Old Plans, Ongoing Handouts, New Spin - Deciphering the Nuclear Construction Announcement

M V Ramana (m.v.ramana@ubc.ca ) and Suvrat Raju (suvrat.raju@gmail.com ) are physicists associated with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, and currently based in Princeton and Bengaluru, respectively. Ramana is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin India, 2012).

In May 2017, the union cabinet approved the construction of 10 more 700 megawatt pressurised heavy water reactors. A careful reading of this largely public relations spin on existing plans suggests that it chiefly hopes to persuade the Nuclear Suppliers Group to accept India as a member and attract capital that aims to profit from supplying components for nuclear power plants. Given our track record, the prospects of it adding to the role of nuclear power in India appear bleak.

On 17 May 2017, the union cabinet gave its approval for the construction of 10 more 700 megawatt (MW) pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) (IANS 2017). These PHWRs will be in addition to four such reactors already under construction. The cabinet secretariat's official press release read like a sales pitch, and claimed that the construction of these 10 reactors would "help transform Indian nuclear industry" and that it would "be a major step towards strengthening India's credentials as a major nuclear manufacturing powerhouse" (Press Information Bureau 2017). The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) put out their own press releases, profusely hailing the decision (NPCIL 2017c; DAE 2017).

The reality underlying these announcements is far less spectacular. Plans for building many PHWRs have been enunciated in the past, and have not materialised. A more careful reading of the announcement suggests that it is targeted at persuading the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to accept India as a member and winning over sections of capital that hope to profit from supplying components for nuclear power plants. This publicity blitz notwithstanding, nuclear power will continue to be an expensive and relatively minor source of electricity for the foreseeable future.

Planning History

The chosen designs for the 10 reactors, the 700 MW PHWR, is one that the Indian nuclear establishment has evolved over the decades, starting with the original 220 MW design imported from Canada (Bhardwaj 2006). Of the 22 nuclear reactors operating in India today, 14 are 220 MW PHWRS and they account for about 3,080 MW of the total installed nuclear capacity of 6,780 MW, which in turn constitutes 2.1% of the total electricity generation capacity in the country. Apart from a few other smaller and older plants, the rest of this total capacity is largely provided by the two 540 MW PHWRs operating in Tarapur, and the two imported 1,000 MW light water reactors (LWRs) at Kudankulam.

The DAE has been planning to build a fleet of 700 MW PHWRs for a long time, and so the government's decision is neither "bold" nor new, and simply constitutes one more step in this direction. In 2007, the DAE announced that as part of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–12), "work on 8 × 700 MWe of indigenous reactors totalling 5,600 MWe capacity" would commence (NI 2007). Of these, fourreactors are already under construction—two each at Kakrapar (Gujarat) and Rawatbhata (Rajasthan). Construction of Kakrapar—3 and Kakrapar—4 began in November 2010 and March 2011 respectively (NPCIL 2017a), whereas Rajasthan—7 and Rajasthan—8 began in July and September 2011 respectively (NPCIL 2017b). In December 2012, the government stated in the Rajya Sabha that work on eight more 700 MW reactors would commence during the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–17) at Kaiga, Chutka, Gorakhpur, and Mahi Banswara (Narayanasamy 2012). However, none of these projects began during the Twelfth Plan.

Although not mentioned in the official press releases, media reports suggest that these are the very sites targeted for the current approval. This history suggests that the recent announcement is largely a public relations spin on existing plans that had already been set in motion by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The Export Story

The government's announcement also recycles other old tropes. For example, it plays up the role of this effort in "strengthening India's credentials as a major nuclear manufacturing powerhouse." This is the latest in a long sequence of efforts by the nuclear establishment to position itself as an exporter of nuclear reactors.

The DAE's rhetorical desire to export nuclear technology dates back to the early 1990s (see, for example, ToI 1990). But claims about the potential for nuclear reactor exports multiplied during the debate over the US–India nuclear deal between 2005 and 2008, and have continued since then.

The rationale for these claims—apart from burnishing the institutional credentials of the DAE—was to persuade members of the NSGto see India as good enough to be admitted to the club. This diplomatic effort, initiated by the UPA government, has been adopted by the Narendra Modi government. Despite its embarrassing failure to do so last year, the government appears to be launching arenewed effort to join the NSG by making claims about exports of Indian PHWRs.

However, the nuclear establishment's efforts at obtaining export orders for its reactors have not been particularly successful.

