Today three reprocessing plants are operated by the Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) with a total design capacity of about 230 metric tons, none of which are safeguarded. The first Indian reprocessing plant at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay began operating in 1964 and has processed fuel from the Cirus and Dhruva research reactors. It was decommissioned in 1973 due to excessive corrosion, then refurbished and put back into service in 1982. A total of about 400 kg of plutonium is estimated to have been separated at the small BARC facility, and is reported to have been used in the Indian nuclear weapons program.³ The plutonium used in the "peaceful nuclear device" exploded in Rasjasthan in 1974 was reprocessed at BARC.

A second reprocessing plant, the Power Reactor Fuel Reprocessing (PREFRE) facility, dedicated to reprocessing CANDU power reactor fuel, was brought into operation at Tarapur in 1982. The design capacity of PREFRE is 100 metric tons of fuel per year. However, production at the plant has been constrained by logistical and technical problems. Furthermore, India has sought to avoid building plutonium stockpiles. In 1995, there was a serious leak of radioactivity at the Waste Immobilization Plant associated with the Tarapur plant. In the spotlight of public scrutiny caused by the leak, it was revealed that due to a "shortage of funds," the equipment for the waste immobilization plant was corroded from lying out in the open.

To date, fuel from just two nuclear stations, the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) and the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) has been reprocessed at PREFRE. Estimating the amount of fuel that has been reprocessed at PREFRE is extremely difficult since no data have been published by the Indian authorities. Estimates are therefore based on assumptions about the way in which the RAPS and MAPS reactors have operated, and how much fuel could have been dispatched to Tarapur.

A maximum of about 310 metric tons of cooled spent fuel from these two reactors is estimated to have been reprocessed, yielding a maximum of 900 kg of plutonium by the end of 1995. A more realistic estimate, taking account of plutonium requirements of the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FTBR) at Kalpakkam, suggests that 300-400 kg of plutonium had been separated at PREFRE.

In March 1996 cold commissioning (operation without actual spent fuel) began at the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant (KARP) located at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) near Madras. 'Hot' commissioning, with the introduction of fuel, was planned for the end of 1996. Originally, this site was planned to have 1,000 tons of reprocessing capacity by the year 2000, but these plans are now in limbo.⁴ The facility is currently designed to process fuel from the MAPS reactors and has a design capacity of 100 metric tons of CANDU fuel per year, for an annual output of about 350 kg of plutonium.

Surendra Gadekar edits Anumukti: A Journal Devoted to Non-Nuclear India, and works at The Institute for Total Revolution, a Ghandian institute located in Vedchhi, a small tribal village in Gujarat.

1. Under irradiation thorium-232 is transformed into uranium-233 which is fissile, and can be used in both thermal and fast reactors. Thorium has not been used in any nuclear program on a commercial scale as yet because of many significant technical and economic issues connected with its use.
2. N. B. Prasad Committee's report on Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (1982)
3. See David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: Inventories, Capabilities and Policies, SIPRI/Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 180-83.
4. P. K. Iyengar in Nuclear Power: Policy and Prospects ed. P. M.
5. S Jones (John Wiley and Sons) 1987, p. 283