We really lack champions in the Power Sector

For power generation, we only seem to concentrate on thermal? Why don't we explore the other alternative such as hydro and nuclear?

 

Hydro has a lot of problems. Projects in Arunachal Pradesh are not coming up because of lack of access. Agitating people in Assam are not allowing equipment to move to Arunachal for fear of the Brahmaputra level going further down. These concerns may be unwarranted, but my argument is, the Brahmaputra level was down even before the plant came up. So, hydro will take time, plus hydro will help only during peak season. Remember, 70-80 percent of the hydro plants of the country run only during monsoons, not round the year. Now, we are left with thermal and nuclear. Nuclear was beginning to chug along nicely till Fukushima. After the disaster, everyone got scared, rightly or wrongly we don't know. After the accident, Germany has switched off its nuclear programme, Japan has reduced and backed down, but France has not, in fact, 80 percent of France's power supply comes through nuclear.

 

Logically speaking, it's about perceptions and concerns, we in India have about private sector participation, and we think everything should be done by the Nuclear Power Corporation, which means slow progress, delays, limited money and no transparency. There are also issues about spent fuel and decommissioning. We have always had heavy water reactors wherein we have a three-stage process. However, the reactors that are coming from the US are single-cycle light water reactors, so there will be a lot of spent fuel lying around. How will that be dealt with? Unlike the US, we have one-fifth the land mass and four times the population. So, that brings us to coal. It is not that we don't have coal reserves, it is just that we don't invest enough in mining because everything has been given to Coal India, so it has become the monopoly sector of the government. After Supreme Court declared coal as a national asset, there is further confusion. No one is taking decisions, nobody is taking ownership..... We really lack champions in the Power Sector.

Is Power Sector not on priority list of the govt?

Back-to-back failure of grids plunged the nation into darkness. A total of 21 states and its 60 million people were affected. Life in metros came to a grinding halt. People in small towns, for whom outages have become a way of life, were also surprised, and perhaps pleased, to see power cuts make a comeback on TV news. World media termed it as the biggest power failure in a decade.

The reaction from the government was abrupt. Outgoing power minister Shushilkumar Shinde(he got a promotion the same day) was abrupt in his reaction. Other than blaming the states for overdrawing power which led to the grid failure, he said nothing. He did not find it necessary to elaborate on the causes and solution. Neither an assurance that efforts will be made to avoid repeat of power failures on such massive scale was put forth. The power ministry was given as an additional charge to corporate affairs minister Veerappa Moily who during an interview on his first day said the power situation in the country was unrelenting. Embarrassingly, there was a power cut during the interview!

Do you feel power sector is not on priority list of the govt?