In 2007, for example, the chairman of NPCIL announced that the company was "considering exporting small and medium reactors (220 MW to 700 MW) to countries in the Asian region" and that "Thailand and Cambodia have held preliminary talks with NPCIL for reactors as they are satisfied with NPCIL's safety and operational capabilities" (Wadke and Subramanian 2007). In 2009, it was the turn of a different country and NPCIL announced that a "proposal for reactor sales to Kazakhstan is already on the anvil, with discussions between NPCIL and the Central Asian nation's nuclear utility Kazatomprom at an advanced stage" (Bureau 2009). The same year, DAE Secretary Anil Kakodkar announced that India had made an export version of its advanced heavy water reactor design, called the AHWR–LEU, which would use low enriched uranium (LEU) instead of the plutonium used in the original AHWR design. The target for this reactor design was to be developing countries "with modest industrial infrastructure" (WNN 2009).1

None of these countries have so far purchased any reactors from India. Nor is it likely that there will be any sales in the near future. Around the world, nuclear power, as a share of electricity generated, is on the decline, from the historical maximum of 17.6% in 1996 to under 11% in 2015 (BP 2015; Ramana 2016). Although there is much talk of new countries adopting nuclear power, as of 2016, only two new countries were actually building reactors—Belarus and the United Arab Emirates (Schneider and Froggatt 2016: 13). Just about every reactor sold in the last decade or more has been a LWR and prospects for the export of Indian PHWRs are bleak.

Corporate Handouts

A second target for the announcement is evidently the various corporations that profit from supplying equipment to nuclear power plants. All of the official announcements specifically mentioned these companies. NPCIL commented on the approval generating "confidence in the Indian nuclear industry about the continuity of business as it would provide orders over a period of time" and how it "would also help the Indian industry evolve, augment its capacities and capabilities" (NPCIL 2017c). The DAE's press release, a statement from a group of retired nuclear bureaucrats, talked about "new enthusiasm and optimism among equipment manufacturing industry", predicting that it "is poised to grow in tandem with our programme, bringing India to the frontline of global nuclear manufacturing and supply chain" (DAE 2017). Most importantly, the government press release talked about "likely manufacturing orders of close to 70,000 crores" being given to domestic industry (Press Information Bureau 2017).

Although there are a number of such corporations, a few of them capture most of the contracts. Historically, some of the prominent companies involved in such supplies are Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Walchandnagar, and Tata Consulting Engineers. Most of these corporate entities naturally welcomed the government's announcement. The director of L&T called the move "bold and historic" (Reuters 2017). Likewise, the chief operating officer of Godrej & Boyce termed it a "visionary" step (Bureau 2017).

Many of these companies had been hoping for major contracts from imported reactors. Take the case of L&T. In 2008, its top official had publicly expressed the expectation that it would get offers of around ₹24,000 crore per year for 10 years (MC 2008). In April 2015, L&T signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with French company Areva to carry out some of the manufacture for the EPR reactor planned for construction in Jaitapur (PTI 2015). Kalyani Group company Bharat Forge had earlier signed an MoU with Areva for the manufacture of forgings related to nuclear plants (Staff 2009). Tata Consulting Engineers had signed a preliminary contract with General Electric Hitachi "to collaborate in areas such as workforce skills identification and development, as well as early feasibility design studies, product and project engineering work" (GEH 2010).

In late 2015, in anticipation of reactor imports from the US, the chairman of the Godrej Group, Adi Godrej, excitedly said, "There will be a huge opportunity". And the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walchandnagar Group was "very hopeful that before the end of the financial year … enquiries [would] start to come in" (Reuters 2015).

Although this bonanza from imported reactors has not materialised, contracts for nuclear plants can still be very large and profitable. For example, in March 2009, L&T received a ₹345 crore order for four steam turbines for Kakrapar—3 and Kakrapar—4, and in September 2009, two orders worth ₹405 crore (Larsen & Toubro 2009a, b). In December 2012, it received an order valued at "over ₹732 crores" (Larsen & Toubro 2012). It is likely that the number of large private—sector companies involved in the nuclear reactor business will expand in the coming years, and the recent announcement should be seen as a strategy to win over those sections of capital.

Cost

Ultimately, the cost of these handouts and efforts to woo NSG members will be paid by the public. Each of these 10 reactors will be hugely expensive propositions, as suggested by the ₹70,000 crore figure for manufacturing orders mentioned in the official announcement. Although the government has not so far provided a cost projection, we can come up with a rough estimate on the basis of earlier experience.

We can start with the last two PHWRs under construction, Rajasthan—7 and Rajasthan—8. Construction of these began six years ago and they were estimated to cost ₹12,320 crore or about ₹6,160 crore per reactor (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation 2012). These projects have been delayed by at least two years due to what the government terms "major equipments supply constraints," referring to the inability of commercial manufacturers to manufacture components for these reactors on schedule. This itself suggests that the government's plan to manufacture 10 reactors in "fleet mode" may be overly ambitious.

Delays inevitably lead to an escalation in cost. Although the government has not announced the precise cost escalation at the Kakrapar and Rajasthan projects, even a very conservative estimate using just the additional cost of debt servicing in building the project over seven rather than five years suggests an escalation of about 15% in costs. In addition, the construction cost index for power sector projects has gone up by more than 20% (CIDC 2017). Putting these factors together suggests that even if construction were to be started immediately, each new 700 MW PHWR would cost about ₹8,500 crore, and 10 PHWRs would cost ₹85,000 crore. The true cost is likely to be even higher.

