Indian nuclear community should not have any confusion regarding this as there are discussions going around about using Thorium even before the fast breeder technology is developed, Kakodkar said.
Although India has huge amount of Thorium and will be a main concern for long time in the future, India has to follow the better thought out plan of three-stage programme of Homi J Bhabha as Thorium does not provide fast growth.
India requires fast growth and this can be sustained by fast breeder reactors (FBR), with a multiplier effect.
If you deploy thorium out of turn (before stage II maturity), which does not support growth out of turn, then you will not get large generating capacity, Kakodkar said.
Developing Nuclear Technology for our energy independence: the grand challenge.
Kakodkar said that if India needs to produce huge quantity of electricity in future, the sequence should be correct, Stage I – pressurised heavy water reactor using natural uranium, Stage II-fast breeder using uranium-plutonium and stage III-using thorium (converted into fissile material Uranium- 233,).
