India The Indian Department of Atomic Energy has issued approval to start civil construction work for a second prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam, near Madras. The unit will be 500MWe, and is expected to be operating by 2009.
It will be fuelled with uranium-plutonium carbide with a thorium blanket to breed fissile U-233. This will take India’s ambitious thorium programme to stage 2, and set the scene for eventual ‘thorium-fuelled reactors’ utilising India’s plentiful thorium resources.