This high—cost implies that the electricity from these reactors is likely to be more expensive than electricity from competing sources of energy—even if the comparison is restricted to so—called base load sources, such as coal, natural gas, and hydroelectric power. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have also declined in cost. As we have discussed earlier (Raju and Ramana 2013; Ramana 2007), the government's tariff model for nuclear power hides several indirect costs. These include an inconsistent accounting of the time—value of the equity invested in nuclear plants, and significant subsidies for the heavy water that is used in PHWRs. We will explore this issue in a forthcoming article.

Evaluation

Announcements are, of course, easier than delivery. There has been a history of the nuclear establishment setting ambitious targets and making tall claims. A particularly relevant example dates back to 1984, when the DAE announced that it would be constructing a number of PHWRs (CAG 1999). That plan involved building 12 235 MW PHWR units and 10 500 MW units by 2000, which were to bring the country's nuclear power generation capacity to 10,000 MW by the turn of the century (Ramanna 1985). That did not happen. Instead, as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found in 1999, the "actual additional generation of power" from this plan "was nil in spite of having incurred an expenditure of ₹5,291.48 crore." Installed nuclear capacity at the end of 2000 was 2,720 MW, less than a third of the target.

Plans to import LWRs from France and the US have also failed. Plans for imported LWRs were announced at the beginning of the decade as part of a new target of 20,000 MW by 2020 (Chidambaram 2001). But these import plans did not, for the most part, become serious till the 2008 decision by the NSG to lift the ban on nuclear trade with India. At that time, NPCIL assumed that construction of the first imported LWR would start in 2008 and the reactor would start operating in 2014 (Thakur 2008: 62). But,as of May 2017, there has been no reactor imported as a result of the NSG waiver.

Nuclear power targets have also fallen. Following the 2008 NSG waiver, nuclear power targets swelled and, in 2010, the DAEsecretary announced a target of 35,000 MW by 2020 (PTI 2010). By 2015, the target was a mere 14,600 MW by 2020–21 (Sasi 2015). Considering that the current official capacity is 6,780 MW, and that only the Rajasthan and Kakrapar projects and the prototype fast breeder reactor are likely to be completed by then, total nuclear capacity will probably touch 10,080 MW by 2020.

The fruitless pursuit of imported LWRs suggests that it would be fallacious to assume that all the 10 PHWRs will be constructed. It is almost certain, going by history, that they will not be constructed on time. The four 700 MW PHWRs under construction have all been delayed. The initial commissioning dates were December 2015 for the two Kakrapar units and December 2016 for the Rajasthan units (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation 2012: 32). As of December 2016, Unit 3 at Kakrapar was expected to become critical by November 2017, and Unit 4 is expected to start six to seven months later (IANS 2016). The Rajasthan units are expected to start about a year later (Chaffee 2016). Practically all reactors constructed by the DAE and NPCIL have suffered delays and cost overruns (Ramana 2012).

Changes in the Power Sector

While nuclear power has been suffering delays and overruns, an important change has occurred on the supply side of India's power sector—a rapid increase in renewable energy. For many years now, wind and solar power have delivered more electricity to the grid than nuclear energy. The Central Electric Authority (CEA) reports that between April 2016 and March 2017 renewable energy sources together generated 81.9 TWh, more than twice the 37.9 TWh generated by nuclear power.

According to the CEA, renewable energy is expected to contribute about 20% and 24% of the total energy requirement in 2021–22 and 2026–27 respectively (Central Electric Authority 2016: 6.13). Even if these figures do not come true, the direction in which renewable energy is heading is clear. In contrast, the CEA projects that the share of nuclear energy will stay roughly constant, around 2% of all electricity generated in the country. Nuclear power, then, will continue to be a minor source of electricity for India.

Conclusion

In its press release, NPCIL declared that its mission was to "produce nuclear power as a safe, environmentally benign and economically viable source of electrical energy to meet the increasing electricity needs of the country" (2017c). The reality, however, is that nuclear power is neither safe nor environmentally benign, given the risk of catastrophic accidents and the production of radioactive waste. The high costs involved in generating nuclear energy imply that it cannot be an economically viable means of meeting the electricity needs of the millions in India without access to power.

The announcement about building 10 PHWRs fits a pattern, often seen with the current government, where it trumpets a routine decision to bolster its "bold" credentials. Most of the plants that were recently approved have been in the pipeline for years. Nevertheless, there is good reason to be sceptical of these plans given that similar plans to build large numbers of reactors have failed to meet their targets, often falling far short. Neither is there a high likelihood of reactor exports. The media hype surrounding this announcement, and the effort and the expense invested in it, is a revealing indicator of the style of functioning of the Modi government.

