Hill containment of nuclear power plants (NIAS Report No. R13-2012)

While India, after independence has made tremendous progress in several areas of technology such as - atomic energy, space, electronics, information, communications and so on, it is a woeful fact that in terms of providing basic necessities of life like food,water,health facilities,education and electrical power it is still reeling at atrocious levels. It is a regrettable fact that nearly 40% of the population is still below the poverty level. There is no electricity for majority of the villages. Even in most of the cities nearly 20% of the population is without the electricity. The governmental agencies are fully aware of this situation and ambitious plans have been drawn up to remedy this situation. Strategies for long term energy security are shown in Figure 1 [1]. At the present time (2012), thermal and hydroelectric sources dominate the power scenario. While nuclear power is less than 3% (4.78 GWe) today, it is hoped that it will reach about 25% (GWe) by 2050 using only the indigenous Uranium. This share will be doubled to about 50% (600 GWe) by importing 40 GWe LWRs along with requisite uranium fuel, for them during the period 2012-2020