As the government attempts to cobble together a consensus for pushing through two key legal amendments that aim to liberalise India’s nuclear energy sector, foreign equipment vendors have flagged the need for putting in place quality standards to upgrade the country’s mid-and lower-tier nuclear supplier base. Global companies that have commenced exploratory talks for partnerships and are auditing India’s nuclear supply chains have cited the need to develop quality standards for manufacturing processes in the nuclear value chain. Rolling out a national programme to train equipment suppliers has been suggested, especially for newer technological formats such as light water reactors (LWR) assembly and fabricating small modular reactors (SMR).This gap has been specifically flagged in the second and third rung of equipment suppliers that, in turn, provide inputs to the tier-1 suppliers such as L&T, Bharat Forge, Godrej & Boyce and Walchandnagar Industries. Alongside this, the need for a robust cybersecurity protocol is also learnt to have been flagged in these early deliberations, with global vendors citing potential risks including loss of control over vital information that can possibly impact nuclear plant operations and hold plant operators hostage in the event of a cyber attack.Critical equipment suppliesThere is some historical context to quality and cost overruns in the capital-intensive nuclear sector, especially with regard to issues plaguing equipment supplies. Finland’s long-delayed Olkiluoto-3 EPR nuclear reactor that was connected to the Finnish power grid for the first time in March 2022, 12 years after planned launch, is a case in point. Quality issues with plant suppliers led to delayed system tests, an increase in the number of maintenance tasks due to project delays and the lack of necessary spare parts pushed back the schedule of the French EPR-based unit. Subsequent problems with feedwater pumps further delayed the project commissioning at the last stage, resulting in the reactor vendors Areva-Siemens and their subcontractors coming under fire.In India, nuclear regulator AERB primarily focuses on design certifications, while the quality aspects are largely handled by the operator — currently the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). While NPCIL has a strong safety record, characterised by no radiological accidents across 238 reactor-years of operation, the new technological formats on the anvil include LWRs of the type being developed by the Russians at Kudankulam.While both NPCIL and Rosatom have developed a vendor base of some 200-odd suppliers, in India, the problem being flagged pertains to tier-2 suppliers and below, especially given new reactor types likely to be taken up. Also, though India’s civil nuclear programme has expertise in manufacturing smaller reactor types, it is almost entirely based on its mainstay Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) technology. Based on heavy water and natural uranium, these reactors are increasingly out of sync with LWRs — the most dominant reactor type across the world. The Americans, alongside the Russians and the French, are among the leaders in LWR technology.Quality upgradation templatesThere are multiple national templates for quality upgrades. In Japan, there was a national push to expand the country’s nuclear power programme in the mid-70s after nuclear energy was declared a national strategic priority in 1973. This phase coincided with a national quality pursuit by the Japanese industry. This led to companies such as Toyota and Sony becoming synonymous with quality benchmarks. Around the same time, global nuclear watchdog IAEA started developing detailed quality assurance codes and safety guides, with publications like “Quality Assurance for Nuclear Power Plants: A Code of Practice” in 1978, which became a framework that would influence Japan’s regulatory approach.Three decades down the line, China rolled out a comprehensive nuclear quality assurance programme focused on a regulatory framework aligned with international standards and national conditions, overseen by its National Nuclear Safety Administration.Story continues below this ad“A comprehensive programme to include all nuclear suppliers alongside standardisation to develop quality norms for all manufacturing processes would go a long way in addressing this (quality) issue. Training to implement a programme for suppliers is needed, especially when it comes to mid-and-lower tier suppliers,” a senior executive from a global nuclear company involved in these deliberations said. Simultaneously, on the cybersecurity challenges, Indian manufacturers are not yet equipped to handle threats from cyberspace and a robust cybersecurity protocol in the nuclear sector must be instituted, the executive said.The problems are sometimes uncovered with the design of the domestic reactors, or with the quality control issues relating to their components.These issues usually crop up after construction is already underway or complete, leading to delays. Subsequent remediation efforts further exacerbate cost calculations.Improving nuclear vendor baseAccording to a senior government official who was involved with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in earlier quality-related discussions, apart from increasing vendor capacity, the need to improve quality of vendors has been flagged internally in the past in the Indian nuclear ecosystem. The suggestions then included the DAE needing to take essential steps to improve the quality of work as required for systems and equipment using required codes and standards. As part of the steps needed to beef up quality control and assurance, the need for developing highly-qualified professionals to ensure timely decisions on quality inspection and management has been echoed in an exhaustive task force report formulated earlier on the issue.