Note

1 The purpose of the plutonium or the LEU is to provide the initial fission reactions to produce neutrons that would go on to converting the thorium into uranium—233, which would then undergo fission reactions and produce energy.

References

Bhardwaj, S A (2006): "The Future 700 MWe Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor," Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol 236, pp 861–71.

BP (2015): Statistical Review of World Energy 2015, London: BP:
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about—bp/energy—economics/statistical—review—of—world—energy.html.

Bureau (2009): "NPCIL Embarks on Marketing Drive for Reactors," Business Line, 21 June.

—(2017): "₹70,000—crore Investment Proposal to Set Off Chain Reaction in N—Energy," Economic Times, 18 May.

Central Electric Authority (2016): "Draft National Electricity Plan," New Delhi;
http://www.cea.nic.in/reports/committee/nep/nep_dec.pdf.

Chaffee, P (2016): "Potential and Existing Global Nuclear Newbuild Projects (non—Generation IV)," Nuclear Intelligence Weekly,Vol 10, No 25, pp 8–16.

Chidambaram, R (2001): "Nuclear Energy Needs and Proliferation Misconceptions", Current Science, Vol 81, No 1, pp 17–21.

CIDC (2017): "Construction Cost Indices", Construction Industry Development Council,
http://www.cidc.in/new/cci—new.html.

Comptroller and Auditor General of India (1999): "Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India," New Delhi.

DAE (2017): "Top Nuclear Scientists Hail the Cabinet's Decision Regarding Mega—project on 10 New Indigenous Reactors", Department of Atomic Energy, Mumbai, 19 May,
http://dae.nic.in/writereaddata/pr190517.pdf.

ET Bureau (2016): "India Won't Need Extra Power Plants For Next Three Years, Says Government Report," Economic Times, 2 June.

GEH (2010): "GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Tata Consulting Engineers Exploring Potential Design and Workforce Development Opportunities for New Reactor Projects", GE Newsroom, 17 Aug;
http://www.genewsroom.com/Press—Releases/GE—Hitachi—Nuclear—Energy—and—Tata—Consulting—Engineers—Exploring—Potential—Design—and—Workforce—Development—Opportunities—for—New—Reactor—Projects—224707.

IANS (2016): "Trial Run of India's First 700 MW Reactor in 2017", Economic Times, 31 Dec.

—(2017): "India to Build 10 Heavy Water Reactors to Boost Nuclear Power," Hindustan Times, 17 May.

Larsen & Toubro (2009a): "L&T Receives ₹ 345 Cr Order for Critical Equipment for Nuclear Project", press release, http://www.larsentoubro.com/media/28064/npcil345crorder300309.pdf.

—(2009b): "L&T Wins Repeat Order for Steam Generators for Nuclear Power Projects," press release,  http://www.larsentoubro.com/media/30321/lt—wins—repeat—order—for—steam—generators—for—nuclear—power—projects.pdf.

—(2012): "L&T Secures ₹732 Cr Order from Nuclear Power Corporation of India," press release,  http://www.larsentoubro.com/media /28331/ltsecuresrs732croreorderfromnuclearpowercorporationofidia_—8588469091606587 310.pdf.

MC (2008): "NSG Waiver May Generate Orders Worth Rs 2K Cr: L&T", Money Control,  https://moneycontrol.com/video/business/nsg—waiver—may—generate—orders—worth—rs—2k—cr—lt_355257.html.

Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (2012): "37th Report on Mega Projects (₹1000 Crores and above) June, 2012", New Delhi.

N.I. (2007): "Attainment of Self—sufficiency in Nuclear Power Production," Nuclear India, Vol 40, Nos 11–12, p 20,dae.nic.in/sites/default/files/nimay07.pdf.

Narayanasamy, V (2012): "Unstarred Question No. 2949: Nuclear Power Plants in the Twelfth Plan," Rajya Sabha, New Delhi

NPCIL (2017a): "Plants under Construction — Kakrapar Atomic Power Project", Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd,  http://www.npcil.nic.in/main/ConstructionDetail.aspx? ReactorID=91./

—(2017b): "Plants under Construction — Rajasthan Atomic Power Project", Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd,  http://www.npcil.nic.in/main/ConstructionDetail.aspx?ReactorID=87.

—(2017c): "Mega Impetus for Nuclear Power—Cabinet Approves 10 New Indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors," Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, 18 May,   http://www.npcil.nic.in/pdf/news_18may2017_01.pdf .

Press Information Bureau (2017): Press Release on Cabinet's decision to transform domestic nuclear industry, 17 May, Department of Atomic Energy,   http://dae.nic.in/?q=node/973.

PTI (2010): "N—Power Generation to Touch 35,000mw by 2020: AEC Chief," India Today,   http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/N—power—generation—to—touch—35,000mw—by—2020:—AEC—chief/1/89269.html.

