The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (2010) comes into force....

 The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (2010) comes into force with the notification of the attendant rules for its implementation.

THE rules for implementing the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (2010), which were being awaited for long, particularly by foreign nuclear goods suppliers, were notified on November 11 and made public on November 16. In effect, therefore, the Act came into force as of November 11. The concern of the suppliers related chiefly to Section 17(b) of the Act, which provides for ‘right of recourse' to the nuclear power plant (NPP) operator to move against any supplier of “equipment or material with patent or latent defects or sub-standard devices” if that was determined to be the cause for a nuclear incident and render the supplier liable for nuclear damage (see box).

 Key provisions 

 

I. The requirement under the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) in respect of the operator's right of recourse in a national law:

Article 10 of the Annex:

National law may provide that the operator shall have a right of recourse only:

(a) if this is expressly provided for by a contract in writing;

(b) if the nuclear incident results from an act of omission done with intent to cause damage, against the individual who has acted or omitted to act with such intent.

II. Provisions in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (2010) for the operator's right of recourse:

Section 17: The operator of the nuclear installation, after paying for the compensation for nuclear damage…, shall have a right of recourse where:

(a) such right is expressly provided for in a contract in writing; (b) the nuclear incident has resulted as a consequence of an act of supplier or his employee, which includes supply of equipment or material with patent or latent defects or substandard services;

(c) the nuclear incident has resulted from the act of commission or omission of an individual done with the intent to cause nuclear damage.

III. Provision in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Rules (2011) for the operator's right of recourse:

Rule 24:

(1) A contract referred to in clause (a) of Section 17 of the Act shall include a provision for right of recourse for not less than the extent of the operator's liability under subsection (2) of Section 6 of the Act or the value of the contract itself, whichever is less.

(2) The provision for right of recourse referred to in sub-rule (1) shall be for the duration of the initial licence issued under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules (2004) or the product liability period, whichever is longer.

The right of recourse can be exercised by the operator after paying the compensation for nuclear damage in accordance with Section 6 of the Act so that the affected public is compensated for the damage, including loss of life or property, immediately after the incident. The provision 17(b), however, flies in the face of the standard international practice for nuclear liability which indemnifies the supplier entirely and makes the operator strictly and absolutely liable for the incident or accident irrespective of the cause. The international liability regime that is currently being followed by most of the 30 NPP operating countries, either through international conventions or through domestic laws, do provide for ‘right of recourse' which, however, is much more limited in scope than what the Indian Act seeks to provide.

 A VIEW OF the Tarapur Atomic Power Station. It is not clear as yet if suppliers will accept the apparent relief from indefinite liability that the rules have now given them and begin to do business with NPCIL.

The international regime promoted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) (which is yet to come into force and which India has signed and is planning to ratify soon), requires that the domestic nuclear liability law of a country that is not a party to the Paris Convention of 1960 or the Vienna Convention of 1977 should be consistent with certain provisions laid down in the Annex of the CSC, which include operator's ‘right of recourse' (Article 10). But this provides for ‘right of recourse' (see I in box) and channelling liability to the supplier only in cases when it is “expressly provided for in the [operator-supplier commercial] contract” or “if the nuclear incident results from an act or omission done with the intent to cause damage”.

However, the Indian Act goes beyond these by providing for Section 17(b), mentioned above, in addition to Sections 17(a & c), which are in accordance with Article 10 of the CSC Annex (see II in box). Thus, the Indian Act would seem to be not consistent with the international liability regime. However, the CSC (Article XVIII) only requires that while submitting the instruments of ratification, a signatory country has only to declare that its domestic law is consistent with the provisions of the CSC Annex. Only when some party to the convention raises the issue of the Indian Act being inconsistent with the international liability regimes will the IAEA take cognisance of that aspect and set forth measures to resolve it.

Potential supplier countries to India – the United States, France and Russia – have voiced their dissent to this contentious ‘right of recourse' provision in the Indian Act at different times. One of the issues has been the period of applicability of the controversial Section 17(b). Operators have contended that a supplier of equipment or component cannot be held liable under the conditions of 17(b) throughout the lifetime of the reactor during which period many modifications to the NPP – both hardware and software – could be made. And that is why potential suppliers have been keenly awaiting the announcement of rules to operationalise the Act.

Besides 17(b), the other provision in the Act that the suppliers are wary of is Section 46, which allows for tort cases based on other domestic laws to be moved against the operator in addition to the damages that the operator has to bear under the Liability Act. In principle, the proceedings of such a case can bring the supplier of equipment too under its ambit if the operator contends that defective equipment was the cause of the nuclear incident.

Obviously, rules framed to implement an Act have to be in conformity with the provisions of the Act. One thing the nuclear liability rules cannot, therefore, do is to resolve the Act's contradiction with the CSC Annex. So the issue of India's admission to the CSC will depend on how the IAEA will address the issue if the matter is brought up before it by any party. But, notwithstanding the commitment given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to President Barack Obama in November 2010, India can choose not to ratify the CSC and yet seek to do nuclear commerce globally. This should be possible given that nuclear supplier countries have been doing business with countries that have not even signed the CSC or are parties to other international conventions. Indeed, only the U.S. has insisted on India ratifying the CSC ( Frontline, December 3, 2010), while France and Russia have only required in their bilateral agreements with India that the Indian law should conform to international standards. The only issue would be if aspects of liability governed by the Indian domestic law are acceptable to them as meeting international norms.

The Act does not specify any extinction period for the ‘right of recourse' provision under its Section 17 (see II in box). It is open-ended and would seem to be applicable for the whole lifetime of the NPP or the equipment in question, and for an unspecified extent of liability. In fact, this was the perception of people who argued for and succeeded in the inclusion of 17(b) in the Act.

But the rules that have now been announced change that. They cap both the time period for which the operator can exercise the right of recourse and the extent of financial liability of the supplier (see III in box). Firstly, the rules require that the operator shall include such a right of recourse provision in the commercial contract (emphasis added). Since, in case of a nuclear incident, the extent of the operator's liability is, vide Section 6(2) of the Act, Rs.1,500 crore, Rule 24(1) requires that the liability channelled to the supplier cannot be less than the lesser of the operator's liability (Rs.1,500 crore) and the value of the contract. That is, if the value of the contract is more than Rs.1,500 crore, the extent of the supplier's liability will be at least Rs.1,500 crore. But if the value of the contract is less than Rs.1,500 crore, the supplier's exposure will only be equal to the value of the contract.

