The Indian Railways has approached the Nuclear Power Corporation of India limited (NPCIl) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to set up a captive nuclear power plant to meet its growing energy demands.
“Yes, we are exploring possibilities about the use of nuclear power in Railways. Advantage of nuclear power is that the price will remain stable for a long period of time and in fact, it can even come down as the life of the plant goes up and input cost is recovered,” Railway Board’s Member (Electrical) Kul Bhushan said.
Railways is tight-lipped about the location of this plant but sources claim ‘existing nuclear sites’ were possible options for this captive plant. Despite apprehensions about nuclear power and related protests in some parts of the country, the Railways is confident that its idea would see the light of day.
Railways’ current power demand is about 3,000 MW and it is expected to go up by another 1,000-2,000 MW in next 10 years or so. At current prices, Indian Railways’ diesel bill stands at about Rs 16,000 crore per annum and electricity charges at another Rs 9,000 crore every year.
“We hope to save some money by lowering expenditure. Saving on fuel bill is one of the ways we are looking at,” the senior Railway official said, adding, “Producing electricity on our own would help us save money.”
Of the total 64,000 route km of Railway network, roughly 24,000 km has been electrified. This electrified route carries about 67 per cent of freight and another 50 per cent of passenger traffic.
One of the total four units of Railways’ 1,000 MW captive thermal power plant at Nabi Nagar in Bihar is expected to be operational by June 2014 and subsequently, the remaining units will be readied in a gap of every three months. Railways’ second captive thermal power plant of 1,320 MW capacity at Adra in West Bengal is also in the pipeline. “We are also aspiring for getting at least 10 per cent of our total energy requirement through conventional sources. The newly set up Railway Energy Management Company, in collaboration with Railway and RITES ltd, is working on it,” Kul Bhushan said.