Thursday, August 25 2005 14:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: India today (August 25, 2005) unveiled before the international community its revolutionary design of "A Thorium Breeder Reactor (ATBR)" that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years "with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres."

Designed by scientists of Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.

Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as "seed" to ignite the reactor core initially.

Eventually, ATBR can be running entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).

BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented today at the week-long "international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems" in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.

According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from "seed" rods, converts 1100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. "This differential gain in fissile formation makes ATBR a kind of thorium breeder."