The terrible nuclear crisis at Fukushima in the wake of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami has raised concerns and questions about nuclear power in the whole world. While thousands of people in Berlin came on to the streets spontaneously to oppose nuclear energy, governments in China, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Poland and Philippines have issued a moratorium on their nuclear expansion plans.
Ignoring these worldwide concerns, the Indian nuclear establishment and the UPA Government are busy claiming how safe and disaster-proof India’s reactors are.
Protecting Nuclear Industry
Thanks to Wikileaks, now we know that sordid behind-the-scenes greased palms, with the connivance of the US, influenced the outcome of the vote in Parliament that saved the US-backed Nuke Deal. The recently passed Nuclear Liability Bill too was drafted under direct US pressure. It exempts both the supplier and operator from any compensation in case of damage due to natural disasters such as earthquakes and puts the burden on the public exchequer. So, if a Fukushima were to be repeated in India, the supplier and operator would escape having to pay any compensation whatsoever!
Even in other cases of accidents, the Nuke Liability Bill virtually exempts the supplier from liability and caps the liability of operators at a maximum of Rs. 1,500 crore. The Government’s liability too is capped at approximately $ 462 million. To put this amount in proper perspective one should note that in the case of the Bhopal gas disaster (undoubtedly far less of a disaster than a nuclear Chernobyl or Fukushima would be), the highly inadequate compensation Union Carbide was asked to pay was $ 470 million!
Nuclear corporations like Areva (the supplier at the proposed Jaitapur plant) have been pooh-poohing the protests of local residents who have raised safety issues. Though protestors have pointed out that Areva’s design is untested, Areva (echoed by the Indian establishment) has asserted that its plants will be safe. The question arises – if the nuclear industry and corporations are really so sure that their plants are safe, why are they so insistent on ‘caps on liability’? Why not offer full liability, if they are so sure of the plants’ safety?
The Liability legislation was prepared, ignoring the concerns and objections expressed by as many as Government’s own Ministries before a Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Bill. For instance Secretary for the Ministry of Health Sujata Rao testified before the committee that the health ministry was not consulted while drafting the bill. She warned that because hospitals are not well-equipped "it is natural that mortality and morbidity due to multiple burns, blasts, radiation injuries and psycho-social impact could be on a very high scale and medical tackling of such a large emergency could have enough repercussions in the nearby areas of radioactive fallout." She admitted that her Ministry had no wherewithal to meet such a nuclear emergency.
Poor Safety Record and No Independent Regulator
Although the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) have made statements asking for stricter safety audits, this is more for public consumption as India remains the only country where there is no independent nuclear regulator! The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in India is subservient to and answerable to the very institution it is supposed to regulate - the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)!! Further regulatory processes are shrouded in secrecy and the Indian public are restricted by draconian legislation like the Indian Atomic Energy Act 1962 even from asking questions.
India has a poor safety record in managing nuclear reactors and there have been a number of accidents and incidents exposing its safety claims. In the 1980s, radiation exposures to power plant workers were ten times the world average for each unit of electricity. Accidents involving high radiation exposures to workers were reported as late as 2003. The only safety measure that we know of after that is that the NPCIL has stopped publishing data on such incidents!!
Adding to the spin of global nuclear industry which has started blaming ‘old reactor design’ in Fukushima while until recently nuclear power in Japan was touted as exemplary, the higher officials of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) were trying to outdo each others in underplaying the situation and reassuring the global nuclear corporates that India would go ahead with its nuclear expansion. S K Jain, heading the NPCIL declared, “There is no nuclear accident or incident in Japan's Fukushima plants. It is a well planned emergency preparedness programme which the nuclear operators of the Tokyo Electric Power Company are carrying out to contain the residual heat after the plants had an automatic shut-down following a major earthquake.” Can the establishment which is busy denying this huge nuclear disaster at Fukushima be trusted to conduct a serious and honest audit of India’s safety preparedness?
Jain also added that “India was uniquely placed as it had a centralised emergency operating centre with well drawn procedures scrutinised by regulators.” The procedure that he was referring actually is nothing but a regular safety audit that NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd) does after every 2 years. India’s nuclear expansion is taking place in earthquake-prone zones and seashores like Jaitapur in Maharashtra, Kalpakkam and Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, Haripur in West Bengal and Mithivirdi in Gujrat. The existing reactors in Kakrapar, Narora (UP) and Tarapur are also located in densely populated earthquake-prone areas.
