Give an account of the growth and development of nuclear science and technology in India. What is the advantage of fast breeder reactor programme in India?

Growth and development

• 1948 Atomic Energy Act and the Atomic Energy Commission, with Homi Bhabha, set research as a sovereign goal. Department of Atomic Energy (1954) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Trombay) became the core.
• Apsara (1956) was Asia’s early research reactor. Cirus and later Dhruva trained people and made isotopes.
• Power: Tarapur boiling-water reactors with the United States (late 1960s), then Rajasthan (Canadian CANDU lineage) and an indigenous pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) line under Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited — Kakrapar, Narora, Kaiga, and others.
• 1974 peaceful nuclear explosion and 1998 tests brought sanctions and a long dual-use isolation: limited imported fuel and technology, so self-reliance in PHWR, fuel fabrication, and heavy water was forced, not chosen.
• Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, ran the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (1985, sodium-cooled) as the school for breeders.
• Applications beyond power: radiation in food and medicine, isotope diagnosis, and strategic propulsion research — the DAE umbrella is wider than electricity.
• 2005 Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, 2008 Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver, and IAEA safeguards on separated civilian plants reopened imported uranium and reactor offers (Kudankulam VVER with Russia; talks on other light-water units).
• Liability law, local protest (Kudankulam, Jaitapur), and project delays remain the political half of the technology story.

Three-stage programme (Bhabha)

• Stage 1: PHWRs on natural uranium; spent fuel yields plutonium.
• Stage 2: FBRs burn plutonium and breed more fissile material from uranium-238, multiplying a scarce uranium base.
• Stage 3: thorium–uranium-233 cycles in advanced reactors, using India’s large monazite / thorium resource.
• Without stage 2, stage 3 stays a paper option.

Advantages of the FBR programme

• Fuel security: breeds more fissile atoms than it consumes (with a blanket); stretches domestic and imported uranium.
• Path to thorium: produces the inventory and the operating skill for U-233 systems.
• Waste: can burn some long-lived actinides relative to a once-through thermal cycle (design-dependent), reducing the high-level waste burden in principle.
• Base-load, low-carbon power once commercial — a complement to coal and to variable renewables.
• Indigenous learning: sodium technology, fuel fabrication, and safety culture stay inside Indian labs rather than as a perpetual import.
• Caution: FBRs are complex (sodium fire risk, cost, delays). The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has been a long construction. Advantage is strategic, not a cheap kilowatt-hour in the first unit.