India has made a remarkable progress in operating the entire nuclear fuel cycle consisting of mining, milling, fuel fabrication, nuclear reactor operation and spent fuel management. The Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD) established over 6600 tones of additional uranium resources at Lostoin, Wakhyn, West Khasi Hills Meghalaya, Chitriat, Nalgonda District, Andhra Pradesh, and Rahul, Sikar District Rajasthan. Prospecting and drilling for the precious resources continued in several areas in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
The Nuclear Fuel Complex met the fuel requirements of all the operating pressurized heavy water reactors and boiling water reactors. NFC supplied the entire initial full core fuel requirement of unit 3 of the Tarapur Atomic Power Project TAPP-3, the reactor internals of unit 6 of Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP-6), the coolant tubes and Garter springs for replacement in Units 1 &2 of the Narota Atomic Power Station and the first supply of titanium bal alloy hydraulic tubes which is a critical component in the Light Combat Aircraft for the Aeronautical Development Authority. The scientists and engineers at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research operated the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) at Kalpakam without any failure of the mixed carbide fuel used, for a record length of time.
During 2006-07, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) achieved the target capacity addition of 1300 MWe in the Xth plan with the commissioning of two nuclear power reactors of 540 MWe capacity at Tarapur (TAPP-3&4) and two units of 220MWe at Kaiga (Kaiga-3&4). The total generation including wind power generation at Kudankulam was 398 million units more than last year. But the overall capacity factory for the nuclear power plants was low at 63%. NPCIL successfully completed the life extension and safety up-gradation of unit-1 of the Narora Atomic Power Sta¬tion (NAPS-1) within the estimated cost and time.
The Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) and NPCIL developed various LASER-based tools indigenously to reduce radiation exposures to workers involved in replacement of coolant tubes at NAPS-1. NPCIL concentrates its research and development (R&D) activities in 21 areas in nuclear and electronic systems which include new and improvised technologies to enhance safety, safety experiments to validate design parameters, methods to reduce operation and maintenance costs of operating units, management of radioactive waste, ageing and degradation studies, remote inspection, maintenance, emergency handling and refurbishment/repair technologies, indigenization of processes, equipment and components, development of electronics and computer based systems for existing nuclear power plants among others.
The sophisticated tools used by NPCIL helped in situation inspection to identify locations where suspected leakages on the steel liners in the vault of KAPS-1 occur and an indigenously developed automatic cutting level inspection on machine for feeder pipe replacement during the en masse coolant channel replacement campaign. This helped to reduce plant outage time and to save substantial foreign exchange. All this is not enough and India is working still had to develop more advanced nuclear technology.