India stokes its nuclear power plants

The government moves to ensure the supply of uranium for India’s nuclear power plants.

India will open the new Mouldih uranium mine at Jharkhand in March. The mine is expected to produce some 150 tonnes of uranium ore per day.

Its ore will go to the Turamdih mill that has the capacity to process 3,000 tonnes per day. This mill’s processing capacity is being increased to 4,500 tonnes per day.

India will also commission a new processing plant to handle the massive uranium ore output from the Tummalapalle uranium mine.

Diwakar Acharya, Chairman and Managing Director of the Uranium Corporation of India, Ltd, described this mine’s output as “mind boggling.”

“We started the Tummalapalle mine with 14,000 tonnes of deposits now it has gone up to 60,000 tonnes. This may go up as explorations are still on with encouraging results,” he said.

The processing plant will have a capacity of 3,000 tonnes of ore per day that will be progressively increased to 6,000 tonnes per day.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd is currently building four 700 MW reactors. Two will be in Rawatbhata in Rajasthan and two in Kakrapar in Gujarat. It plans to build 10 more such 700 MW reactors over the next 10 years.

At present, India operates 20 nuclear power plants at six sites across the country that have the capacity to generate 4780 MW of electricity.