Forgers Required

Saurav Jha

The nuclear world seems to be forging ahead, literally. It has been apparent for quite sometime now that the chief impediment to the renewed worldwide push on the nuclear front is the lack of component suppliers, especially for reactor pressure vessels. This may soon be a thing of the past though as a number of players with forging capability have now jumped into the fray to build pressure vessels. The Indian manufacturing sector is no exception and a slew of joint ventures to produce nuclear components have been announced this year.
 However the really significant news on this front continues to be foreign. Chinese company Dong Fang unveiled to the world the first ever completely fabricated reactor pressure vessel in China. The Chinese have been cognizant of their earlier deficiency in this regard and therefore made this a strategic priority. Their efforts have clearly borne fruit and June 2009 has seen the commissioning of a first ever indigenous reactor pressure vessel for the Ling Ao Phase II unit 4 owned and operated by the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC). The reactor is a domestically designed 1080 MWe Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) unit and its pressure vessel measures over 13 metres long and weighs over 320 tonnes.  Dongfang (Guangzhou) has made this vessel at its Nansha facility in Guangdong province.

It must be noted that each time CGNPC has built a new reactor it has been able to increase the percentage of domestically sourced components. For instance the first two units at Ling Ao Phase I, based on a French design, featured only around 30 per cent Chinese components. This figure rose to 60 per cent for the first two units at Ling Ao Phase II and has now risen to over 80 percent at Ling Ao Phase II Unit 4 with the induction of the domestically built pressure vessel.  Both Dongfang and Shanghai Electric Company are now looking at forges that will accept 600 tonne ingots.

Meanwhile the Russians have shown that they are still a superpower when it comes to machining capability and have unveiled a “super-powered” next generation steel melting complex at OMZ's Izhorskiye Zavody facility. This development is a major step towards the forging of single components from ingots of up to 600 tonnes in weight, which thereby makes it the second facility after Japan Steel Works to be able to do so. The improvements at OMZ are part of an overall Russian thrust to position itself strongly in all segments of the energy sector. Indeed the modernization has been financed by GazPromBank.  The facility will also remove Russia’s dependency on foreign suppliers for low speed turbines.
'Japan Steel Works is presently the world leader in the area of super-heavy forgings. However as we have seen the Russians and Chinese are already catching up. The British may enter the game soon enough as well with Sheffield Forgemasters trying to secure government support to build a forge that can accept 500 tonne ingots.

Back home there is a realisation that the private sector should currently focus more on the supplier segment of nuclear power rather than try to immediately set themselves up as nuclear utilities. Indeed the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission has said on more than one occasion that given the complex nature of this hi-tech enterprise that besides plant operation involves a difficult fuel cycle, the private sector should take more time to familiarize themselves with this industry through participation in the supply chain before jumping onto the utility bandwagon. Right now a select group of Indian majors including L&T, BHEL, Godrej, Bharat Forge and Tata seem poised to enter the fray in the next three years or so through strategic tie-ups with foreign majors.
Now while India may still not be on the level as far as fabricating large pressure vessels is concerned. It has certainly mastered Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) technology. Readers would note that PHWRs unlike Light Water Reactors (LWRs) do not require pressure vessels but instead make use of coolant channels to do the job. India has over three decades of experience in operating and developing these reactors.  Indeed a number of nations in Asia and Africa have expressed interest in sourcing PHWRs from NPCIL. The first customer for Indian PHWRs will in all probability be Kazakhastan, which is according to sources interested in an unspecified number of 220 Mwe class PHWRs.
The deal would of course make immense sense for Kazakhstan which has some of the world’s largest deposits of natural uranium and does not foresee electricity demand in excess of 10-15, 000 MWe.  This is precisely why small reactors make great sense for Kazakhstan, as a few large reactors would cause an unacceptable supply shortfall in the event of failure or even routine Operations & Maintenance (O&M) practice. Moreover given the fact that PHWRs use natural uranium as fuel thereby obviating the need for enrichment which is both costly as well as the technological preserve of a few nations also helps NPCIL’s PHWR sales push.  
An actual sale would do wonders to India’s ambition of positioning itself as a supplier of nuclear technology besides underlining the fact that India is probably the only country in the world today that is in a position to provide cost effective and small sized reactor which are more relevant to many small countries needs today.
Meanwhile India’s existing fleet of small reactors are showing increased capacity factors as the fuel mismatch issue that had plagued them for the past couple of years has been sorted out due to new mining and milling units in Jharkhand. Moreover this is set to improve further and several external sources are also being tied up to supply uranium to India. Indeed the Government’s budgetary allocation for the Department of Atomic Energy reflects this, as expenditure under fuel inventory head has seen an increase of nearly 50 per cent for the next fiscal 2009-10.

While the opening up of export possibilities for indigenous PHWRs and easing of the fuel supply situation is certainly great news, a quickening of pace is required on the LWR front, specifically given the ambitious plans India has to augment its nuclear generating capacity through the import of large LWRs. For like the Chinese, NPCIL also seeks to increase the domestic component of imported LWRs from 30 per cent for the first units of a type at any given location to 80 per cent for the last reactors at that project site. This can only happen if Indian industry stands up to be counted in the realm of forging capability, albeit of a different kind.

Saurav Jha is Consulting Editor of India Power Journal and author of “The Upside Down Book Of Nuclear Power “ due for publication by Harper Collins in January 2010.