As for the cap on the time period for right of course, it would be either the initial licence period issued by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules (2004) or the product liability period, whichever is longer. The italicised phrases, however, need explanation. Rule 9 of the Radiation Protection Rules (2004) specifies the period of validity of the licence issued for a nuclear reactor thus: “Every licence issued shall, unless otherwise specified, be valid for a period of five years from the date of issue of such licence” (emphasis added).

From the above, it is clear that, in principle, the licence period can be anything less than or more than five years. But, if unspecified, it will be five years by default. Indeed, it has been a codified practice of the AERB that the initial ‘operating' licence is for a five-year period. At the end of five years, a review of all aspects of the power plant operation is done and licence is renewed for another five-year period. At the end of 10 years, an elaborate and comprehensive review of the working of the plant is carried out before a renewal of licence for another five years.

But starting the operation of a nuclear reactor does not happen with the press of a button or the single throw of a switch. The commissioning of an NPP is a long-drawn process (which is completed over several months). It goes through the following distinct phases, each of them involving elaborate tests and simulations under the supervision of AERB and other experts. The operator, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), is given due authorisation or consent, which is equivalent to a licence though not termed so, for each one of these phases. These are for much shorter durations, varying from a month to six months or even more.

After the full loading of the fuel, authorisation for starting Phase A operations is given. This involves initiation of fission and gradual ‘approach to criticality'. Once criticality is achieved, the AERB gives its authorisation for Phase B, which involves operation of the NPP in low power over a length of time when various nuclear physics checks and safety checks are performed in the presence of experts. After satisfactory low power operation, yet another authorisation (Phase C) is given for gradually increasing the reactor's output to full power. Its performance, in particular its stability, is observed for 100 full power reactor days. Only after this the actual licence for commercial operation, including grid connectivity, is given, and this constitutes the initial operating licence with a validity of five years. Build-up of radioactivity begins once fission is initiated (Phase A), and there is the likelihood of a nuclear incident involving radioactivity during all the three phases of testing. While the operator's liability is clear in all of them, how will the operator's right to recourse clause be interpreted as the different stages of authorisations are for different and shorter durations?

From the perspective of liability and in the wake of the new rules for the operator's right of recourse, the AERB, according to reliable Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sources, is now seized of this ambiguity in the licensing process and will evolve a new definition for initial operating licence that will include the initial start-up process as well. Any future operating licence that will be issued to NPCIL will be in accordance with the amended operating licence definition. Given that the progress to commissioning can even take up to six months, effectively, the period for the operator's right of recourse should technically be five years plus that initial build-up period.

The other phrase that needs similar elaboration is ‘product liability', a term akin to ‘warranty period' but something more than that. The Liability Rules define ‘product liability period' as the “period for which the supplier has undertaken liability for patent or latent defects or sub-standard services under a contract”. Thus this part of the rule actually has relevance to the controversial Section 17(b) of the Act and the product liability period refers to that of the product implicated, or sought to be implicated, in an incident though the announced rules do not explicitly include any clause for implementing 17(b) itself. The document on ‘General Conditions of Contract (GCC) for Supply of Indigenous Stores' of NPCIL specifies the ‘product liability period'. It must be pointed out that this document is specific only to indigenous suppliers because NPCIL has hitherto not dealt directly with foreign suppliers of products and equipment.

‘Patent defect' refers to a defect that is manifest or recognisable on inspection of the product, and there is a corresponding ‘patent defect liability period'. Under the NPCIL contract conditions, this is 12 months from the date of acceptance of the product or 18 months from the date of its receipt at the site, whichever is earlier. ‘Latent defect', on the other hand, means a defect within the material or arising out of design deficiency, which does not manifest itself and/or was not reasonably discoverable during the ‘patent defect liability period'. The supplier's ‘latent defect liability period', according to the GCC, is “limited to a period of five years from the end of ‘patent defect liability period' of the respective plant and equipment including spares”. In effect, therefore, the ‘product liability period', under NPCIL's terms, will be the sum of these two periods and is, therefore, six and a half years from the date of arrival of the product at the site or six years from the date of its acceptance.

From the perspective of nuclear liability during a nuclear incident, this would seem to be irrelevant as regards most products. This is because the clock starts ticking from the time they arrive on the site. Given that the NPP construction period itself can take up to five years or more, the product liability period for most products will expire before the initial operating licence period begins. That is, if a particular product is identified to be the single causative agent for a nuclear incident – which would rarely be the case because a nuclear incident is usually is a combination of several products and operating conditions – the liability period for that product (and hence for the supplier) would in nearly all cases have expired by then unless the incident occurs during the testing phases unless, of course, a product or component is changed before the expiry of the initial licence period. In such a case, the product liability period can extend beyond the initial licence period and, therefore, would have some relevance if it is involved in any incident.

One of the curious things in the ongoing debates on channelling of nuclear liability to suppliers, which should affect Indian suppliers as well, was the inexplicable silence of Indian suppliers on the issue as compared with their foreign counterparts. But Section 6.7 of the GCC, which provides for ‘Indemnity against Loss/Damage', gives an explanation for this. Subsection 6.7.7 states: “The Purchaser [NPCIL] shall indemnify and hold harmless the Contractor [supplier] in respect of Third Party life and Property damage claims arising out of nuclear event at Purchaser's Site.” This implies that in contracts with domestic suppliers, NPCIL has hitherto provided indemnity to them in case of an event at an NPP. That is, the GCC followed by NPCIL all along has been consistent with strict and absolute liability of the operator.

