Abstract

The Atom in India: Searching for Sources

The quantity of power used per capita in a country is the index of its development and standard of living. The per capita consumption of electricity in India, before the Five Year plan, has been only 14 kilowatt-hours. Present sources of energy are coal, oil, and water-power. In proportion to its size, population, and supplies of raw materials India is poorly endowed with coal and oil, it is possible of course that some sources have not yet been explored. According to the Geological Survey of India, reserves of coal of all grades amount to sixty billion tons, of which twenty billion tons are workable and only five billion of good quality. Average production is about thirty million tons a year, with the Indian railways consuming 32 per cent of the total. India's good coal is confined to Bihar and West Bengal, except for small seams in Assam and Hyberabad, and because of the distance of the fields from industrial centers its use for the generation of power is very costly.