India to assess hybrid nuclear reactor technology

New Delhi: India's Department of Atomic Energy has expressed its interest in assessing nuclear technology developed by an Indian-American physicist that has the potential to overcome the twin problems of radioactive waste and the production of military-grade material from the conventional nuclear reactors.

The Super X Divertor (SXD) technology developed by Swadesh Mahajan, an Indian-born physicist, currently located at the University of Texas, has combined fusion and fission in a hybrid reactor, in which neutrons generated through fusion are used to advance and augment a fission reactor. The technology marks the first development of a hybrid reactor.

Under current technology, nuclear power is produced through nuclear fission, which results in radioactive waste as well as fissile weapons-grade material.

Nuclear fusion which does not produce waste.

"Yes, we took the name from comic books, but it is by no means a piece of science fiction," Mahajan said.

"We have designed a credible, compact, high power density neutron source and a hybrid reactor, in which the fusion source and the fission reactor can interact very efficiently and systematically to achieve waste destruction and fuel breeding," Mahajan said while talking to science writers in Delhi. "It can burn all bomb making isotopes to minimise proliferation risk."