In fact, the GCC provides for this indemnity to the supplier even in cases of tort proceedings against the operator under other laws unless the contract explicitly provides for it. Section 9.1(a) of the GCC says: “Except in cases of criminal negligence or wilful misconduct, the Contractor shall not be liable to the Purchaser, whether in contract, tort, or otherwise, for any indirect or consequential loss or damage, loss of use, loss of production, or loss of profits or interest costs, provided that this exclusion shall not apply to any obligation of the Contractor to pay liquidated damages and/or any other penalties/recovery etc. specifically provided for in the Contract, to the Purchaser.” This again would seem to be consistent with the prevalent international norms for right of recourse. In the wake of the Liability Act and the attendant rules, it remains to be seen whether NPCIL chooses to amend these provisions under the GCC for domestic suppliers.

But, more pertinently, what will be the nature of the GCC that NPCIL would draw up for future contracts that it is likely to enter into directly with foreign suppliers? Will such a differential dispensation in commercial contracts with domestic and foreign suppliers be acceptable to the latter?

In queries to the different potential nuclear suppliers to India, such as Areva, GE and Westinghouse, all of them have said that they are still studying the rules and do not wish to make any comments. While the opposition parties have expressed their strong opposition to the rules by saying that the government has succumbed to suppliers' pressures, it is not clear as yet if these suppliers will accept the apparent relief from indefinite liability that the rules have now given them and begin to do business with NPCIL. If they do, the obvious impact of the rules is that there will be loading of cost of insuring for an amount equal to the extent of liability that the supplier is now exposed to for the initial five-year period, thus increasing project costs.

As for Parliament's assent to the rules, according to Section 48 of the Act, the rules made will remain before both Houses of Parliament, while in session, for a total period of 30 days which may be comprised in one session or in two or more successive sessions. For any amendment recommended by Parliament to become effective, both Houses will have to agree to the change(s). The winter session for the year will last for a month from November 22 to December 21. With the opposition having already publicly voiced their dissent to the rules, the issue is bound to occupy a substantial fraction of the session period with acrimonious debates.

-R. Ramachandran

Courtesy: Frontline, Dec 03-16, 2011

Complaint against "Dinamalar" for its unethical and illegal activity

Dinamalar Tamil Daily is a Pro-nuke media. And it used to publish the news items with a willful intention to defame the protesters and leaders of the people's movements. 

On 24-11-11, Dinamalar published a front page news-like material, which states the leaders of people's movements are inviting the queries from the common public, without the consent of the leaders. And Dinamalar published the addresses, email ids & contact numbers of the leaders which amounts the trespassing of their privacy. This unethical and illegal activity of Dinamalar caused many problems to the people's leaders. 

In this scenario, the "LAWYERS’ CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS" filed a complaint before the Press Council of India. The copy the complaint is given below. 

LAWYERS’ CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Reg. No.274/2001

No.281, (Old No.134), II Floor, Thambu Chetty Street, Chennai-600 001

Date : 25.11.2011 To           The Chairman Press Council of India New Delhi Sir,           Sub.: Publication of front page news item by “Dina Malar” a Tamil                    daily on 24.11.2011, instigating physical violence and                   humiliation against three leading personalities spearheading                    the agitation against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project                    in Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu–requesting immediate                    action to curb the menace by the said daily as well as other                    print media–Reg. ---           Ours is an organization of lawyers practicing at the Madras High Court formed to espouse the Constitutional ideals principally aimed at striving for political, economic and social justice as enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution of India and broader human rights.           As far as we are concerned, we view the protests and resistance to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project as a spontaneous peoples’ movement in a democracy, where the issues raised by them need to be addressed in a more concerned and accommodative manner. That apart, it is everyone’s knowledge that Kudankulam issue is the only real issue the people of Tamilnadu are witnessing and it needs due importance.           Whileso, we were terribly shocked to read a top front page news item published in the Tamil daily, “Dina malar”, in its edition dated 24.11.2011 under the caption, which could be translated in English as, “Why do we oppose Kudankulam Nuclear Plant?” The said news item carried a sub title stating, “Protestors are ready to offer explanation”. A reading of both the caption and the sub title suggest that the news item seeks to report the willingness of the protestors against the project to explain their stand. The news would not surprise anyone if its content justifies the caption and the sub-title given to it.           Unfortunately, it was not the case! The news item did not say that the protesters have either issued a statement justifying the caption or given an interview to that effect.           Shockingly, the news item begins abruptly with a self-posed question that when the plant is about to be commissioned to benefit the people of Tamil Nadu, whether the protests were justified. It charges the protestors for claiming that their protest was only for the benefit of the Tamil people.           After having given such an intro(duction) in the lead paragraph, the news item prompts the readers to contact (the leading protestors) over the one rupee coin box PCO to their phone numbers and e-mail addresses.           Following this, the news item has furnished personal details of three persons (along with photographs) among the leading protesters with a tinge, suggesting to the readers that they are undesirable elements. Apart from their background, the details of the family, including children of one among them, has been provided in the news item.           The news item also carried their respective contact numbers, landline and mobile, and their e-mail addresses. Specific details with regard to their residence and office have also been highlighted in the said news item.           The news item also specifically and pointedly indicates as to the place where they could be seen and met. While providing the background, provocative inputs have been deliberately incorporated so as to tune the readers to identify them as traitors, receiving funds from abroad. The whole news item paints the said 3 persons as agents of some foreign force to stall the project.           The inescapable conclusion one would arrive at after reading the said news item would be that these protesters have to be “taught” a lesson, i.e., the news item was published only with the sole intention and object of putting the persons described therein to the risk of their life and limbs. To put it more bluntly, except expressly suggesting to physically harm those protesters, the news item conveyed the message. The publication of the said news item as the top front page by the said daily is clearly indicative of its intention to instigate the readers to “react” in the way the Daily expects them of.           On reading the same, we are unable to restrain ourselves from approaching you for taking up the matter in all its seriousness and to proceed against the said daily.           We genuinely feel that in a democracy, one can have any opinion on any subject but there are ways and means to express their opinion. At the same time, it is more important that one cannot unleash violence against violence who is holding a view contrary to his.           The case of “Dinamalar” may be that it wants to support the Kudunkulam Nuclear Power Project which can be assessed by the views expressed by it. However, the abuse of freedom of the press by it to instigate violence against those holding contrary news is impermissible under the Constitution of India and other laws.           On enquiry, we learn that on publication of the abovesaid news item, there had been a flurry of telephonic calls to all the three persons and their family members mentioned in the news item, filled with obscene comments and brutal threats to their life. This has also been put in public domain by the persons concerned in an interview to a private television channel. It is in this context, we would like to draw your kind attention to the flagrant violation of press freedom by the Tamil daily “Dinamalar”.           Therefore, we hereby request you to initiate appropriate action against the Tamil daily “Dinamalar” and also, issue appropriate directions to initiate criminal action against those responsible for publication of the said news item.                                                                                                 (S. SATHIA CHANDRAN)                                  (C. VIJAYAKUMAR)     Joint Secretary                                                       Secretary