—(2015): "L&T, Areva Sign MoU for Cooperation on Jaitapur Nuclear Plant," Livemint, 11 April.

Raju, S and Ramana, M V (2013): "Cost of Electricity from the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant," Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 48, pp 51–60.

Ramana, M V (2007): "Heavy Subsidies in Heavy Water", Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 42, pp 3483–90.

—(2012): The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India, New Delhi: Penguin India.

—(2016): "Second Life or Half—life? The Contested Future of Nuclear Power and its Potential Role in a Sustainable Energy Transition," in F Kern (ed.), Energy Transitions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 363–96.

Ramanna, R (1985): "Can Nuclear Energy Claim to be the Only Source of Power in the Future? C. C. Desai Memorial Lecture, Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, Bombay: Department of Atomic Energy.

Reuters (2015): "Indian Manufacturers Like Larsen & Toubro and Walchandnagar Industries Target Orders from Revived Nuclear Power Push," Economic Times, 24 Dec.

—(2017): "Indian Cabinet Approves Plans to build 10 Nuclear Reactors", Reuters India, 18 May.

Sasi, A (2015): "PMO Sets Target: Hike N—Power Capacity Three—Fold in 10 Years," Indian Express, 2 Feb,http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india—others/pmo—sets—target—hike—n—power—capacity—three—fold—in—10—years/.

Schneider, M and Froggatt, A (2016): The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016, Paris: Mycle Schneider Consulting,   http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The—World—Nuclear—Industry—Status—Report—2016—HTML.html.

Singh, J (2016): "Unstarred Question No 146: Investment in Atomic Energy Sector," New Delhi: Lok Sabha;   http://www.dae.nic.in/writereaddata/parl/winter2016/lsus146.pdf.

Staff (2009): "Bharat Forge and AREVA Sign MoU for manufacture of heavy forgings in India," Forging, 6 Feb,   http://forgingmagazine.com/materialsmro/bharat—forge—and—areva—sign—mou—manufacture—heavy—forgings—india.

Thakur, S (2008): "Economics of Nuclear Power in the Indian Context," Atoms for Peace, Vol 2, No 1, pp 59–67.

ToI (1990): "Export Nuclear Tech: Iyengar," Times of India, 14 May.

Wadke, R and Subramanian, T S (2007): "30,000 MW to be Added Using Imported N—Fuel," Business Line, 16 Aug.

WNN (2009): "Thorium—fuelled Exports Coming From India", World Nuclear News, 17 Sep;   http://www.world—nuclear—news.org/NP_Thorium_exports_coming_from_India_1709091.html.

Courtesy: Economic and Political Weekly, 17 June 2017

Nuclear safety before vendor interests - M. V. Ramana & Suvrat Raju

The question that must be asked, is whether India is willing to compromise on its laws and the safety and rights of its citizens to protect the business interests of reactor suppliers

In 2010, under pressure from multinational nuclear suppliers, the Manmohan Singh government pushed through a law to protect them from the consequences of a nuclear accident. The law makes it impossible for victims to sue the supplier, even for an accident that results from a design defect. Liability is effectively transferred to the Indian taxpayer, first to the public sector Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) and then the government. Even this is capped at a maximum of Rs.2,500 crore and victims need not be compensated for any additional damage.

BEYOND MEGAWATT: Making the operator and supplier share liability is not only fair but crucial from the point of view of cover.

However, the law also includes a clause that, under certain circumstances, allows the NPCIL, although not the victims, to sue the supplier and recoup the money it has paid out. It is this relatively minor clause that nuclear suppliers, and their friends in the Indian establishment, have been railing against for the past two years.

The Russian Deputy Prime Minister warned India, on his recent visit, that if the Russian company Atomstroyexport (a subsidiary of Rosatom) was forced to obey this law, then the cost of power from the Kudankulam third and fourth reactors would go up. He must have been hoping that no one would try and square this threat with earlier claims of safety made about these plants.

In a paper, published by “Nuclear Engineering and Design” in 2006, three NPCIL officials claimed that, in any given year, the probability of a severe accident at these plants was one in 10 million. If Atomstroyexport can persuade insurers that this figure is correct, then to obtain cover even for accidents where the highest possible liability of Rs.2,500 crore is applicable, it would need to pay a premium of only about Rs.2,500 per year. For the 1,000 MW Kudankulam reactors, operating at an 80 per cent load factor, this should lead to an increase in tariff of about a third of a millionth of a rupee per unit!

This absurdly low figure arises because both the factors in the calculation earlier make little sense. As preliminary data from Fukushima shows, a nuclear accident can cause economic damage that is more than a hundred times larger than the artificial cap on liability in the Indian law. Moreover, empirical evidence — in a total of about 15,000 reactor-years of operation, there have been several “core-damage” accidents including Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island — suggests that the probability of severe accidents is about a thousand times higher than what the industry claims.

