This American company could help India’s thorium dream

Path of least resistance

But Shah sees larger potential for Clean Core. Unlike Holtec, whose export license was endorsed by the two Mumbai-based industrial giants Larsen & Toubro and Tata Consulting Engineers, Clean Core had its permit approved by two of India’s atomic regulators and its main state-owned nuclear company. By focusing on fuel rather than new reactors, Clean Core could become a vendor to the majority of the existing plants already operating in India. 

Its technology diverges not only from that of other US nuclear companies but also from the approach used in China. Last year, China made waves by bringing its first thorium-fueled reactor online. This enabled it to establish a new foothold in a technology the US had invented and then abandoned, and it gave Beijing another leg up in atomic energy.

But scaling that technology will require building out a whole new kind of reactor. That comes at a cost. A recent Johns Hopkins University study found that China’s success in building nuclear reactors stemmed in large part from standardization and repetition of successful designs, virtually all of which have been light-water reactors. Using thorium in existing heavy-water reactors lowers the bar for popularizing the fuel, according to the younger Shah. 

“We think ours is the path of least resistance,” Milan Shah says. “Maybe not being completely revolutionary in the way you look at nuclear today, but incredibly evolutionary to progress humanity forward.” 

The company has plans to go beyond pressurized heavy-water reactors. Within two years, the elder Shah says, Clean Core plans to design a version of its fuel that could work in the light-water reactors that make up the entire US fleet of 94. But it’s not a simple conversion. For starters, there’s the size: While the PHWR fuel rods are about 50 centimeters in length, the rods that go into light-water reactors are roughly four meters long. Then there’s the history of challenges with light water’s absorption of neutrons that could otherwise be captured to induce fission in the thorium. 

For Anil Kakodkar, the former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission and a mentor to Shah, popularizing thorium could help rectify one of the darker chapters in his country’s nuclear development. In 1974, India became the first country since the signing of the first global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to successfully test an atomic weapon. New Delhi was never a signatory to the pact. But the milestone prompted neighboring Pakistan to develop its own weapons. 

In response, President Jimmy Carter tried to demonstrate Washington’s commitment to reversing the Cold War arms race by sacrificing the first US effort to commercialize nuclear waste recycling, since the technology to separate plutonium and other radioisotopes from uranium in spent fuel was widely seen as a potential new source of weapons-grade material. By running its own reactors on thorium, Kakodkar says, India can chart a new path for newcomer nations that want to harness the power of the atom without stoking fears that nuclear weapons capability will spread. 

“The proliferation concerns will be dismissed to a significant extent, allowing more rapid growth of nuclear power in emerging countries,” he says. “That will be a good thing for the world at large.” 

Alexander C. Kaufman is a reporter who has covered energy, climate change, pollution, business, and geopolitics for more than a decade.