Some FAQs about Koodankulam and Nuclear Power: Nityanand Jayaraman and G. Sundar Rajan

Steel drums with nuclear waste. The inescapable byproduct generated from the fission of nuclear fuel in the form of uranium or plutonium creates what is called nuclear waste. This waste comes in a huge variety of extremely radioactive material with half-lives ranging from 8 days to hundreds of thousands of years. In other words their radioactivity takes a really, really long time to decay, thousands of times our human life-times. These fission products if released to the environment will last a long time, and it is almost impossible to decontaminate them.

NITYANAND JAYARAMAN and G. SUNDAR RAJAN of the Chennai Solidarity Group for Koodankulam Struggle developed  the  fact-sheet below in response to real questions that they encountered during the course of street and college campaigns. They say: “The questions were sincere, so we felt a sincere response was warranted.”

Introduction

Since August 2011, Tamilnadu has witnessed renewed protests against the commissioning of the first of two 1000 MW power plants as part of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP). While protests have been ongoing against the project since the proposal was mooted in 1988, the impending commissioning of the reactors in light of the devastating and uncontrollable nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, has rightly triggered a wave of concern among thinking people in India.

The protests against nuclear power plants is not isolated to Koodankulam. Even as we speak, fisherfolk and farmers in Jaitapur, Maharashtra and farmers and residents of Gorakhpur, Haryana, are saying a loud “No” to nuclear power plants in their area. Haripur, West Bengal, which was to be a site of Russian reactors, will no longer be on the nuclear map, as the State Government bowed to local sentiments and declared West Bengal a nuclear-free State.

Wise people do learn from others’ mistakes. Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and Japan have all announced that they will move away from the nuclear option, and explore clean and sustainable forms of electricity generation. But India’s chest-thumping “nucleocracy” wants to play the death game with peasants and fisherfolk as the pawns in the gamble.

The staunch and united protests by Farmers, Traders and fisher folks of Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Thoothukudi has scared the nuclear establishment. Faced with the real prospect of having to abandon the project, the Congress-led UPA Government is doing what it does best — Divide and Rule; communalise the issue, and allege that foreign hands are at play. At different times, the nuclear establishment and Dr. Manmohan Singh have said different things – that Tamilnadu’s industrialisation will falter without the project; that India cannot do without nuclear energy; that our nuclear plants are 100 percent safe; that abandoning the project at this stage can prove to be dangerous. When it comes to explaining the consequences of a major disaster, Indian scientists, including Dr. Kalam, have behaved more like astrologers than rationalists. How can anyone predict that no major earthquake will hit this area or that this human-made technology cannot fail?

The fears of Fukushima and the fears about continued electricity shortage have raised a number of conflicting emotions and doubts in people’s minds. This booklet aims to quell some of the misconceptions about the safety of nuclear energy, and answer some frequently arising questions.

1. India is a developing country. We need electricity to develop. If we rule out the nuclear option, won’t our development will be hampered?

Nuclear power is not the only option for generating electricity. There are a number of conventional and non-conventional sources of energy that can be explored for generating electricity. It is a fact that in more than 60 years of post-independence industrialisation and modernisation, the contribution of nuclear energy to the total electricity generation is less than 3 percent. Renewable energy sources already contribute more than 10 percent of India’s electricity and Large Hydro projects deliver about 22 percent. Large dams, though, have exacted a devastating toll on the environment and lives of adivasi communities.

For India to emerge as a true leader, we have to be careful not to destroy our natural capital – our waters, lands, air and people. By saying “No” to dangerous, risky and expensive technologies like nuclear, we create opportunities to develop cleaner, saner and less dangerous forms of electricity generation.

Increasing the available electricity can also be achieved by conservation and demand-side management strategies. For every 100 MW of electricity generated in India, more than 40 MW is lost because of inefficient transmission and distribution (T&D). Industrialised countries like Sweden have a T&D loss of less than 7 percent. In other words, of the total 180,000 megawatts of electricity generated in India, 72,000 megawatts (40 percent) is lost, wasted. That is equivalent to shutting off all power plants in the States of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.

If efficiency were to be increased to, say 90 percent, the savings would be the equivalent of setting up a 60,000 MW power plant – or about 60 plants the size of the Koodankulam plant that is currently at the heart of a controversy – with a fraction of the investment and none of the risks. Increasing energy efficiency of electrical appliances is another way to save electricity. In Tamilnadu alone, if incandescent lamps are converted to LED bulbs, we can save about 2,000MW.

Add to all this, the benefits of cutting on wasteful consumption. Shopping malls and IT companies burn electricity throughout the day. Night or day, lights and AC are running, even while households and small commercial establishments have to suffer power outages. There must be a rationalisation of the use of electricity. The fact that villages surrounding Kalpakkam where a nuclear plant is situated are reeling under major power shortages is itself proof of “inequitable distribution” of electricity.

2. Is renewable energy technologically viable? Will it be able to meet our energy needs?

Meeting India’s energy needs requires more than just renewable energy, especially since electricity is merely one form of energy. In India, electricity meets only 12 percent of total energy needs. People make do without electric lighting or cooling. But even the most indigent family needs fuel for cooking. Biomass (firewood or cow dung patties) is by far the most important source of energy for the nation.