Suppliers have successfully wielded their influence in other countries to avoid economic liability for accidents. Their argument that the Indian law will lead to cost escalations is meant to veil the real reason for their worry: the law sets a bad precedent and, in the future, either in India itself or in another country, it may lead to a more rational law centred on victims rather than the industry. In such a law, there would be no cap on liability, and suppliers would be held jointly responsible with the operator for paying out damages.

In fact, the Supreme Court has already admitted a petition, by the lawyer Prashant Bhushan, requesting precisely these changes in the law. Making the operator and supplier share liability is not only fair but crucial from the point of view of safety.

Design and accidents

The history of nuclear power shows that design failures have played an important role in all severe accidents. This is true of Fukushima, where the underlying problems with the Mark 1 design had been recognised many years earlier. The Kemeny Commission, set up by Jimmy Carter, to analyse the Three Mile Island accident pointed out that the suppliers, Babcock & Wilcox, shared culpability. The disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, which was built by the Soviet predecessor of Rosatom, was caused by a combination of two grievous design features: a positive “void coefficient of reactivity,” and the lack of appropriate containment.

Apart from the untenable claim about higher tariffs, nuclear suppliers and the Indian government have made other disingenuous arguments to get rid of the clause on supplier liability. One of them is that the law is hurting India’s domestic manufacturers, some of whom are involved in supplying small parts of the plant.

In general, as in other industries, exposing all manufacturers along the supply chain to tort claims helps make them more conscious of safety and quality. Manufacturers who are supplying parts to a hazardous industry need to be more careful about reliability.

Nevertheless, the law does not, as such, prevent the NPCIL from signing subcontracts that indemnify smaller suppliers along the chain. The NPCIL’s problem is that it is politically infeasible to extend this indemnity to the manufacturer of the plant itself, as it discovered when it tried to provide blanket indemnity to Atomstroyexport for the Kudankulam third and fourth units.

Industry on Indian law

The nuclear industry also argues that India’s current law is out of sync with international conventions on nuclear liability. This is a poor argument because these conventions were all drafted under pressure from nuclear manufacturers who, historically, were in a stronger position than they are now. In the early days of nuclear power, American suppliers exploited this to impose the idea that liability should be channelled to the operator. Later, suppliers from other countries also adopted this self-serving argument.

Until recently, the United States itself never joined any international liability convention, because under its domestic law, called the Price Anderson Act, victims retain the right to sue suppliers. Economic compensation is channelled through a complicated insurance system, but manufacturers can be found legally liable and this has consequences.

In 1997, the U.S. engineered the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), with a special rider for itself. When Bush communicated the convention to the U.S. Senate for ratification, he emphasised that “The United States in particular benefits from a grandfather clause that allows it to join the convention without being required to change certain aspects of the Price-Anderson system that would otherwise be inconsistent with its requirements.”

India’s own law is largely borrowed from an annex of the CSC. After showing no inclination to join any of the existing treaties for half a century, the Indian government rushed to sign this discriminatory convention soon after the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. This shows that it was acting under external pressure, and not out of any concern for potential victims.

Even granting that suppliers should be liable in principle, many well-meaning people argue that India must acquiesce to the demands of the industry because it desperately needs electricity. Leaving aside the debate on the role of nuclear power in general, it is clear that India’s push towards importing reactors has less to do with electricity, and more to do with other factors.

Kakodkar article

Even by the standards of UPA II, the process of handing out multi-billion dollar contracts for reactors to various multinational companies has been opaque and arbitrary. In Jaitapur, the government has promised to buy up to six European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) from Areva. No EPR is in commercial operation anywhere in the world and in France and Finland, Areva is running into severe construction-difficulties. Two nuclear complexes have been promised to the U.S., again involving designs that have never been built before.

In a rare candid admission, the former chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, provided the rationale behind these seemingly bizarre decisions.

Writing in the Marathi daily Sakaal, in January 2011, Kakodkar explained: “America, Russia and France were the countries that we made mediators in the efforts to lift sanctions, and hence, for the nurturing of their business interests, we made deals with them for nuclear projects.”

As the debate on liability continues both in public and in the courts, the question that the country must ask is whether it is willing to compromise on its laws, and the safety and rights of its citizens to protect the business interests of reactor vendors.

(The authors are physicists.)

Courtesy: The Hindu, October 30, 2012

Kudankulam : Where the mind is full of fear - Suvrat Raju, M. V. Ramana

Villagers living around Kudankulam are justifiably scared as empirical data suggest a far higher probability of accidents than claimed by the nuclear establishment

Contempt for democracy is as old as democracy itself. The British liberal, John Locke, wrote in 1695 that for “day-labourers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairy-maids ... hearing plain commands, is the sure and only course to bring them to obedience and practice. The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe.” The Indian ruling classes have evidently taken these medieval ideas to heart. They are simply unable to acknowledge, anywhere in India, that farmers and working-class people may have a valid and independent perspective on infrastructural projects that must be respected.

