23. FUEL AND POWER FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIA

by Nigel Calder

When the Indian Government announced the award of the contract for its first nuclear power station which is to be built at the fishing village of Tarapur on the coast sixty miles north of Bombay, it recalled to my mind the sight of Indian labourers at the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, working with simple tools and carrying baskets on their heads, just as their ancestors did when they built the great Moghul fortresses. Unless one understands how the old and the new India have to serve one another, and the contrast between the modern industrial cities and the 500,000 remote villages where little has changed in a thousand years, one cannot grasp the nature of the technical and human problems facing those who seek to reinforce the weary muscles of a vast nation with modern resources of fuel and power.

Energy means much to the Indians: modern towns and factories (better distributed over the country), more efficient cottage industry, more economical railways and, not least, light in the home - light to study by, light to extend the days cut short by sunset. It means, too, the hope of saving 300 million tons of cowdung which is burnt on domestic fires each year, and using it to fertilise the soil, and of preventing the alarming deforestation and soil erosion brought about by the consumption of firewood. Moreover, it involves the development of heavy industry.

Although the Tarapur nuclear power station and great hydro-electric projects like the Bhakra Nangal scheme (with a dam 740 feet high across the Sutlej river) have more glamour, coal remains one of India's most important and paradoxical problems. There are vast resources of coal, but it is coal very different from what we know in Western Europe. The great coal-fields of East India were formed along the river valleys and then mashed up by glaciation, so that the coal is of inferior quality mixed up with sedimentary matter which leaves a great deal of ash and also makes the coal quite unsuitable for coking. Only about one per cent of India's coal is of coking grade and this has important consequences for the Indian steel industry.

Next to coal, hydro-electric generation is India's most important source of energy. The hydro-electric potential of India has been estimated at about 41,000 MW, although about half of this is in remote mountainous areas where the demand for power is small. Nevertheless, it is envisaged that by 1976 half the estimated installed generating capacity in India will be in the form of hydro-electric plant.

Other possible sources of energy, which could be important for local use, are wind power, solar energy, tidal power and geothermal power, but they are not likely to make an important contribution to the total energy supply in the foreseeable future. The gap, if any, between resources and needs will have to be filled by nuclear energy.

(from New Scientist, 18th October, 1962)