India’s energy security depends on the robustness of our paradigm of harnessing and deploying energy in various forms, and in forms meaningful to the millions of under-served Indians. The current paradigm promotes inefficient energy generation and transmission, inequitable distribution and consumption wherein rural areas and small commercial establishments suffer even while elite users enjoy uninterrupted access to electricity and other forms of energy. With the current wasteful and unjust modes of production and consumption, neither conventional nor renewable forms of electricity generation will suffice. Why is that villages that are reeling under the effects of pollution from the thermal plants in Singrauli, UP – once hailed as the energy capital of India – have neither electricity nor clean water? While challenging coal and nuclear, we also need to question a development model that incessantly calls for sacrifices by adivasis, dalits, farmers and fisherfolk so that others may prosper.

On the topic of renewable forms of energy for electricity generation, though, the fact remains that we have barely scratched the surface in terms of harnessing the potential. According to the Government of India, India’s potential in renewables is as follows: wind energy – 48,500 MW (65,000MW, according to Indian Wind Energy Association http://www.inwea.org/); small hydro power – 15,000 MW; biomass Energy – 21,000 MW; and at least 4,00,000 MW from Solar Energy. The monumental amounts of money being sunk into nuclear technology can be gainfully diverted to increase research in renewables, and electrical energy efficiency. Already, advances in solar and wind technologies are reducing per MW costs. The capacity of existing wind mills can be increased six to eight-fold by replacing older, lower-capacity turbines, with newer, higher capacity turbines, or by installing new and more efficient turbines amidst existing wind mills. In the last 15 years, India has added about 17,000MW of power using renewable sources; China has added the same amount in just one year. So, where is the need to put all our eggs in just the “Nuclear Basket”?

Secondly, many of the applications of electricity can be met by smart design. Tinted glass buildings in a city like Chennai require the burning of electricity for lighting throughout the day, even when the sun is shining brightly outside. Our city’s malls and the IT companies in the Knowledge Corridor are examples of such “stupid” design.

In Germany’s Black Forest region, an ordinary woman named Ursula Sladek, mobilised people to pay for the take over of the electricity company after the Chernobyl disaster. Today, the people-owned company supplies electricity generated from small, decentralised renewable sources to more than 100,000 customers. After the Fukushima disaster, an average of 400 new customers are subscribing to the company requesting clean electricity. It is clear that electricity from renewable energy is not just environmentally sustainable but also commercially viable.

3. Can we, as Dr. Abdul Kalam says, let one disaster (in Fukushima) derail our dreams of becoming an economically developed nation?

Besides the better known disasters at Kyshtym, in erstwhile USSR (1957), Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), at least 76 nuclear accidents totalling $19.1 billion in damages have occurred between 1947 and 2008. Most of these accidents – 56 to be precise – happened after the Chernobyl disaster. This translates to one serious nuclear incident every year causing $332 million in damages annually. Between 2005 and 2055, at least four serious nuclear accidents are likely to occur, according to calculations by an interdisciplinary study titled “The Future of Nuclear Power” conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003. The 2011 Fukushima disaster is the first of MIT’s prophetic estimates.

And it is not just disasters that we are concerned about. Even nuclear reactors that “operate perfectly” are associated with higher risks of cancer and unexplained deaths. In the US, where 104 reactors are operating at 65 sites, elevated rates of leukemia and brain cancers are reported from communities near nuclear power plants.

Studies conducted by Dr. V. Pugazhenthi, a physician and researcher, who provides medical service in the nuclear town of Kalpakkam, Tamilnadu, have revealed elevated incidences of congenital deformities like polydactyly (webbed fingers), thyroid problems and various kinds of cancers among the residents living around the nuclear facility.

4. Dr. Abdul Kalam says coal-fired power plants are dirty because they cause pollution and emit tons and tons of climate-changing carbon. He points out to the devastating impacts of coal mining on the environment and the lives of communities in the vicinity.

Dr. Kalam is right about coal-fired power plants. Coal plants are dirty and polluting. Coal mines are hells on earth. But we should not be forced to choose between two evils – nuclear or coal. Would you like to be tortured or killed? My answer is “Neither.”

Dr. Kalam does not talk of the effects of uranium mining on the environment and health of communities. In Jadugoda, Jharkhand, where India’s uranium is mined by the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd, the effects of radiation among the local adivasi population are horrendous. Indian Doctors for Peace and Development, a national chapter of the Nobel-winning International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, recently published a health study on Jadugoda. The study found that:

• Primary sterility is more common in the people residing near uranium mining operations.
• More children with congenital deformities are being born to mothers living near uranium mining operations.
• Congenital defects as a cause of death of children are higher among mothers living near uranium mines.
• Cancer as a cause of death is more common in villages surrounding uranium operations.
• Life expectancy of people living near uranium mining operations is lower than Jharkhand’s state average and lower than in villages far removed from the mines.
• All these indicators of poor health and increased vulnerability is despite the fact that the affected villages have better economic and literacy status than reference villages.

The path to a sustainable and socially just future lies in moving away from environmentally destructive technologies such as coal and nuclear. Nuclear energy will not help us combat climate change. Per unit of power, nuclear energy emits four to five times more Carbon dioxide (CO2) than renewable energy. If the entire nuclear fuel cycle is considered, the emissions are even higher.

5. Why are people protesting only now? Couldn’t they have told the Government that they don’t want the project when it was first proposed?

The project was first proposed in 1988. Within months, protests built up against the nuclear plant. People and students mobilised 1 million signatures against the nuclear plant to hand over to Mikhail Gorbachev, the then Premier of USSR, when he visited India in 1989. Black flag protests, youth mobilisation, rallies in Chennai and other urban centres. Koodankulam has been a controversial issue from Day One. On May 1, 1989, fisherfolk and other residents from around the project site organised a massive rally in Kanyakumari town. The peaceful rally was disrupted by the police, and one youngster – Ignatius – was shot in the police firing that ensued. Between 1991 and 2001, the protests died down, because USSR – the technology provider – splintered into several smaller nations. But this history is glossed over by the propagandists, and repeated without verification by a lazy and irresponsible media.

Like the Rajiv Gandhi Government at that time, the Sonia Gandhi Government now has refused to acknowledge the protests or heed the aspirations of local people.

That is evident from the manner in which the Central Government is hell-bent on pushing the Jaitapur nuclear project in the face of stiff opposition by local farmers and fisherfolk. Protests in Gorakhpur, Haryana, and Jaitapur are not just being ignored, but violently repressed.

