. As someone writing on energy – and, ergo, at some distance from the on-ground realities of climate change – the urgency this writer feels is more academic, less visceral. Distance, as Mahasweta Devi had written once, has a way of stoking detachment.
This is a trap to avoid. And so, from now on, this newsletter will expand its focus to ongoing scientific research on climate change – and the fight against it. What are those at the frontiers of climate change seeing?
Last week, for instance, the earth briefly went 2 degrees warmer than the norm this time of the year. Closer home, the island of Minicoy (Lakshadweep) just saw its hottest November ever.
CGD: Competition before confidence
India is considering allowing greater competition in City Gas Distribution (CGD). Till now, the country has been handing out single-operator licenses for each circle. That will change now. “Consumers may soon have the power to choose between multiple operators of Piped Natural Gas and Compressed Natural Gas,” reported Mint. One awaits further information. If true, this announcement will invalidate CGD winners’ already tottering business calculations.
From phones to cars - a smart shift?
A bunch of cellphones – and consumer electronics – makers want to make electric cars. The list includes Xiaomi, Sony, Apple, Huawei, Ola and Micromax. Talking of Ola, it’s readying for an IPO. “The raised funds will be utilised to expand Ola’s electric vehicle (EV) business and establish India’s first lithium-ion (Li-ion) cell manufacturing facility in Krishnagiri (Tamil Nadu),” wrote Business Standard.
The chop-shop
For a slew of projects, Maharashtra is set to cut as many as 2.5 lakh trees across its tiger zones. “Around 630 hectares of the tiger corridor of Tadoba Andhari, Kaval and Tipeshwar tiger reserves are proposed to be diverted and 1,17,224 trees stand in danger of being chopped,” reported Hindustan Times. “In another case, the diversion of 146.99 hectares of forest land has been planned, and 192 hectares of non-forest land will be given for the Yavatmal Marki Mangli coal mining block in the tiger corridor of Tadoba Reserve, Painganga Sanctuary, Tipeshwar and Kaval tiger belts. Approximately 1,13,425 trees are under threat here.”
That is just the start. “Eight hundred and sixty-five trees will be sacrificed for an 18-inch natural gas pipeline from Nagpur to Jharsaguda passing through the Pench, Umred-Pauni-Karhandla, Navegaon-Nagzira tiger areas, using 3.92 hectares of forest land,” reported the daily. “In another case, the tiger corridor of Umred Pavni-Karhandla reserves and Tadoba Andhari is likely to be given for mining to a Nagpur-based company and is 25 km from the core reserve area. This will entail cutting 18,024 trees.”
There are yet more projects. Melghat Tiger Reserve will lose 13.23 ha of land. Tree loss has not been mentioned by state authorities. “The widening of National Highway 53 between Navegaon and Nagzira will cost 403 trees,” added the paper. “According to the Wildlife Board, 16.26 hectares of eco-sensitive zone and tiger corridor will be diverted for the widening. An electricity transmission line from Umred to Nagbhid will cost 386 trees and 179 hectares of tiger corridor of Navegaon Nagzira and Tadoba reserves, while the Kamleshwar-Warud electric line passing through the tiger corridor of Bor-Pench will cost 380 trees and will use 30 hectares of land.”
The impact is showing. Territorial battles between tigers are rising – partly because the forests are shrinking; and partly because the government continues to release yet more tigers that stray outside their forests into Nagzira and the others.
All this goes back to what India’s tiger census had said. Tiger numbers are increasing–but their habitat quality is decaying.
The Adani saga continues
And then, there is the Adani Group. It kept courtroom reporters busy. A contempt plea was filed in the Supreme Court against SEBI after it failed to finish its probe into allegations of share price manipulation. In addition, after the FT report, the Department of Revenue Intelligence wants to restart its probe into Adani’s coal imports. Fresh allegations of favouritism continue to come. The group denied charges of favouritism in its Dharavi Redevelopment Project after the state government was accused of tweaking the Transfer of Development Rights. “The Shinde government has gifted Mumbai’s real estate market to Adani’s conglomerate,” charged Varsha Gaikwad, the Congress MLA from Dharavi. “The notification proposes mandatory for all real estate constructions in Mumbai (where TDR is admissible) to purchase at least 40% of their TDR requirements at exorbitant rates from the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, where Adani Properties Pvt. Ltd. is the lead partner to facilitate Adani group’s takeover of Mumbai’s TDR market,” she told Mint.
In the middle of it all, Foreign Policy takes stock of a tumultuous year for the group and asks if it has prevailed.
In other news
Australia has assured India of steady coking coal supplies. India has also kicked off the 8th round of commercial coal auctions. We want to stop all coal imports by 2025-26, Coal Minister Prahlad Joshi said.
From fossil fuels to decarbonisation. The government is about to auction 20 critical mineral blocks.
A press release by Telf AG says India can sizably replace coal with hydrogen – and decarbonise steel – only by 2050.
In Jharkhand, a tribal agitation against Damodar Valley Corporation’s pumped storage project continues.
A very interesting report from CEEW pegs India’s residential rooftop solar potential at 637 GW. This is a dramatic upgrade. India’s renewables potential had been pegged at just 1,000 GW till now.
And, finally, there are the steps we take to undercut climate resilience. Do read this report on Pune’s water tanker mafia. And see this video on how UP is trying to bring down its AQI numbers.
Video of the week
Cyprus Confidential, the latest ICIJ investigation into Putin and the offshore wealth that supports his regime.
Report of the week
The geopolitics of Hydrogen. (German Institute for International and Security Affairs)
Climate LongReads of the week
‘There are no crops to celebrate’: climate crisis wipes out a way of life in Taiwan’s mountains (Guardian)
U.S. Bets on Small Nuclear Reactors to Help Fix a Huge Climate Problem (NYT)
Has India’s Adani Group Prevailed? (Foreign Policy)
‘Energy independent’ Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for four straight months (The Progress Playbook).
In Photos: Dalits, Adivasis in Odisha's Tijmali Push Back Against Vedanta's Mining Bid (The Wire).
Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you — and almost everyone else (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).
The Single Most Dangerous Expansion of Fossil Fuel in the World, Bill McKibben on natural gas (The Nation).
The New Nuclear Age: The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks (Scientific American)
Book of the week
We are still reading – and vastly learning from – Michael Mann’s The New Climate War.
That said, there is another book we are now impatient to read. In The Bill Gates Problem, journalist Tim Schwab takes an investigative look at Gates’ philanthropy and asks whether he is a force for good – or bad.
Given our time when the super-rich rush in to solve global problems – but bring their own angularities and prisms into the solutions – this is an urgent book. Here is a review.