The strife in Kudankulam illustrates this attitude. When peaceful rallies against the plant started in 1988, immediately after the project was mooted, the police responded with live ammunition. At the public hearing for the environmental impact assessment of the proposed units 3 to 6, the project met with overwhelming opposition; the government simply ignored this. Last year, when the commissioning of the first reactor became imminent, a large body of people shifted from sporadic expressions of opposition to active but non-violent resistance. The Jayalalithaa government stalled for a while but soon — possibly after striking a political deal with the Manmohan Singh government — rolled ahead with the project. The recent incidents of state repression — in which one person was killed in police firing and paramilitary forces were seen literally driving villagers into the sea — form the latest addition to this pattern.

‘FOREIGN HAND’

Government officials apparently subscribe to the axiom that they understand the interests of the local people better than the people themselves. This is why they tie themselves into bizarre knots, when faced with genuine dissent. For example, earlier this year, the Prime Minister’s Office started insisting that a “foreign hand” was guiding the protests. In an incident straight out of an Orwell novel, the police captured and deported a cash-strapped German backpacker who had almost no relation to the movement. Since the removal of this “mastermind” from the scene has regrettably not had the desired effects, the Home Minister has again started to see visions of “foreign nationals” near the Kudankulam plant.

Lower-level officials seem to be no different. As the Superintendent of Police, Tirunelveli, said succinctly: “the villagers are good. They are being instigated.” This point of view is echoed by pundits who are concerned that the “educated” leadership might get the presumably “uneducated” villagers to act against their “own best interests.” What the Union Ministers, the police and the pundits have in common is a profound contempt for the rights and abilities of ordinary people to control their lives, combined with an ignorance of the actual dynamics of the movement.

All available information suggests that the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) largely comprises the local villagers and fisherfolk. If these people had been as “gullible” as the government claims, its large-scale propaganda campaign emphasising the benign nature of the plant would have succeeded.

The locals are not being irrational. To the contrary, it is the top echelons of our technocracy which have persisted in making scientifically untenable statements. For example, the previous Chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission stated that the chance of a nuclear accident in India was “one in infinity”! It is easy for people, even without specialised knowledge, to weigh this against the patent evidence from Fukushima offered by TV screens around the world — that nuclear reactors can and do explode on occasion — and decide not to trust the assertions of “experts”.

More quantitative comparisons do not change the broad picture. By means of a process known as probabilistic risk assessment, the nuclear industry routinely trots out precise-looking figures, claiming that the probability of a severe accident is very low. However, empirical data from the past decades of nuclear plant operation sharply contradict these claims and suggest a far higher probability of accidents. This obvious dichotomy has engendered public distrust, and nuclear technocrats have only themselves to blame for this.

It is unclear whether the industry itself believes its safety claims. The manufacturer of the Kudankulam plant, Atomstroyexport, is protected by an intergovernmental agreement between India and Russia, which completely absolves it of any responsibility in the event of a disaster. This agreement is probably inconsistent with India’s domestic laws and judgments of the Supreme Court.

The government has refused to release the text of the agreement despite a Right to Information request, a court petition, and even a parliamentary question, leading to the suspicion that it contains clauses that are even more egregious than commonly suspected.

The government points out that India has never suffered a catastrophic accident. However, India’s total operating experience of about 350 reactor years — a tiny fraction of the world total of about 15,000 reactor years — is too low to allow a valid extrapolation into the future.

If anything, the risk of a nuclear accident in India is likely to be higher than elsewhere because of weaknesses in the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). As the Comptroller and Auditor General pointed out in its recent scathing report, the AERB remains “subordinate to the Central Government,” which also operates all nuclear plants in India. The CAG report also stated that the AERB had failed to develop a mechanism to ensure regulatory compliance or oversee the procedures for radiological emergencies.

On Kudankulam, the AERB is unwilling to take its own reports seriously. After Fukushima, an AERB committee recommended that reactors must have sufficient power back-up and freshwater supply for emergency cooling of the reactor and spent fuel pools; the use of seawater for this purpose can corrode a reactor. Instead of ensuring this, the AERB has simply accepted the government’s promise that it will construct a water tank, and provide a mobile diesel generator sometime in the future. The locals have no way of holding the government to account on this assurance.

The fisherfolk near Kudankulam are also worried that the routine operation of the nuclear plant will adversely affect their livelihood. Rather than engaging with these concerns constructively, which it could easily have done, the government has simply dismissed them with more expert opinions.

IMPACT ON HEALTH

There have been a few independent epidemiological studies of the health of people living in the vicinity of nuclear facilities. One study compared the health status of the inhabitants of five villages within 10 km of the Rajasthan atomic power station and four other villages more than 50 km away. It observed statistically significant increases in several indices including the rates of congenital deformities, spontaneous abortions, still births, and solid tumours in the villages closer to the reactor.

