Perpetual Power Technologies
By the time, India’s first domestic venture capital funded domestic company started operations in June 1990 – a lot had changed. The company shifted to Bangalore and procured a plot of land adjacent to India’s first solar company – Tata BP Solar. In those days solar was USD 30 per watt (it is now 0.06 per watt). Niether solar nor nuclear made sense.
So Perpetual Power became a HCL associate to make UPS systems. I stayed put in Delhi and exited. Arjun Malhotra and Shiv Nadars brother Dr Balakrishnan who worked in NASA became the new shareholders in Perpetual Power. The company got a new CTO from Aplab called Suryanarayan to build a UPS. And the rest was anything but nuclear. Like many companies of its age, inspite of Umesh’s marketing brilliance and the HCL network – it didn’t go anywhere.
Time went by and nuclear became one of those things that moved like any govt file. Then in 2004, President Kalam took office. Files began to move. Mr MR Srinivasan was back in power. He had retired but was now back in Delhi as a key advisor in Lutyens Delhi. It was decided that private sector participation would be allowed in nuclear power generation. Like many others, I bought a new set of books. Thorium was becoming popular. All kinds of Americans were talking of mini nuclear. And even micro nuclear.
By 2012, two Indian startups had designed a micro nuclear reactor. The problem was that a nuclear reactor just gives you heat. But in tropical India – you don’t need heat – you need electricity. How do you convert the heat into electricity.
Large nuclear plants convert heat into electricity using steam turbines. 70% of the energy is lost. 30% max becomes electricity. There are four types of nuclear reactors – boiler water, light water, heavy water and molten salt. All the reactors in India are if the first three type. The problem is that these reactors produce low temperature steam. Only one company – Alsthom (now EDF) makes such steam turbines). The coal plants use superheated steam and Japanese turbines.
In 2015, shortly after the BJP had come to power, Ravi Sharma and I went to meet RP Singh, the dynamic CMD of NTPC with a proposal to replace coal boilers with nuclear reactors. We had solved the steam temperature problem by adding a booster reactor.
In the 2024 union budget, the Indian govt announced a Rs 100,000 crore support for nuclear. Everything had changed. At the cost of sounding immodest – the iit alumni group was a good twenty years ahead of anyone else in the world. Our startups are kicking at full speed. With a target capital cost of Rs 8 crores per MW – this is cheaper than any option.
Thorium needs negligible land and can produce power for under Rs 5 per kWh. Fuel and maintenance are under Rs 0.5 out of this.
I need to head back to L&T to explore if nuclear can indeed be done. And if they will do it.
RIP MR Srinivasan
Wish you could have seen the reactor fire.