An Indian-promoted, US-headquartered company, Clean Core Thorium Energy (CCTE), has developed a nuclear fuel that can enable India to tap into its abundant thorium resources. It has announced a tie-up with NTPC, India’s largest integrated power company. This tie-up will help NTPC further its ambitions in the nuclear energy sector, into which it plans to foray. 

This is the second tie-up that CCTE has formed with an Indian company after L&T in October. CCTE’s nuclear fuel is a combination of ‘high assay low enriched uranium’, or HALEU, and thorium. This fuel, which it calls ANEEL, for Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life, can be used straightaway into India’s existing Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors, thus enabling the use of the huge thorium the country is blessed with. India’s thorium reserves, estimated to be a million tonnes, can last centuries, if not millennia, and is the country’s biggest energy resource. Furthermore, ANEEL is also proliferation-resistant. However, it is pertinent to note that ANEEL is still undergoing irradiation tests at the US Idaho National Laboratory. Also, the use of ANEEL would mean importing HALEU from the US. 

• Read:Why India wants 1 GeV particle accelerator for thorium

The tie-up with NTPC is for “exploring development & deployment of ANEEL fuel in India, exploring possible indigenisation of ANEE fuel manufacturing, local supply chain development, exploring establishment of supply chain for HALEU and exploring supply of Uranium to India with sovereign guarantee,” according to a press release. 

CCTE was set up in the US by Mehul Shah, a Gujarati businessman. Lakshmi Narayanan, former CEO of Cognizant; Dr Anil Kakodkar, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; and M K Narayanan, former National Security Adviser, are among the people closely associated with CCTE.  

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