India completes two CANDU reactors under budget, ahead of schedule.

[NNadir]

India is relying mostly on heavy water technology because of its huge thorium reserves. India intends to use a closed fuel cycle in which thorium is a key resource. My view is that the thorium based thermal breeding cycle is the best fuel cycle in the world right now.

India's CANDUs are advertised now as PHWR, (Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors) and as "indigenous" but they are knock offs of the Canadian technology.

From the sound of the article, they built two reactors for $1.4 billion, but everything is cheaper in India, due to the presence of a huge impoverished underclass. (Following India, we are developing a huge impoverished underclass here in the US.)

Anyway here are the commentaries. Clicking around the first link, one can see the other 5 reactors under construction in India right now.

The 540MWe Tarapur Atomic Power Project (TAPP)-4, India's largest totally indigenously built nuclear reactor, reached criticality on 6 March. The reactor, on the Arabian sea coast at Tarapur in Thane district of Maharashtra is expected to be joined by TAPP-3, a twin unit of TAPP-4, which is due reach criticality in March 2006. Both reactors are adjacent to the first two reactors built at Tarapur in the late 1960s by GE.

The reactors have reportedly been developed ahead of schedule, taking less than five years, and below costs. The original costs of construction of both TAPP-3 and 4 was expected to be Rs 80 billion ($1.86 billion) but apparently came in at Rs 60 billion ($1.39 million). Consequently, power from the plant will be sold for Rs 2.65 (¢6.1/kWh) as opposed to the initial estimate of Rs 3.5/kWh (¢8.1/kWh). Maharashtra would receive 39% of the output from the two new reactors, Madhya Pradesh 19% and Gujarat 17%, while some would be allotted to Goa, Daman and Diu. The Centre would also retain a share for allotment to power deficient states. TAPP-4 is expected to begin commercial operations in August.

Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), said that the development signified an important turning point in building larger units. The focus would now be on building nuclear power reactors with a capacity of 700MWe because building larger power reactors will result in a 20% reduction in capital cost.

http://www.npcil.nic.in/news_06June05_01.asp

Five years from pouring concrete to operation is still a relatively long lead time compared what the Japanese are doing. The Japanese built the Kashiwazaki Kariwa AWBR's in the late 1990's in 39 months from concrete pouring to operation.

But back to India:

When it comes to nuclear power, he said, India is not a developing nation. It already has a home-grown reactor technology using heavy water as the neutron moderator and coolant, with ambitious plans for building new power generating capacity. (Heavy water, D2O, is water in which both hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen containing one proton and one neutron.)

TAPP-4, India's largest indigenously designed and built power reactor, went critical on March 6. It is a pressurized heavy water reactor, or PHWR, with an output of 540 megawatts. Chidambaram said the reactor was built in just under five years from the time the first concrete was poured, comparable to the best gestation period for nuclear plants built by advanced nations.

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0527india.shtml

[jpak]

1. And they are busily cranking out plutonium for India's nuclear weapons

program.

Hooray

[muesa]

2. Ahead of schedule, under budget

because they still educate and respect ENGINEERS.

[NNadir]

3. That is true.

It is probably true also that their success, too, has something to do with not elevating ignorance. I think here in the west we not only fail to honor science and engineering enough but that we also pay too much credence to ignorance. They don't so far as I'm aware, have creationists in India and although they probably have a bunch of Greenpeace clowns there, they probably have them all on "ignore."

Nuclear engineering is a very rigorous field, requiring broad capacity in nuclear physics, nuclear chemistry, materials science and mathematics. One must be scientifically top notch. To my mind we don't value these disciplines enough in US culture and it's going to haunt us for a long time.

[muesa]

4. The only "engineering" and "science" we value in the US is

1. "Computer Science" - most of which is using off the shelf "Software Developer Kits" and "Web Authoring Kits" to create mundane web pages and an overabundance of forums, and
   
2. The hot field d'jour - biology and biochemistry and bioengineering, but as pointed out in Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science" - the intelligent designers and the anti-stem cell research fundies are killing this field.
   

[NNadir]

5. You're right. We are trying to kill the biological fields.

It's amazing with all the technologies that originated in the US, we lead in none of them.

It's all that at which the US is good in my generation: Killing things.