New Delhi

Safety first: the fast-breeder reactor at Kalpakkam, India, was submerged by December's tidal waves. Credit: M. LAKSHMAN/AP

India's nuclear regulator has called for a detailed report on the impact of December's tsunami on the nation's prototype fast-breeder reactor. The reactor's site at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu state was flooded by the wave, prompting fears about its future safety.

The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board wants to know whether it should modify the design of the Rs35-billion (US$800-million) project — the centrepiece of India's nuclear-energy research programme — in light of the flood, which killed a construction worker.

Nuclear engineers say the flood shouldn't necessitate any major changes to either the siting or the design of the reactor, but critics are using the flood to reopen a debate about whether the ambitious project is appropriate to India's pressing energy needs.

Fast-breeder reactors were once widely regarded as the future of nuclear power. They rely on chain reactions that produce more fissile material than they consume.

India's prototype reactor at Kalpakkam would use sodium as a coolant and oxides of plutonium and uranium as fuel to produce 500 MW of electricity. It is the first of five such reactors that India hopes to build by 2020, says Anil Kakodkar, secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, after which it would switch to larger reactors.

But Ashok Parthasarathi, a science-policy specialist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, says the huge project demonstrates the unbalanced nature of energy policy in India. The country spends only about Rs150 million each year on research into renewable energy sources.

V. S. Arunachalam a former scientific adviser to India's defence department who is now at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, says that fast-breeder reactors will not be economically viable until the end of this century. And although France and Russia are still seeking to develop them, the United States, Britain and Germany have each abandoned fast breeders in the face of mounting costs, technical problems and the continued availability of cheap uranium for conventional nuclear reactors.

But Baldev Raj, who heads the Indian project, says the technology “is very much alive” internationally. He adds that India's decision to proceed is based on “experience gained from the design and operation” of a fast-breeder test reactor at Kalpakkam since 1987. Critics counter that the new reactor is 60 times bigger and relies on a different fuel.

Officials at the atomic-energy department say that India has a special need for the technology because it cannot buy uranium from abroad without agreeing to put all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards — something it has always refused to do.

The Kalpakkam project has been dogged by bad luck so far. India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, missed a ceremonial pouring of concrete last August because of ill health.

S. K. Sharma, chairman of India's nuclear regulatory board, says that the tsunami has not exposed any particular safety risks at Kalpakkam. He predicts that any necessary design changes could be implemented before the project's 2010 completion date.