“QA (quality assurance) coverage support is a festering issue in NPCIL jobs and often delays are due to holds during QA coverage. A provision should be made to provide three-shift coverage either through addition of manpower or by involving TPI (Third Party Inspection). The QA team should be deployed full time at all major supplier locations,” according to the recommendations of a Vivekananda International Foundation 2018 task force report titled ‘Nuclear Power: India’s Development Imperative’ that was sent to the government for consideration. The task force chaired by Anil Kakodkar, Former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, had among its 13 members Anil Razdan, Former Secretary, Ministry of Power, Government of India, SK Jain, Former Chairman & Managing Director, NPCIL, Ravi B Grover, Emeritus Professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, and representatives from Walchandnagar Industries Ltd and Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co.Story continues below this adAlongside the quality and manpower issue, the need to expand vendor capacity, particularly in areas where existing manufacturing in India is limited, was also flagged, including in core equipment such as pressure vessels and heat exchangers. In India, there are only a few companies that have experience in executing work such as primary piping, insulation and instrumentation. Expanding the vendor base in these areas and for equipment such as reactor pressure vessels, steam generators and heat exchangers have gaps where the need for additional vendors was highlighted. In case of control and instrumentation, for indigenisation, NPCIL is possibly dependent more on the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, a public sector enterprise under the DAE, but their capacities were recorded as “limited”. In civil works, only two companies — L&T and HCC — dominate the domain of reactor island work. In the case of post-tensioning and pre-tensioning systems of containment, there is only one French company, Fressynet, that has new technologies. “There is a need for more such companies if we have to scale up nuclear,” the official quoted above said, citing the earlier recommendations.Apart from meeting domestic needs, the need to ensure that Indian industry is facilitated to enter the export market was mooted. This step, officials said, would allow for a better balancing of shop floor capacity and enhance the industry’s overall competitiveness.Legislative groundwork, SMR-pushThis comes at a time when the legislative groundwork is underway for multiple amendments in the two overarching laws governing the country’s atomic energy sector, which now aim to align these legislations with legal provisions globally, addressing festering investor concerns and setting the stage for an opening up of India’s civil nuclear sector.The Indian government has committed to getting two key legislative amendments passed, including an explicit assurance to this effect made in the union budget presented earlier this year, even though the legislative route for at least one of the two proposed bills would be an arduous one.Story continues below this adWith the legislative amendments done, India plans to get into the manufacturing value chain of SMRs — increasingly seen as important for nuclear energy to remain a commercially competitive option into the future. In the civil nuclear sector, New Delhi is pushing SMRs — advanced nuclear reactors that have about a third of the generating capacity of most traditional nuclear power reactors but can produce a large amount of low-carbon electricity – as a technology of promise that can help in industrial decarbonisation, including a determined hard sell of the country’s ability to take something of a leadership role in the dissemination of this technology. These are important in offering base load power that could give grid operators some degree of flexibility, especially given the imperative of inducting renewables into the grid brings with it the challenge of inducting more base load generation to balance out the vagaries of renewable power output. While thermal generation is seen as important in this regard, nuclear energy offers a more carbon-neutral base load generation option.Alongside partnerships, the government is working on its own SMRs that are being designed and developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), a constituent unit of the DAE. These reactors are the Bharat Small Reactor (220 MWe PHWR), the Bharat Small Modular Reactor (BSMR200 MWe PWR) and another small modular reactor (SMR-55 MWe PWR), which are being indigenously designed and developed with an objective of repurposing of retiring fossil fuel-based power plants, captive plants for energy intensive industries and off-grid applications for remote locations.Conceptual and detailed designs for these reactors are learnt to be at “an advanced stage”. Prototype demonstration reactors essentially serve to establish technology readiness for design, construction, and operation. In view of the available in-house expertise and know-how of technologies being developed, no collaboration has been envisaged, government officials said. It is planned to establish lead units of SMR-55 and BSMR 200 MWe at DAE sites for technology demonstration. These demonstration reactors are likely to be constructed in 60 to 72 months after being accorded project sanctions, they said.