Last November, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif performed the ground breaking ceremony of Pakistan's largest nuclear power projects, Kanupp-II and Kanupp-III. China is providing two reactors alongside a concessional loan of $6.5 billion for the construction of these $9.395 billion plants.
When completed in November 2019, these would add 2,200MW to Pakistan's electric power, at a very cheap rate. This would indeed mitigate the problems of power shortage and high per-unit cost of electricity. Average price of power generated by Chashma-3 and 4 would be around Rs 9.59 per unit, much less than the price of electricity generated by thermal plants running on gas or oil. Due to economy of scales, new Kanupp category plants would produce cheaper electricity than the Chashma class power plants. Nuclear power compares favourably with all other sources except hydro-electric power.
Coal and nuclear power generation processes offer the cheapest per unit generation cost after water and domestic gas. With building of large scale dams irretrievably politicised and dwindling supply of local gas, the choice of cheap electricity is narrowed down to coal and nuclear power plants. Of these two, going by the economy of scales and environmental impact, nuclear power generation is cheaper and cleaner. Nuclear power is cleaner than all fossil fuels in terms of its impact on the environment. Prime Minister has outlined a vision that by 2050, nuclear energy Pakistan will add 40,000 MWe to country's energy-mix. The ACP1 000 model of the PWR concept, to be commissioned in Karachi, is a proven design. The ACP1000 uses the basic PWR design with safety improvements added, to meet the current safety targets of Generation-III reactors and after incorporating the lessons learnt from the Fukushima accident. It is based on the earlier CPR1000 design, which has been used in 15 plants now under construction in China, of which the first unit started operations in 2010.
An American think tank, Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) has recently released its comparative nuclear security indexation encompassing world-wide nuclear material security. NTi's proclaimed mission is to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Its assessment is pegged around a five points' criterion: quantities and sites; security and control measures; global norms; domestic commitments and capacity; and risk environment. This study has assessed Pakistan as the 'most improved' country among nine nuclear armed states.
Pakistan, which improved its score by three points compared with 2012, and has demonstrated the largest improvement by any nuclear armed state. Country's score benefited primarily from increased physical protection and stringent regulation of licenses and on-site security reviews. Report credits Pakistan for having an operational Centre of Excellence. Pakistan has also participated in new bilateral and multilateral assistance, although, its score for Voluntary Commitments was already high.
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