By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Mar 14 (IPS) – Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week,
which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a
wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme.
When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United
States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for
nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are
queuing up for contracts.
The biggest of these contracts was signed in Dec. 2010 with French state-
owned manufacturer Areva. The contracted 9,900-megawatt nuclear power
park, the world’s largest, ran into public resistance over its location in
Jaitapur-Madban, in the Konkan area of western Maharashtra state.
“Apart from our opposition to nuclear power we object to the selection of the
site on the Konkan coast which falls in a known seismic belt,” Laxminarayan
Ramdas, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and
Peace, told IPS.
“The unfortunate events in Japan and the possibility of a meltdown at the
Fukushima nuclear power plant should serve as wakeup call for the
proponents of nuclear energy in this country,” said Ramdas.
Jaitapur, on the Konkan coast, falls in the “high damage risk zone” in the
official earthquake hazard map of India.
Over the past 20 years there have been three earthquakes in Jaitapur
exceeding five points on the Richter scale, and the worst of them in 1993 –
measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale – left 9,000 people dead in the Konkan
region.
“The Konkan is one of the world’s hottest biodiversity hotspots and a nuclear
accident could result in extensive and long-term damage from radioactivity,”
Ramdas said.
Ramdas, who served as India’s naval chief (1990 – 1993) and won the 2004
Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding for his
efforts at building peace between Pakistan and India, has been barred from
entering Jaitapur by the Maharashtra government.
“The government is promoting an exorbitantly expensive reactor design
[European Pressurised Reactor or EPR] which has not been cleared by the
nuclear regulatory authority of any country, including France,” Ramdas said.
“We don’t know who they are trying to please.”
The world’s first EPR reactor, under construction in Olkiluoto, Finland, is
mired in litigation with Finnish, French, British and U.S. nuclear regulators
who have raised a slew of serious safety issues.
India’s public sector Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) has so
far signed nuclear cooperation agreements for the supply of equipment or
fuel with the U.S., Russia, France, Britain, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan,
Mongolia and Namibia – and has plans to set up ten nuclear energy parks.
But, plans to set up nuclear energy parks in Kudankulam, in southern Tamil
Nadu, Mithi Virdi in western Gujarat, Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh, and Haripur
in West Bengal have run into protests by local farmers’ or fishermen’s groups.
The loudest of the protests has been coming from Kudankulam where a
9,200-megawatt power plant is fast coming up with Russian VVER (water-
cooled, water-moderated energy reactor) technology, popular in the former
Soviet bloc countries.
S.P. Udayakumar, who leads the influential National Alliance of Anti-nuclear
Movements, and is based in Nagercoil city in Tamil Nadu, told IPS that what
happened at Fukushima could happen anywhere in the world regardless of
precautions.
“There are serious lessons here for India, just as the world is preparing for the
25th anniversary of the deadly nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl on
Apr. 26,” stressed Udayakumar. “But the Indian nuclear establishment is in
denial mode.”
“After the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami damaged the Kalpakkam
nuclear facility [also in Tamil Nadu] and caused several deaths there, India’s
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) busied itself with assurances that India’s
nuclear power plants were safe,” said Udayakumar.
While the reactors of the Madras Atomic Power Plant (MAPP) at Kalpakkam
escaped damage, DAE officials admitted that they were not constructed with
the possibility of a tsunami, of a type that killed 225,000 people in 11
countries, in mind.
“After Fukushima Daiichi, the Indian public must sit up and assert itself on the
dangerous nuclear power programme that the Indian government and the
nuclear establishment are foisting on the people,” Udayakumar said. “So far,
this has been marked by lack of transparency, unaccountability, forcible land
acquisitions and police repression.”
Indian experts and officials continue to insist that the 20 functional nuclear
power plants scattered all over the country are safe. On Sunday, the NPCIL
released a statement saying that the event in Japan was being reviewed.
“Resulting out of such review, any reinforcement as needed would be
implemented,” the statement said.
NPCIL also said: “After the severe [7.6 on the Richter] earthquake of Gujarat,
Bhuj on Jan. 26, 2001, the Kakrapar atomic power station continued to
operate safely. Similarly, during the tsunami event in 2004, MAPP was safely
shut down without any radiological consequences.”
“Generally speaking, India’s nuclear plants are built to withstand
earthquakes,” says Vinod Menon, an international consultant who, until last
year, was a prominent member of the National Disaster Management
Authority.
But Menon admits that there are many imponderables such as the actual
intensity of a temblor or just how close the epicentre of a seismic event is to
the surface of the earth.
“Going by what we know the densely populated Ganges and Brahmaputra
valleys that lie below the Himalayas – a vast, 2,900 kilometre mountain chain
– are prone to strong earthquakes, and special precautions need to be taken
for any major construction in that belt,” Menon told IPS.
One Response
Nuclear is the only clean option available. After japan quake, price for reactors will surely come down. This is the time for India to buy more not less reactors.
I believe that Jaitapur should have at least 10 reactors not 6. + we should exponentially scale up Kundankulam..
Comments are closed.