Heavy Water Board (HWB) is a constituent unit under the Department of Atomic Energy in the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

. The organisation is primarily responsible for production of heavy water (D₂O) which is used as a moderator and coolant in nuclear power as well as research reactors. Other than heavy water, the HWB is also engaged with production of nuclear grade solvents and extraction of rare materials. India is one of the largest manufacturers of heavy water in the world. Similarly, India has one of the world's largest fleets of

pressurized heavy water reactor A pressurized heavy-water reactor (PHWR) is a nuclear reactor that uses heavy water ( deuterium oxide D2O) as its coolant and neutron moderator. PHWRs frequently use natural uranium as fuel, but sometimes also use very low enriched uranium. The ...

s producing most of India's nuclear power supply.

History

The research in heavy water production was initiated by the Chemical Engineering Division of

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It was founded by Homi Jehangir Bhabha as the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 1 ...

(BARC) in the 1960s and was continued by the Heavy Water Division of BARC where a pilot plant was operated for studying the H2S-H2O exchange process. While these studies were in progress, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) commissioned the first heavy water plant in India at

Nangal Nangal is a town, near city of Rupnagar in Rupnagar district in Punjab, India. It sits at the foot of the Shiwalik Hills where it was established after plans for a dam required the movement of previously established villages. Residential area ...

Punjab, India Punjab (; ) is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and ...

in the premises of National Fertilisers Limited (NFL) in 1962. The plant had to be dismantled owing to national security considerations arising out of the

disinvestment Disinvestment refers to the use of a concerted economic boycott to pressure a government, industry, or company towards a change in policy, or in the case of governments, even regime change. The term was first used in the 1980s, most commonly in ...

of NFL. The plant used to be operated by NFL and the DAE ensured the quality of the product.

Plants

HWB currently operating seven plants around the country.

HWP Baroda

Heavy Water Plant at

Baroda Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capital ...

is the first plant set up in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

for the production of heavy water by employing Monothermal

Ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous wa ...

Hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...

exchange process. The plant is located 8 km north from Baroda railway station along the national highway No. 8, adjacent to the Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd. (GSFC).The plant was integrated with GSFC until 1999 when GSFC upgraded their Ammonia plant to an incompatible low pressure system resulting in temporary suspension in the operations of the Heavy Water Plant.
HWP Baroda also has a potassium metal plant for supply of

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosph ...

metal for preparing

catalyst Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

solution for all monothermal ammonia-hydrogen exchange plants. The plant was expanded in 1987 to enhance the production capacity to 52 MT/year and has a capability to meet the demands of external customers also. This plant is based on Thermal reduction of Potassium Fluoride with Calcium Carbide initially developed by Hoechst A.G., Werk Griesheim, West Germany. An independent front end was added to produce Ammonia at this time. This plant was commissioned in 1975 with an initial rated capacity of 30 MT/year. The plant was awarded ISO-9001:2000 on 06.08.2002. with calcium carbide initially

HWP Hazira

HWP (

Hazira Hazira is a suburb and a transshipment port in the Surat City in the Gujarat state of India. It is the west most end of Surat. Hazira is one of the major ports of India and the most important element of Surat Metropolitan Region. The town is ...

) is the second heavy water plant in the country based on the ammonia-hydrogen exchange process which has been set up without foreign collaboration. It employs the ammonia-hydrogen exchange monothermal process. The plant is located at a distance of about 16 km from Surat city. Work on this plant commenced in August 1986 and the plant was commissioned in February 1991.

HWP Kota

The Heavy Water Plant at Kota is indigenously built and is based on the bithermal H2O-H2S exchange process. The plant is located in

Rawatbhata Rawatbhata is a city, Tehsil and Nagar Palika in Chittorgarh District, Rajasthan, India. It is 131 km from Chittorgarh city, 50 km from the nearest city, Kota. The city has eight nuclear power stations, an under-construction nuclear fuel ...

at a distance of 65 km from Kota Railway Station, adjacent to

Rajasthan Atomic Power Station The Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS; also ''Rajasthan Atomic Power Project'' - RAPP) is located at Rawatbhata in the state of Rajasthan, India. History The construction of the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station Canada began in 196 ...

(RAPS). The Heavy Water Plant is integrated with RAPS for its supply of power and steam. An oil fired steam generation plant is also added to ensure uninterrupted supply of steam during the shut down periods of RAPS. Water from the nearby Rana Pratap Sagar reservoir, on the Chambal River, purified of suspended and dissolved impurities forms the process feed with the D20.

HWP Manuguru

The Heavy Water Plant at

Manuguru Manuguru is a census town and mandal in Bhadradri Kothagudem district in the Indian state of Telangana. It comes under the Mahaboobabad Parliamentary constituency and the Pinapaka Assembly constituency. Manuguru is an urban area, situated on ...

