Slow and stunted: Plutonium accounting and the growth of fast breeder reactors in India

The Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has projected a large growth of nuclear power in the country predominantly based on breeder reactors. These projections use a simplistic methodology that does not carefully account for the availability of plutonium that is required to fuel breeder reactors. In this paper, we demonstrate that this methodology is problematic, in particular that it would result in negative balances of plutonium if the DAEʹs projections were to come true. The DAEʹs projections also ignore constraints coming from reprocessing capacity in the country. As an alternative, we project the possible growth of nuclear power based on breeder reactors using a methodology consistent with plutonium constraints. The resulting breeder reactor capacity will be only between 17% and 40% of the DAEʹs projections, and will likely never constitute a major source of electricity in India for several decades at the very least.