DAE, experts downplay leakage at US nuclear plant

The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and experts have downplayed the leakage at six underground storage tanks at a nuclear facility in Washington, saying the scenario in that country couldn't be compared with India's nuclear waste disposal and storage.

Speaking to Business Standard, a DAE official said the department had the technology to process and store radioactive waste within its premises for about 40 years. The high-level waste is vitrified (converted into glass) and packed in double-walled stainless steel vessels, which are then sealed in lead flasks. These are stored in a solid storage & surveillance facility (SSSF), a specially engineered underground facility.

"Currently, DAE has three operating reprocessing facilities and an SSSF. Already having developed the technology, it would expand the reprocessing and vitrification capacity, according to its expanding nuclear power programme. In case of reactors to be set up through cooperation with other countries, separate reprocessing facilities would be set up for spent fuel generated in such reactors. Besides, India is also developing an accelerator-driven sub-critical system, through which the actinides would be incinerated into smaller isotopes, with a lower half-life, reducing the storage time to 300 years from envisaged thousands of years," the official said.

However, A Gopalakrishnan, former chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), said, "The immediate urgency is in perfecting and expanding the front-end technologies for efficient spent-fuel reprocessing, including those for separation of actinides of a very long half-life, and fixing those in non-leachable glassy forms."

These steps alone would substantially reduce the volume of highly radioactive material we need to store for very long periods. Unfortunately, while the DAE may assert they have mastered all these technologies in waste management, it is a patently false claim. The prime minister had promised Parliament all such technologies would be transferred from advanced countries under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards, as a result of the Indo-US nuclear deal. But this didn't materialise. Filling this technology gap is of foremost urgency, and this issue should be considered before worrying about the ultimate burial of the high-level waste."

AERB Secretary R Bhattacharya said India was committed to following the closed fuel cycle. "Periodical monitoring is carried out at the level of AERB. We have a good waste management system. We are yet to generate high active waste," he said.

G R Srinivasan, former vice-chairman of AERB, said India followed the "tank-in-tank" concept. "If there is a leakage of nuclear waste from one tank, it goes into the tank below. All efforts are made to detect and prevent it from going to the public domain," he said.

N Nagaich, executive director, Nuclear Power Corporation, said spent fuel for reprocessing and waste storage were looked after by DAE and Bhabha Atomic research Centre, not the Nuclear Power Corporation.