Anyone who¡¯s ever dealt with it has a long list of complaints about the Indian state. They will point out that it rarely invests in long-term solutions and doesn¡¯t seem capable of world-class infrastructure or supporting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs.
Sometimes, the doubters are wrong.?Last month, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a locally designed and built nuclear reactor had reached criticality ¡ª meaning that its internal chain reaction was now self-sustaining ¡ª he was right to say that it was a tremendous achievement.
India already has 25 nuclear reactors generating power for the grid. But this one, in the southern town of Kalpakkam, is different. It¡¯s a fast-breeder reactor ¡ª a rare, more complicated variant that uses plutonium extracted from regular reactors¡¯ spent fuel to produce electricity alongside more fissile material. A resource-starved country is naturally desperate for an energy source that, in effect, produces more usable fuel than it consumes.
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