Inflated Performance Claims
Among the several core sectors encouraged in the independent India, its nuclear programme has been the worst performer despite the heavy funding, insulation from auditing and accountability and posterboy status it received. Producing just 2% of electricity, around 4000 MWs, its performance flies in the face of the tall claims of the DAE. Although the decision to import reactors under the Indo-US Nuclear Deal was taken by the UPA regime largely without consulting the DAE and evaluating the future nuclear energy scenario, the nuclear establishment has suddenly found all merits in it. The DAE haphazardly tried to fit 40,000 MWe capacity through reactors imported after the deal and deemed it necessary for 25% electricity generation from nuclear energy by 2052. Interestingly, DAE’s own 2004 projections, when Indo-US nuclear deal was not on the agenda, never talked of such energy need and planning. In other words, this grand nuclear-based energy projection is an after-thought concoction to justify the dubious Nuke Deal and not an inherent need of the country based on its sovereign energy planning.
The DAE’s expansion plans are dubious and totally inconsistent with its past record. The future projections of increasing nuclear power production by 100 times depend on critical advances in fast-breeder reactors and thorium technology. Fast-breeder is known to be ‘the technology of future whose time has passed’. All the initial champions of fast-breeder technology – including US, France and Japan – have shunned it, owing primarily to unmanageable costs and problems in handling sodium coolant. On the other hand, the Indian DAE is hugely subsidized and least bothered about public and environmental safety. The tsunami in southern India in 2002 had swept the Prototype Fast-breeder breaking the boundary walls. But apart from heightening the boundary, the DAE didn’t try to re-think its design and viability near the seashore. While it lauds itself on handling the damage caused by tsunami well, the truth is the reactor designs in Kalpakkam – both the MAPS(Madras Atomic Power Station) and FBTR(Fast Breeder Test Reactor) designs – hadn’t foreseen the tsunami hitting the reactors.
The Indian ruling establishment has resorted to every possible method to rehabilitate the declining global nuclear corporates. When the catastrophe in Japan was unfolding, the DAE ex-Chairman Anil Kakodkar was convincing the legislators in Maharashtra assembly about the necessity of the Jaitapur project. The Jaitapur nuclear power park would be much bigger than Fukushima in capacity and is being built on French nuclear giant Areva’s untested EPR reactor design about which 3000 objections have been raised by the European nuclear regulators. Even when the experts have pointed to problems with this environmentally disastrous, economically prohibitive and extremely risky project, the government is unleashing violent repression on the people of Ratnagiri area. While the activists and experts – even ex high court judges, government environmental panels and an ex-Navy Chief – are being labeled as provocateurs and outsiders and prohibited from entering the district, the administration has given externment orders for local activists and implicated dozens of them in false police cases. The only insider for the government seems to be the French company Areva!!!
Nuclear is Just Not the Answer
In a massive and global PR campaign in recent years, the nuclear industry has re-branded itself as being ‘green’ and a solution for climate change. Contrary to this claim, the nuclear reactors have huge carbon footprints – in carbon-intensive processes starting from mining to transportation, construction up to decommissioning.
In a press conference organized by the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre in Tokyo last week, Masashi Goto who was an engineer during Fukushima’s construction testified that a tsunami of this scale just wasn’t imagined 40 years ago during the construction. One of the costly lessons from Fukushima is that the nuclear option is least advisable in an unpredictable climate change scenario as it is virtually impossible to take into account all the safety measures required in the future.
Also, it is important to put the energy security question in proper perspective. Nuclear energy is neither safe nor reliable, and it is not a solution for our growing energy needs. Even after the massive expansion, nuclear will contribute only 6-7% of the total electricity and around 2.3% of the total energy consumption. No source can provide guaranteed supply of energy for the unending growth fetish of capitalism. And in capitalist growth, only a limited part of electricity generated goes for actual consumption and the rest is consumed by energy-guzzling sectors such as advertising, military industrial complex, excessive bureaucracy etc. If a post-capitalist world could be won, socialized production could minimize these wastages and ensuing environmental damage substantially without really curbing any of our genuine energy needs. The nuclear energy question calls for an overhaul of the political economy of energy, and therefore needs an urgent intervention from the left ranks.
The Fukushima crisis has led to an upsurge of public opposition to nuclear power worldwide. This would also mean stricter safety norms globally and would render a nuclear renaissance more expensive and politically sensitive. We must ensure the government in our country doesn’t succeed in making this country a dumping ground of this effectively obsolete and dangerous technology.
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