At a time when coal and gas shortages have crippled operations at most of India’s thermal stations, a boost in nuclear fuel is set to take atomic power generation to a seven-year record next fiscal. With supplies from a new uranium mine and processing facility at Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh set to commence later this year, the capacity factor of the 20 operational nuclear reactors, adding up to an installed capacity...

An independent study says some 250 thermal power projects that have got clearances may be meant just to grab land and water resources. THERE have been a growing number of headlines that speak of an energy crisis and the energy deficit in India in the last few years. The disparities in the demand-supply scenario, the increasing prospects of disruptions in the global supply of fuel and the consequent results of higher...

'Economic growth will need massive energy. Will we allow an accident in Japan, in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima, arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail our dreams to be an economically developed nation?' Every single atom in the universe carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its heart, called the nucleus. This form of energy, often called Type-1 fuel, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful...

Contributory factors: Coal shortage, overdrawal by States, early winter and of course, Telangana agitation The country is facing a severe shortage of electricity. Coal shortage in power plants and heavy overdrawal by some States have aggravated the crisis, especially during the festive months. In addition, the setting in of winter has led to a decline in hydro power production. In the South, the Telangana agitation has badly hit power supplies in Andhra...

In March this year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided the houses and businesses of a few top industrialists in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, home to one of the subsidiaries of India's biggest coal miner, Coal India (CIL). Dhanbad is more widely known in popular imagination as home of the infamous 'coal mafia', which spread a reign of terror across the coal mining districts of the then undivided Bihar in the...