Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) is at the threshold of embarking on an ambitious programme of fuel manufacturing for a large fleet of 10 new Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) recently announced by the Government of India and four reactors are already in the making, said chairman and chief executive Dinesh Srivastava on Wednesday.
Mr. Srivastava mentioned that very high quality standards on a par with world PHWR fuel manufacturers has become a routine at the NFC. He was speaking at the three-day international conference on ‘Characterisation and Quality Control of Nuclear Fuels- CQCNF-2018’ organised by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).
The sixth such conference being organised since the year 2002 in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna-Austria, it provides a platform to share present practices, recent developments and future trends in the area of nuclear fuels for water cooled and fast breeder reactors.
About 200 scientists including 20 eminent foreign nuclear scientists from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan, Austria and United States are attending the conference. Senior scientists and engineers from various units of DAE like BARC, NPCIL, IGCAR, AFFF, RRCAT etc. are also participating and presenting papers on important developments carried out in their units in the last three years.
Former Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee, who is also presently Chancellor of Homi Bhabha National Institute, spoke of how NFC conquered challenges in making the first 100 MT/ year of nuclear fuel and to be successfully scaling it up to the present level of 1500 MT/year, developing new technologies, meeting stringent specifications of nuclear fuel and so on.
Atomic Minerals Directorate Director M.B. Verma highlighted the importance of the quality of raw materials for nuclear fuel making and also assured increased supplies to meet the country’s future requirement, now that about 3000 MT of raw material has been identified in the country. Convener of the conference and General Manager-Fuels Group - D.S. Setty said it is the year of “The millionth PHWR fuel bundle production at NFC” which has put DAE on a strong footing for the ambitious nuclear program ahead.