20 years after Nuclear-deal
Source: By Anil Sasi: The Indian Express
Nearly two decades after India and the US concluded a civil nuclear deal, the first real sliver of hope to belatedly leverage the commercial potential of this landmark pact comes from an unlikely contender: Holtec International, based in Camden, New Jersey.
Unlike Westinghouse Electric Co. and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, the two US nuclear industry flag bearers that were seen as early frontrunners for entry into India’s civil nuclear sector, Holtec is a smaller, privately-held company that is now billed as one of the world’s largest exporter of capital nuclear components.
Holtec’s pitch is for fostering a public-private initiative centred on the American company’s flagship small modular reactor, the SMR-300, to potentially help break this stasis in the nuclear engagement between the two countries, with the possibility of using existing coal plant sites in India to deploy its proposed SMR-based projects and the possibility of joint manufacturing at some point in the future.
Kris P Singh, the Indian-American promoter of Holtec International, which was established in 1986 and is now a key part of the nuclear ecosystem in the US and provides spent fuel storage and logistics support for over 140 nuclear plants worldwide, was the only CEO that Prime Minister Narendra Modi met one-on-one during his US visit late last month.
A meeting took place at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel on 23 September 2024 during the second leg of Modi’s US visit, with the discussions focused on Holtec’s proposal for “advancing energy cooperation”.
These developments come at a time when India is working to get into the manufacturing value chain of small reactors, both as a way of fulfilling its commitment to clean energy transition, and bundling SMRs as a technology-led foreign policy pitch.
SMRs — small reactors with a capacity of 30MWe to 300 MWe per unit — are increasingly seen as important for nuclear energy to remain a commercially competitive option in the future, especially in the wake of surging power demand from technology companies, given the massive incremental electricity requirement coming in from AI machine learning applications and data centres.
Over the last couple of weeks, the Holtec team is learnt to have briefed top officials at India’s Department of Atomic Energy on SMR-300 — a pressurised light-water reactor that creates energy through fission, uses the same low-enriched uranium fuel as traditional reactors operating today to produce at least 300 megawatts (MWe) of electric power. The company claims it can be designed to operate on an area of land that is little less than a dozen football fields, as compared to a much larger footprint for a traditional reactor project.
Holtec’s SMR-300 is one of seven advanced reactor designs supported by the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Programme. In 2020, the company’s SMR project received a $116-million award to help accelerate design, engineering and licensing activities and is currently in the early design review stages in the United Kingdom and Canada to deploy its small reactor.
But there are niggling issues. On the Indian side, the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, which sought to create a mechanism for compensating victims from damage caused by a nuclear accident, and allocating liability and specifying procedures for compensation, has been cited as an impediment by foreign players such as GE-Hitachi, Westinghouse and French nuclear company Areva (now called Orano).
This is primarily on the grounds that the legislation channelises operators’ liability to equipment suppliers, with foreign vendors citing this as a reason for worries about investing in India’s nuclear sector due to fear of incurring future liability. On the American side, the ‘10CFR810’ authorisation (Part 810 of Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (Part 810) of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954) gives American companies such as Holtec the ability to export to India under some strict safeguards, but does not permit them to manufacture any nuclear equipment or perform any nuclear design work in India. This authorisation is essentially a non-starter from New Delhi’s perspective, which wants to participate in manufacturing the SMRs and co-produce the nuclear components for its domestic needs.
So, the US-India nuclear deal could need some additional leeway, for which New Delhi is trying for a workaround, even though it lacks the legislative mandate to make any changes to the 2010 legislation.
Things are moving in the right direction, but we have much distance to cover with both the US Government and the Government of India,” Holtec International’s Founder and CEO Singh told The Indian Express.
Holtec has a non-nuclear manufacturing facility in Dahej, Gujarat, and has conveyed that it can double the workforce at that plant in less than a year if the proposed manufacturing plans are cleared.
As of now, two SMR projects have reached the operational stage globally. One is an SMR named Akademik Lomonosov floating power unit in Russia that has two-modules of 35 MWe (megawatt electric) and started commercial operation in May 2020. The other is a demonstration SMR project called HTR-PM in China that was grid-connected in December 2021 and is reported to have started commercial operations in December 2023. Apart from Holtec’s SMR-300, other emerging Western contenders in the SMR segment include the Rolls-Royce SMR, NuScale’s VOYGR SMR, Westinghouse Electric’s AP300 SMR and GE-Hitachi’s BWRX-300.
India is hoping to pitch itself as a credible alternative to the incumbents in this niche field, riding on its strong track record of having operated small-sized reactors over an extended period of time and the ability to manufacture nuclear reactors cost-effectively and at scale.
This also comes at a time when Beijing is working on an ambitious plan to seize the opportunity of global leadership in the SMR space, unlike large reactors where China has been a latecomer. Like India, Beijing is seeing SMRs as a tool of its diplomatic outreach in the Global South and that the country could shake up the SMR industry, just as it has done in the electric vehicle sector.
Though India’s civil nuclear programme has expertise in manufacturing smaller reactor types – 220MWe PHWRs (pressurised heavy water reactors) and above – the problem for India is its reactor technology. Based on heavy water and natural uranium, the PHWRs are increasingly out of sync with the light water reactors that are now the most dominant reactor type across the world.
The strategic pitch from Holtec’s end is that a collaborative approach could be a positive for both the US and India, given that both countries are ill-placed to compete with China on their own, given India’s technological constraints and the US being seen as being impeded by a relatively high cost of labour and the growing protectionist mood in that country.
According to government officials, detailed technical discussions are currently underway in policy circles to plan a roadmap for studying the feasibility and effectiveness of the deployment of such reactors.
Russia is also learnt to be keen to expand its nuclear cooperation with India to include a partnership in SMRs, sources said. The future course of action will be finalised on the basis of the decision of the Government within the overall remit of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and the possibility of allowing participation of private sector and start-ups in this sector (SMRs) is also being looked at.