IAEA and US to initiate a nuclear fuel bank: C Ganguly

Mumbai, Dec 12: International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) and some of the developed countries are formulating a policy to create a sustainable chain of fuel supply to recipient countries against the condition of Nuclear non-proliferation, Leading nuclear energy scientist and member of the IAEA Dr Chaitanyamoy Ganguly here said.

He was addressing members of the international scientific community attending the five-day International Conference on 'Advances in Nuclear Materials&Satellite Conference on Materials Behaviour: Far From Equilibrium' being organised at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) from today.

Dr Ganguly said there is ''rising expectations'' for nuclear power and energy specially from the developing countries. However, he stressed the need and demand of the world community for nuclear energy should be dealt with ''caution'' along with optimism.

He pointed that the United States, which has a large nuclear energy programme is further expanding it to achieve production levels to 30 per cent by 2030. Similarly, India can also produce 20 per cent of nuclear energy through its nuclear programmes by 2020, Dr Ganguly added.

Dr Ganguly, referring to a US proposal under discussion with IAEA said that coutries with nuclear history such as the United States, UK, Russian Federation along with IAEA as the final banker are ready to supply nuclear fuel. However, the supply of the nuclear fuel to countries will depend on a condition that recipient states honour global non-proliferation policies.

Declining to go into further details on the US-IAEA intiative, he said that ''Fast Reactors'' or ''Advanced Burner Reactors'' is the latest in the nuclear reactors section. While, spent fuel is no more a liability but has become a progressive reality due to the advancement in reprocessing technology, he said.

The spent fuel reprocessing and recycling of plutonium and other actinides is gaining popularity, particularly from the point of view of reduction of volume, radio-toxicity and decay heat of high level watse for repositories, Dr Ganguly remarked.

Dr Ganguly, said in the area of power reactor fuels, IAEA's priorities in LWR and PHWR fuels and fuel structure are high perfomance and high burnup through better fuel design, improved quality assurance in fuel fabrication and close control of primary and secondary coolant water chemistry.

Drawing attention to the growing debate of 'Green House Effect' around the world, he said countries have realised that nuclear energy is superiror to the exisitng Fossil Fuel reactors, responsible for the sudden climate changes in many parts of the globe.

He also informed that in the future countries such as Indonesia, Turkey, Vietnam and Morrocco in Africa are expected to switch to the nuclear energy as a result of rising demand and climatic changes.

UNI

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