Why India's fast breeder programme is cutting edge

A nearly 200 tonne nuclear reactor safety vessel being erected at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam

Rediff.com: Why India's fast breeder programme is cutting edge

After three decades of hard work, and despite the devastating tsunami of 2004, the 500 megawatt Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam is coming up at a furious pace, says Shivanand Kanavi who visited it recently. It also happens to be the first tsunami-ready reactor in India.

Fast breeders have entered journalistic and parliamentary lexicon during the debates on the India-United States nuclear deal.

According to an apocryphal story, a venerable member of Parliament, dazed by the sudden influx of nuclear physics in the Central Hall of Parliament, did not want to be left behind in the sound byte game and said, "We are good at fast breeders. That's how we became one billion-strong"!

Be that as it may, the fast breeder technology, in its essence, is more than 50 years old. Most people do not know that the first ever kilowatt of power from a nuclear reactor, anywhere in the world, came in 1951 from a fast breeder reactor, Experimental Breeder Reactor I at Idaho Falls in the US.

So, what are these new-fangled objects, the fast breeder reactors? If we care to struggle with a little bit of nuclear physics, we might profit from it. Here are a few simple incentives to cross the knowledge hump.