Telangana Telangana (; , ) is a state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India with a geographical area of and 3 ...

is based on the bithermal hydrogen sulphide-water (H2S-H2O) exchange process. This plant with a capacity of 185

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s per year is the second plant based on this process, the earlier one being at Kota, Rajasthan for which the complete technology has been developed indigenously by BARC and HWB. The Manuguru site was chosen because of its proximity to Singareni coal fields and

Godavari The Godavari (IAST: ''Godāvarī'' �od̪aːʋəɾiː is India's second longest river after the Ganga river and drains into the third largest basin in India, covering about 10% of India's total geographical area. Its source is in Trimbakeshwa ...

river which provide respectively large quantities of coal and water required by the plant. It was commissioned in December 1991. It is the flagship plant of Heavy Water Board. It also has a captive power plant having 3 × 30 MWe generating capacity along with providing process steam to Heavy Water Plant production.

HWP Talcher

Heavy Water Plant at

Talcher Talcher is one of the 4 sub-divisions of Angul district in the Indian state of Odisha. History During the British Raj Talcher was the capital of Talcher State, one of the princely states of the Eastern States Agency.Malleson, G. B.: ''An his ...

employs the ammonia-hydrogen exchange process (bithermal). The plant is located at a distance of 150 km from Bhubaneshwar. The work on this plant in October 1972 and it was commissioned in March 1985. Operation of the plant was suspended in August 1994 due to unsatisfactory operation of the fertilizer plant of the

Fertilizer Corporation of India Limited Fertilizer Corporation of India is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the ownership of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Government of India. in India. It began in 1961 when Indian government consolidated several state ...

, Talcher. Subsequent to closure of the Heavy Water Plant in Talcher, the plant operation was resumed later and an R&D pilot plant has been commissioned for the production of di-2-ethyl hexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA), an effective metal extractant, used for hydro-metallurgical recovery and the separation of various metals. The

solvent A solvent (s) (from the Latin '' solvō'', "loosen, untie, solve") is a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a solution. A solvent is usually a liquid but can also be a solid, a gas, or a supercritical fluid. Water is a solvent for ...

is useful for concentrating and purifying the valuable metal solutions of low-grade complex ores and is already being used by India's nuclear industry at various commercial operations for the separation and recovery of

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...

and

lanthanides The lanthanide () or lanthanoid () series of chemical elements comprises the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57–71, from lanthanum through lutetium. These elements, along with the chemically similar elements scandium and ytt ...

. In addition TBP is used in the

PUREX PUREX (plutonium uranium reduction extraction) is a chemical method used to purify fuel for nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. PUREX is the ''de facto'' standard aqueous nuclear reprocessing method for the recovery of uranium and plutonium ...

process of nuclear reprocessing allowing the recovery of plutonium and

reprocessed uranium Reprocessed uranium (RepU) is the uranium recovered from nuclear reprocessing, as done commercially in France, the UK and Japan and by nuclear weapons states' military plutonium production programs. This uranium makes up the bulk of the material s ...

from

spent nuclear fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and ...

. As the technology can be used both for high

burnup In nuclear power technology, burnup (also known as fuel utilization) is a measure of how much energy is extracted from a primary nuclear fuel source. It is measured as the fraction of fuel atoms that underwent fission in %FIMA (fissions per ini ...

fuel yielding

reactor grade plutonium Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes der ...

for use in

MOX fuel Mixed oxide fuel, commonly referred to as MOX fuel, is nuclear fuel that contains more than one oxide of fissile material, usually consisting of plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. MOX fuel is an al ...

and for extracting weapons grade plutonium from low irradiated fuel, the technology is inherently dual use. Presently HWP Talcher houses three chemical plants: #Di-2-ethyl hexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) # Tri-Butyl Phosphate (TBP) #B-10 Enrichment Facility

HWP Thal

Heavy Water Plant Thal is the first of second generation plants in India and is made completely with indigenous efforts. It is located at Thal-Vaishet village in Raigad district of Maharashtra and is about 100 km south of Mumbai on National Highway No.66. The site is also accessible from Gateway of India, Mumbai by speedboats and Catamaran services. Work on HWP Thal was started in February 1982 and plant was commissioned in 1985.

HWP Tuticorin

HWP Tuticorin is located in the port town of

Tuticorin Thoothukudi (formerly Tuticorin) is a port city, a municipal corporation and an industrial city in Thoothukudi district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The city lies in the Coromandel Coast of Bay of Bengal. Thoothukudi is the capital and ...

in Southern India. The plant employs an ammonia-hydrogen exchange process (mono-thermal). The plant was commissioned in July 1978. Along with heavy water, the site is also engaged for production of different types of solvents, which will be used in Indian Nuclear Industry, and other activities.

References

{{Nuclear power in India Nuclear power in India Government agencies for energy (India) Year of establishment missing