It is true that the imminent commissioning of the Koodankulam plant, and the threat of expansion of the complex to accommodate 6,000 MW of capacity has re-awakened the fears of the local people. The 2004 tsunami gave the coastal people first hand experience of the raw fury of nature. The television images of the devastation caused by the triple disaster in Fukushima, and the subsequent tragedy of lakhs of Japanese were prevented from returning to their homes or to their normal lives are still fresh in the minds of people. People would be stupid to not be fearful.

6. Crores of rupees have already been spent on constructing the plant. Isn’t it too late to abandon the project now?

It is never too late to do the right thing. It is better to write off a bad investment, than to continue investing in spite of knowing the certainty of routine nuclear pollution and the risks of a disaster.

Consider the costs of a disaster. Belarus, a state in the erstwhile USSR, suffered the maximum damage as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, between 1991 and 2003, Belarus spent $13 billion on disaster-related expenses. It has estimated its losses over 30 years at $235 billion. In Ukraine, the country where Chernobyl was located, still allocates 6-7 percent of total Government spending on disaster rehabilitation programs. Radiation fallout from the disaster has contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometers, mostly in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. That is about twice the size of Tamilnadu.

In Fukushima, just closing down and safely dismantling the Dai-Ichi nuclear plant will take 30 years and cost between $12 billion and $19 billion. This does not include the costs of health monitoring, evacuation and social security, remediation of contaminated environment, the economic losses arising from loss of agriculture and fisheries income, or the foreign trade lost due fear of radiation contamination.

If a decision to opt out of nuclear power is taken, there is still time to convert the Koodankulam plant to a less risky and less polluting technology such as a gas thermal plant. The Shoreham nuclear plant in Long Island, New York, was converted to work on natural gas after the Three Mile Island accident took place. The William H Zimmer nuclear plant in Ohio, and the Midland Cogeneration Facility in Michigan were similarly converted to run on fossil fuel.

7. Indian nuclear plants are safe. So many of India’s nuclear plants have run for decades without mishaps. So what’s the problem?

The claim that Indian nuclear plants are safe is contrary to facts. Safety breaches in India’s nuclear establishment seldom comes to light because of the shroud of secrecy surrounding the institutions. But what little we know gives serious cause for concern. Just take the case of Kalpakkam. The following violations have come to light, including some that were acknowledged more than 6 months after the incident.

• 1987: A refuelling accident ruptured the reactor core.
• 1991: Workers were exposed to radioactive heavy water
• 1999: 42 workers were exposed to radiation
• 2002: 100 kg of radioactive sodium was released into the environment
• 2003: 6 workers were exposed to high levels of radiation

Other very serious incidents have happened in other reactors. In 1991, a contractor working in the RAPS reactor complex used radioactive heavy water to mix paint, and wash the brush, face and hands.

In November 2009, more than 55 workers in Kaiga nuclear plant, Karnataka, were exposed to excessive levels of radiation when they drank water laced with radioactive tritium.

Addition of safety systems have often been an afterthought. A November 1986 report titled “Safety of the Indian Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors” by the Department of Atomic Energy’s Reactor Safety Analysis Group states that “In India, tsunamis and seiches do not occur. Hence cyclones alone have been singled out for detailed study.” This analysis was for Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) of the kind that is installed in Kalpakkam. The 2004 tsunami flooded the entire township and reactor complex. The Kalpakkam reactor survived the 2004 tsunami not by design but by chance.

Even today, the Kalpakkam reactor is not designed to survive a major earthquake or tsunami despite the fact that an International Atomic Energy Agency publication of 2011 identifies one active submarine volcano near the coast of India, and that is off the coast of Pondicherry, 60 km from Kalpakkam.

8. All safety systems are in place in Koodankulam. Dr. Kalam says the plant is 100 percent safe, and that there is no threat of a tsunami since the plant is located 1300 km from the seismic centre point. He has urged people to have faith in the Government, and to believe Governmental experts and engineers. Shouldn’t people do that instead of questioning the experts?

First, any good scientist or engineer will tell you that there is no such thing as 100 percent safe. Such a declaration is 100 percent false. Rather than educating people on the true nature of the risks, and the magnitude of effects in the event of a disaster, Dr. Kalam seems intent on lulling them into complacence. Complacence is the worst thing that can happen for disaster preparedness. It is outright irresponsible to lie to people about the true nature of dangerous technologies.

Second, despite the 2004 tsunami, which belied the Department of Atomic Energy’s declaration that “In India, tsunamis. . .do not occur,” we have Dr. Kalam repeating this false statement. Dr. Kalam’s statement that a tsunami will not occur belongs in the realm of astrology and not science.

Dr. Kalam would have us believe that safety and emergency response are merely matters of technology. That is not true. Robust safety and emergency response systems have to do with siting, planning, the setting up and maintenance of escape routes, an informed citizenry that is trained to react appropriately, an open and transparent administration that is capable of acknowledging and correcting mistakes, engineers and technologists that respect nature’s power, and builders and contractors that are honest.

Good science and technology requires an unwavering commitment to truth, a trait that is in short supply in this country. With scams tainting every aspect of Indian life, people who heed Dr. Kalam’s advice to trust the Government and its engineers would be acting unwisely.

In 2010, a pedestrian bridge constructed for the much-hyped Commonwealth Games collapsed a week before the launch of the Games. The use of sub-standard material and poor construction methods are not restricted to relatively lower risk structures like the ill-fated pedestrian bridge.

In May 1994, the inner containment dome of a nuclear reactor under construction in Kaiga, Karnataka, collapsed sending 120 tonnes of concrete crashing down. The dome is meant to contain radiation in the event of an accident. A. Gopalakrishnan, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s former head, writes that “Senior NPC civil engineers and the private firms which provide civil engineering designs. . .to the DAE have had a close relationship. In this atmosphere of comradeship, the NPC engineers did not carry out the necessary quality checks on the designs they received.” If the dome had collapsed when the plant was in operation, we would have had a Level 7 meltdown on our hands.

