Role of Nuclear Power in the Energy

The installed capacity of electric power generation in the country today is about 275 GW and out of that, the nuclear component is 5.5 GW (2 per cent).

In terms of the total electrical energy produced in the year 2014-15, nuclear contribution (37000 million units) is about 3.25 per cent of the total, thanks to a much higher capacity utilization in the nuclear power generation compared to all other electricity generation systems put together.

Per capita electricity consumption in India is about 1000 kWh, nearly one-third of the world average of 3000 kWh and less than one tenth of the per capita consumption in USA

Since human development index (HDI) has a close linkage with per capita electricity consumption, (Chidambaram 2013) there is no doubt that for an improvement of HDI from the current value of 0.65 to about 0.8 will require at least 4 times increase in our electricity production.

Even today, nearly 25 per cent of population does not have access to electricity and in a major part of rural, semi-urban and even urban areas power cuts are for several hours a day

Nuclear power in which fuel cost is less than 15 per cent will indeed have a stabilizing influence on the power tariff in the future. For making a comparison of cost of electricity produced by different sources, it is necessary to compare the electricity tariffs of plants set-up more or less in the same zone of the country and at same time. Table 3 which makes such a comparison between thermal and nuclear power clearly shows the cost competitiveness of the latter which does not enjoy any direct or indirect government subsidy. Though the capital cost per MW of solar or wind energy is much lower than that of nuclear, this advantage is offset by their low capacity factors




During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the impressive performance of nuclear power stations (over 80 per cent capacity factor and safe operation of about 350 nuclear power plants) all over the world, the increasing concern over CO2 generation from thermal power plants and their adverse effect on global climate change generated a renewed interest in nuclear power.