As the world moves away from uranium and nuclear weapons, India has adopted a policy to ensure it is not considered a nuclear weapons state. India is actively developing a nuclear fuel cycle centered on thorium to reduce its long-term dependence on uranium. This is because India holds roughly 30% of global thorium reserves but only about 1-2% of uranium reserves. This transition is the core focus of the country’s strategic independence plan.
How Thorium Works
This long-term atomic strategy, designed by physicist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, uses a closed fuel cycle divided into three distinct phases:
Stage 1 (Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors)
Uses natural uranium to generate power and produce plutonium-239 as a byproduct.
Stage 2 (Fast Breeder Reactors)
Utilizes the plutonium from the first stage to breed more fissile material and convert fertile materials, marking a critical bridge toward thorium usage. The indigenous Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, achieved the milestone of first criticality.
Stage 3 (Thorium-Based Reactors): Envisions feeding domestic thorium together with bred uranium-233 into advanced heavy water reactors to sustain long-term energy generation.
Current Status
Thorium is not an immediate, direct drop-in replacement for natural uranium because it is fertile rather than fissile. It must first be transformed using neutrons through the reactor breeding process.
While uranium still powers India’s operational nuclear network today, the successful progression of fast breeder technology moves the nation closer to unlocking its vast coastal thorium deposits for centuries of energy.
Pakistan is not actively developing an energy project or commercial fuel cycle based on thorium. While Pakistani defense and policy analysts closely monitor and express security concerns regarding neighboring India’s long-term, multi-stage thorium and fast breeder reactor program, Pakistan’s own civil nuclear energy efforts rely on Chinese-supplied Hualong One reactors at Chashma and Karachi.
– India holds the most thorium in the world, with estimated reserves of roughly 846,000 to 960,000 tonnes, about a quarter of the global total.
– Top Thorium-Holding Countries Other Than India:
– Brazil: 632,000 tonnes
– Australia: 595,000 tonnes
– United States: 595,000 tonnes
– Egypt: 380,000 tonnes
It is also widely considered that India is heavily promoting that it is working on thorium fueling and dropping nuclear energy because India wants to show the world only to conceal its nuclear status.
I appreciate the United States of America, which no doubt used nuclear weapons to stop a brutal nation from killing innocent people. As I have written many times, the heap of dead bodies created by the Japanese was quite bigger than the result of the American atom bomb. America knows the destruction of atomic weapons and, with sincere effort and desire, does not wish that any other country uses atomic weapons. The leadership of the Pakistan Army is sincerely working with America for peace. President Trump is a real Prince of Peace.
May my Lord Jesus Christ bless. Peace to the world.