In July 2011, even as the disastrous events in Fukushima were unfolding, the Leningrad-2 nuclear reactor under construction in Russia experienced a serious mishap. Shortly after concrete was poured for the construction of the outer protective shell of a reactor unit, the structure began to deform, with the reinforcement bars bending and dangling about 26 feet above ground. The reactor under construction is of the VVER 1200 type, a generation ahead of the VVER 1000 reactors currently installed in Koodankulam. Experts have speculated that corruption and use of substandard material may have been behind the mishap. In Koodankulam, we are witnessing the setting up of a high-risk technology by two nations – India and Russia – which compete with each other in the realm of corruption.

9. Aren’t you being anti-science and emotional in protesting against nuclear power?

The argument against Koodankulam is not an argument against science and experimentation. 10,000 MW as in Jaitapur and Koodankulam are not experiments. These are not 100 kilowatt reactions in a lab condition. They are massive investments in power generation technology putting more than just the lives of experimenters at risk. Unwilling people cannot be asked to sacrifice their lives in the interest of Kalam’s science. It is true that many experimenters have sacrificed their lives at the altar of science, and we need to acknowledge them with gratitude. The Nazis experimenting with poisonous chemicals on unsuspecting and unwilling captive Jews, or the pharmaceutical companies currently testing their dangerous medicines on indigent and choiceless people may be contributing to the advancement of science. But their methods are plain criminal. The people supporting the Koodankulam struggle are not “Can’t Doers;” They are “Won’t Doers.” Dr. Kalam is not talking about risking his life for the advancement of science; he is blaming the Koodankulam people for refusing to risk their lives.

Good engineers and scientists require humility, integrity and an ability to accept mistakes and move ahead with the learnings. India’s nucleocracy lacks all these.

It is not the villagers that need convincing. Insurance companies are not convinced that nuclear plants are risk free. On the contrary, they believe that the risks of a nuclear blow-out are uninsurable. If the Koodankulam plant is completely safe as Dr. Kalam puts it, it would be useful to see Dr. Kalam convincing the insurance companies to provide blanket cover to nuclear power plants, and convincing the nuclear equipment suppliers to abandon their insistence on a nuclear liability protocol that exempts them from compensating in the event of a disaster, even if it is caused by a willful fault on their part.

Building a nuclear plant merely on the basis of a belief – as if in God – that a tsunami or major earthquake will not occur is what is anti-science. People who are agitated and fearful of the consequences of the nuclear technology being set up in India are scientific because their fears are based on the empirical evidence of regular disasters and a knowledge of the socio-economic and environmental fallouts of such disasters. The fear is further fuelled by the lack of transparency that shrouds nuclear establishments in India and elsewhere. Apprehension over the likelihood of a disaster given the numerous things that could go wrong technically or due to corruption or malpractices is not unscientific, especially given what is unfolding in terms of 2G scams.

What is being asked is for scientists and engineers to devote their skills in less destructive and risky means of generating electricity.

10. Every technology has its risks. Cars, ships and trains routinely have accidents. You don’t see us abandoning cars and ships. Then why should we abandon nuclear power?

Car accidents or even plane accidents do not leave behind a 20 km exclusion zone in which human life cannot return to normal for decades. A person driving in a car or travelling by plane accepts certain risks voluntarily. A car or a plane accident does not affect the next generation and the unborn. The unborn cannot even be consulted on whether the risk that we are taking is acceptable to them. Imposing such a risk on generations to come is patently unjust. Car accidents do not necessitate the evacuation of people living in a 75 km circle.

Until a technology’s risks are proven to be manageable – and we have seen the unmanageability of the nuclear technology on occasion after occasion – wisdom advises that it be kept in the realm of experimentation. It certainly cannot be unleashed on an unsuspecting community.

11. Dr. Kalam has offered a Rs. 200 crore development package including clean water, jobs, schools, hospitals and motor boats and cold storage facilities to the people in the villages surrounding Koodankulam. Will that not make this development more inclusive?

This offer of Rs. 200 crore is perverse. “If you can’t convince them, bribe them” seems to be the line taken by Dr. Kalam. How different is this from the spate of freebies offered by politicians before elections? Does this mean that if people don’t consent to the nuclear power plant, they will be denied hospitals, schools and clean water? What about other communities where no nuclear power plant is proposed to be built? Will they have to wait for one to be constructed in their backyard so that their rights to water and education can piggyback on that project?

The people are looking for answers to serious questions. Dr. Kalam should answer them respectfully, or restrain himself from speaking.

KOODANKULAM : TIME TO TALK - Praful Bidwai

The Kudankulam protesters must not be maligned as misguided by ‘foreign' interests. Dialogue with them on nuclear hazards remains an imperative. 

AS the popular agitation against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) gains in strength and determination, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and its subsidiary, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), have mounted a multi-pronged attack on the movement and its leaders, while claiming that the Russian-designed reactors being installed are “perfectly” or “100 per cent” safe.

One part of the attack is that the agitators are “imperilling” the safety of the Rs.13,000-crore project by impeding its normal operation and maintenance through their picketing. In particular, Reactor 1, which is at an advanced state of completion, and recently had a “hot run”, is in danger of being “damaged”.

This underscores the protesters' grave irresponsibility. Another part of the attack is the disinformation spread through newspapers to the effect that the movement is backed by “anti-nuclear groups, the Church and foreign activists” ( The Times of India, November 7). NPCIL chairman S.K. Jain said activists from the United States, Finland, France and Australia “are simply sitting there”.

The second attack is reminiscent of past campaigns to malign environmentalists who fought against large dams and destructive mining and industrial projects – and made a valuable contribution to ecological protection and defence of livelihoods. Anti-nuclear groups naturally support the Kudankulam protests on well-reasoned grounds.

It is their legitimate job to do so. But it is pernicious to introduce a denominational/communal element here. The protesters include people from all communities.

My telephone conversations with a number of people around Kudankulam confirm that there are no “foreign” activists there. The only foreigners present recently were the Russian engineers invited by NPCIL itself.

The charge is particularly deplorable because it comes from an organisation that is bent on rewarding foreign nuclear manufacturers with lucrative reactor contracts for their governments' support to the U.S.-India nuclear deal and its endorsement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Former DAE secretary Anil Kakodkar put it straight to the Marathi daily Sakaal (January 5): “We also have to keep in mind the commercial interests of foreign countries and … companies …America, Russia and France were the countries that we made mediators in these efforts to lift sanctions, and hence, for the nurturing of their business interests, we made deals with them for nuclear projects.”

