The Heavy Water Board’s (HWB) now-defunct 49 MT heavy water plant in Tuticorin, India is expected to restart production of deuterium oxide, commonly known as heavy water, from March 2019, said the agency’s chairman and chief executive, U Kamachi Mudali. Speaking to reporters at the Kalpakkam atomic power station, Mudali said renovation work on the plant was nearing completion and that a fresh deal with SPIC for supply of ammonia-rich synthesis gas from its urea plant in Tuticorin was being negotiated. This gas is the basic raw material for producing heavy water.
“Restarting Tuticorin plant has become a necessity, because our plant in Kota, Rajasthan, will be shut down in 2020. We will fall short of 80 MT of production when the Kota plant stops functioning,” Mudali said. At HWB’s Manuguru plant in Telengana, the capacity would be increased by 40 MT to partly offset the loss at Kota plant, he added.
Deuterium oxide is an essential component in pressurised heavy water reactors, like the 220 MW reactors at the Madras Atomic Power Station in Kalpakkam, where it is used as coolant solution as well as moderator to control the fission process in reactors. The Rs 37 crore Tuticorin plant was commissioned in 1978, but was shut in 2007 when SPIC suspended urea production owing to government’s ban on using naphtha for making urea. After seeking a temporary relief from the central government, SPIC resumed urea production in June 2015.
Mudali said HWB recently completed land acquisition to set up a rare earth mineral extraction facility in Tuticorin. The agency would extract rare earth minerals like Yttrium, Ytterbium and Lanthanum from phosphoric acid. “We have acquired land from Tamil Nadu government. The (rare minerals) plant is expected to be ready by March 2020,” Mudali said.
Once operational, the rare earth facility is expected to boost fuel supply for India’s nuclear energy programme, he added. A solvent production plant coming up on the defunct plant’s premises is now at an advanced stage of construction, Mudali said. This is the third such plant in India after Talcher in Odisha and Vadodara in Gujarat. The Tuticorin facility would have a capacity to generate 100 MT per annum of tributyl phosphate, an essential component in reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear reactors. This plant too is expected to be ready by March 2019, Mudali said.
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