However, when we narrow our focus to the nuclear sector alone, the failure has been so abysmal that it beggars description. Let us start with some projections just to get a feel for how good nucleocrats are as futurologists. In 1962, Dr Homi J Bhabha made a 25 year forecast of nuclear capacity of 20,000 MW by the year 1987. In 1985 Dr Raja Ramanna launched the country on the programme of creating a nuclear capacity of 10,000 MW by the year 2000 which would have had not only a large number of 500 MW Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors working but also a prototype 500 MW fast breeder reactor in place. Our programme of 10,000 MW of PHWRs by the year 2000 will, starting at the beginning of the next century, lead to a much bigger programme of nuclear power through fast breeder reactors which have already been demonstrated on a commercial scale in other countries and the development of which has already been taken up in our country.
Nuclear energy is the only source of power in the future.
Coupled to this failure to perform is the fact that reactors have usually taken about three times their originally estimated costs to get completed quite a few years behind schedule and have generally worked to about half or less of their original capacity. Even fairly short-term predictions can be way out. In April 1993, after the devastating fire at Narora, Dr Chidambaram predicted that the reactor would restart operations in two months. It took 21 months for the reactor to actually commence operations. As of early 1996, its losses were running at more than Rs. 10 billion.