Worse, such propaganda about the “foreign hand” behind the protests guts the possibility of a genuine dialogue with the agitators, mandated by the Centre. The whole rationale of the Prime Minister's October 7 meeting with the people's delegation, in response to the Tamil Nadu Cabinet's call for suspending construction at Kudankulam until people's apprehensions about safety are allayed, was to facilitate dialogue and rational debate.

To return to the first line of attack, DAE Secretary Srikumar Banerjee has claimed he had “serious concern” about “damage” to the reactors: “It is not a plant which can be just switched on and off….We have done the hot run. We can't go from hot run to a freeze condition.… We have to have a minimal operational system….” S.K. Jain said: [a reactor] is “not a car factory where you can switch off the systems and close.... You have simulators, ventilators, computer and electronic systems… you have to maintain” them.

There is as yet no nuclear danger at Kudankulam. Reactor 1 has not gone “critical”– that is, had a nuclear fission chain reaction. For all intents and purposes, it is like a car factory, which too has simulators, ventilators and computers.

Contrary to the suggestion of a nuclear activity, a “hot run” involves loading of dummy fuel assemblies (without uranium) into the reactor, and then “taking the temperature of the primary coolant water to the operating temperature of 280⁰ Celsius…,” according to site director M.K. Balaji ( The Hindu, June 5). After the three-week-long hot run, “the reactor would be disassembled”, not just shut down, and the reactor vessel, pipelines, gauges and safety devices inspected. The run's purpose is to see how the coolant circuit operates and whether pipes, pumps, and so on work properly.

Until Reactor 1 attains criticality, its safety will not be affected in the least if operations are suspended even for months. Kudankulam is already delayed by 10 years. Shutting down reactors even after they have gone critical is not rocket science. All reactors are periodically closed for maintenance. Many have been shut down safely or for good – most recently in Japan and Germany, and earlier in the U.S., France, Britain, Italy, and elsewhere.

Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has lent a degree of legitimacy to the DAE's campaign by alleging that “geopolitical and market forces” (the layer presumably meaning rival nuclear suppliers to Russia) are behind the Kudankulam protests. He was categorical that the reactors are “100 per cent” safe, because they have multiple “sophisticated” safety features, and because 99 per cent of their spent fuel would be reprocessed.

NUCLEAR WASTES

Now, reprocessing is a known hazardous and expensive activity, which also produces nuclear wastes, with all their intractable problems. Many components of nuclear wastes have long half-lives (period during which they naturally decay to half their original mass) such as 24,000 years (plutonium-239) and even 710 million years (uranium-235).

Science knows no way of storing wastes safely for such long periods, leave alone neutralising them or disposing them of. No geological formations can be trusted to be stable for millennia and ensure that the wastes will not leach into the environment.

As for safety, no technology is “100 per cent” safe. All technologies carry a finite risk. Risk is particularly great in relatively high-pressure high-temperature systems such as nuclear reactors, which concentrate enormous quantities of energy in small volumes. The work of safety and organisation theory analysts such as Charles Perrow (of Normal Accidents fame) and Scott Sagan tells us that reactors are highly complex systems whose subsystems are, internally, tightly coupled, with the danger that a small mishap or abnormal event in one subsystem can get quickly transmitted to other subsystems, malfunctions get rapidly magnified, and the whole system goes into a massive runaway crisis. “Fail-safe” or “fail-soft” mechanisms can easily break down.

That is what happened at Fukushima, where a station blackout initiated by an earthquake and tsunami caused a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), leading to three core meltdowns and huge releases of radioactivity, whose effects have not fully unfolded, or been understood and studied. The accident is still continuing and the reactors remain crisis-bound.

A station blackout is not a rare phenomenon. LOCAs are known in virtually every reactor type with long operating experience.

FLAWED METHOD

Engineers try to make reactors safer by designing them to recover from various initiating failures, and installing multiple protections, all of which would have to fail before radioactivity is released (defence-in-depth). To quantify risks, engineers use a mathematical method called probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). The physicist M.V. Ramana says that PRA conceives of accidents as resulting from one of many combinations of a series of failures, and computes the probability of a severe accident resulting from these “event-trees” or “fault-trees” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 19).

Japan's nuclear safety agency used PRA to extend the Fukushima Daiichi station's licence just one month before the accident. PRA is also cited by reactor manufacturers to make tall claims about safety. However, PRA is a deeply flawed method and has been questioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study in 2003 says that “uncertainties in PRA methods and databases make it prudent to keep actual historical risk experience in mind when making judgments about safety”.

That experience says five core meltdowns have occurred in the global record of 15,000 reactor-years of operation. At this rate, one can expect a meltdown every eight years in the world's 430-odd reactors.

Conceptually, PRA uses chain-of-event modelling which “cannot account for the indirect, non-linear, and feedback relationships that characterise many accidents…. These risk assessments do a poor job of modelling human actions and their impact on known, let alone unknown, failure modes.” Therefore PRA-based conclusions about overall accident probabilities are undependable.

“Perhaps the only robust conclusion one can draw is that no two major accidents are alike.… This means, unfortunately, that while it may be possible to guard against an exact repeat of the Fukushima disaster, the next nuclear accident will probably be caused by a different combination of initiating factors and failures. There are no reliable tools to predict what that combination will be, and therefore one cannot be confident of being protected against such an accident.”

This grim conclusion warrants sobriety, caution and abundant humility on the part of our nuclear establishment. It should thank the Kudankulam protesters for raising the issue of nuclear safety, and highlighting its paramount importance. It should also reconsider its certification of the French-designed Jaitapur reactors in Maharashtra as safe when their design has not even been frozen or shared with it, and about which hundreds of queries have been raised in Finland, Britain, the U.S., and even France.

There must be a moratorium on all further nuclear activity unless an independent, broad-based, credible safety review is conducted.

 - Praful Bidwai

Courtesy: Frontline, Nov 19 - Dec 2, 2011