Question : ATOMIC ENERGY

(a) whether the Government is facing any energy crisis in the country;

(b) if so, the details thereof and the reasons for energy deficiency in the country;

(c) whether the Government proposes to tap atomic energy in lieu of natural resources and if so, the details thereof;

(d) the number of Atomic Power Plants that have been commissioned and functioning and the quantum of energy being produced there from as on date; and

(e) the risks involved in running Atomic Power Plants and the precautionary measures that have been initiated by the Government?

THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR PERSONNEL, PUBLIC GRIEVANCES & PENSIONS AND PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE (Dr. JITENDRA SINGH) :

(a)&(b) There exists a gap between requirement and availability of electrical energy in the country. During the current year (April 2014 - January 2015), the electrical energy availability in the country was 8,68,591 MU against the requirement of 9,03,104 MU, resulting in gap of 34513 MU i.e.3.8% of the requirement.

The gap between availability and requirement of the electrical energy in the country was inter-alia due to following reasons:

(i) Less thermal generation due to fuel shortage in some power plants.

(ii) Low Plant Load Factor of some of the thermal generating units.

(iii) Transmission and Distribution constraints.

(iv) Less Hydro generation because of poor monsoon in some areas.

(v) High Aggregate Technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of State Discoms.

(vi) Poor financial health of State utilities rendering it difficult for them to raise the resources necessary for making required investments to create adequate generation, transmission and distribution system. At times State Utilities are even unable to purchase power due to financial constraints.

(c) No, Sir. The role of nuclear power in the near term is complementary in meeting the electricity demand of the country. All sources of energy including nuclear power are proposed to be optimally deployed to meet the growing electricity demand of the country.

(d) The present installed nuclear power capacity in the country comprises of twenty one nuclear power reactors with a total capacity of 5780 MW. Of these, one reactor, Rajasthan Atomic Power Station Unit-1 (RAPS -1) (100 MW) is presently under extended shutdown for techno-economic assessment on continuation of operations and twenty reactors with a capacity of 5680 MW are presently operational, generating power in commercial domain. During the year 2013-14, 35,333 Million Units (MUs) of electricity were generated. In the current year 2014-15, the generation upto January 31, 2015 has been 30490 MU

(e) Nuclear power plants are sited, designed, constructed and operated with utmost regard to safety of the public and environment. They are provided with several safety features including multiple physical barriers, fail safe systems, redundancy (more numbers than required) to prevent any undue release of radioactivity in the public domain. As a measure of abundant caution, offsite emergency preparedness plans for an unlikely event of an emergency are also put in place.