28-07-2025
India's 1st private test facility for heavy water upgrade opens
In a small but significant step towards speeding up the operationalisation of nuclear power plants, India's nuclear establishment has, for the first time, roped in private players to carry out a key process that was so far handled entirely in-house.
Mumbai-based TEMA India has been entrusted with testing the equipment required for upgrading of depleted heavy water, a crucial requirement at all Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors in India. Until now, the testing was done by the country's main nuclear research, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
TEMA India inaugurated its test facility two days ago at Achchad in Palghar district, about 100 km north of Mumbai, where it will manufacture equipment such as distillation columns and integrate and test them before sending them to reactor sites for installation.
The Department of Atomic Energy said the facility was designed and built by TEMA India's nuclear vertical under technology transfer from BARC and a 'purchase order' from Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL).
'What we have built is a single-point solution for the upgrading of heavy water. Earlier, the distillation columns and modules used to be manufactured by other vendors, then assembled and tested by BARC. The entire process was perhaps taking seven to eight years. We will be able to reduce this time period by at least one to two years,' said Sunil Kubal, Executive Director-Nuclear at TEMA India.
Heavy water (D2O) is a form of water (H2O) with deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen, instead of regular hydrogen, and is used as a coolant as well as moderator for slowing down fast-moving neutrons during a chain reaction, essential for sustaining the nuclear fission process.
D2O needs to be 99.9% pure for working efficiently. But with time, it gets contaminated with light or regular water, requiring the depleted D2O to be upgraded back to 99.9% using a distillation process. TEMA India will not only manufacture the components required for the distillation process, but will also test them to ensure they produce the right results.
At the inauguration ceremony Saturday, TEMA India also dispatched the first batch of tested distillation column sections for deployment at Unit 8 of the Rawatbhata Nuclear Power Plant (RAPP-8) in Rajasthan, which is scheduled to go critical by December this year.
The company will also manufacture and test distillation equipment for the upcoming four nuclear reactors at Gorakhpur in Haryana and two at Kaiga in Karnataka. 'We are hoping to get more orders in the future. The Indian nuclear industry is set to expand rapidly, and we hope to play an important role in its growth,' Kubal said.
India has set its eyes at achieving 100 GW of installed nuclear energy capacity by 2047. There are 24 nuclear reactors operational in India, with an installed capacity of 8,780 MW. The government had approved construction of 10 more nuclear reactors in 2015, of which one has come onboard, while the rest — with a combined capacity of 13.6 GW — are under construction. The immediate target is to achieve 22.4 GW of installed capacity by 2032. The government has also launched a `20,000-crore Nuclear Energy Mission to develop Small Modular Reactors.