This survey does not reveal the precise cause of these differences but, in the absence of any other plausible factor, indicates that it is the nuclear plant that is responsible in some way.

The Kudankulam-1 plant will augment Tamil Nadu’s total installed capacity by about 5 per cent. The question is whether this benefit justifies the risks and costs associated with the plant. For an individual or corporation based in Chennai, the risks may be small enough to be outweighed even by marginal benefits. But the people who are being asked to bear the brunt of the risk and the inconvenience caused by the plant — the locals near Kudankulam — will benefit only minimally.

The government could determine how the locals balance these factors through a meaningful dialogue with the PMANE or direct public consultations. Instead it wants to force them to trust the decisions of its officials and experts. This brings us to the central issue at stake in Kudankulam: is the course of development in India to be charted only by technocrats guided by corporate and upper-class priorities or will India move towards a true democracy where people have control of their own resources and environment?

(The authors are physicists with the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (Bangalore) and Princeton University respectively. Ramana is also the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India, forthcoming from Penguin India. The views expressed are personal.)

Courtesy: The Hindu

The multiple costs of India’s nuclear ambitions

Areva claims that the European Pressurized Reactors it plans to install at the proposed nuclear plant in Jaitapur will provide “an unequalled safety level”. If so, Areva should be willing to risk its financial health on the safety of its reactors and accept an unlimited amount of liability for accidents, instead of lobbying for a modification in India’s already absurdly low liability caps, argue MV Ramana and Suvrat Raju in the second of our series on rethinking nuclear energy after Fukushima

Writing as we are after the tragic earthquake in Japan and the multiple accidents at the Fukushima nuclear reactors, we cannot think about India’s nuclear ambitions without discussing what went wrong in Fukushima and its implications for evaluating the risk of nuclear accidents. This is all the more necessary because discussions of nuclear power in India have been dominated by voices from the Department of Atomic Energy and related institutions, which have been busy trying to make the accident at Fukushima seem like an aberration, at times denying reality completely. Joining this chorus of reassurances has been the international nuclear industry, which is looking to make billions of dollars in sales of reactors to India after the US-India nuclear deal. Domestically, the Manmohan Singh government, which staked its survival on this deal in 2008, is deeply politically invested in pushing through a large nuclear expansion. 

Let us start with the assurance offered by the chairperson of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission to viewers of NDTV on March 20, 2011 that Indian reactors are “100%” safe. One should add, though, that according to him, what happened in Fukushima was “purely a chemical reaction and not a nuclear emergency”. Is it really true that all of the nuclear reactors in India have a 0% chance of undergoing a major accident?  

This can be answered in two ways. Empirically, there have been many accidents and incidents of safety lapses at the facilities run by India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and its sister organisations. These accidents, and the underlying causes, show that these organisations have poor safety culture, hardly what is recommended when dealing with a hazardous and complex technology like nuclear power. It has been mostly luck that prevented some of these from escalating into major catastrophes. 

Theoretically, nuclear power advocates have a standard though flawed argument: reactors are safe because they have “defence-in-depth”. That concept refers to the practice of having multiple protective systems so that they would all have to fail before a radioactive release occurs.  However the key point is that while it might be improbable for these systems to fail independently it is possible for a single initiating event to cause simultaneous or sequential failures. In Fukushima, the earthquake not only knocked out the primary power supply, it also caused a tsunami that disabled the backup power supply.  Events of this sort are very hard to model in the “probabilistic risk analysis” (PRA) that the industry performs to produce estimates of how infrequent reactor accidents are. 

In fact, perhaps the only robust conclusion one can draw from the PRA methodology is that no two major accidents are alike. This means, unfortunately, that while we can guard against an exact repeat of the Fukushima failure, the next nuclear accident will probably be caused by a different combination of initiating factors and failures.  The many claims we have seen about how reactors, such as the one proposed for Jaitapur in Maharashtra, are safe because they are sufficiently far from the coast and thus protected from tsunamis, are misleading; the next accident is more likely to result from other root causes, not tsunamis. The tsunami was a sufficient condition to trigger the Fukushima accidents, not a necessary condition. 

Despite their claims about the safety of their reactors, nuclear manufacturers and operating entities have known all along that catastrophic accidents are possible. This is why they spent so much effort in lobbying the Indian parliament to pass a nuclear liability law that would limit the amount of compensation they would have to hand out in the event of a disaster. Areva claims that the European Pressurized Reactors it plans to install in Jaitapur provide “an unequalled safety level”. If so, Areva should be willing to risk its financial health on the safety of its reactors and accept an unlimited amount of liability for accidents which, in any case, are supposedly impossible in its facilities. The fact that President Sarkozy, on his visit to India, insisted that India should modify its liability law to indemnify Areva from the cost of a disaster belies these reassuring pronouncements. 

The accident in Fukushima also brings out the absurdly low level of the Indian liability cap, which is set at a maximum of the rupee equivalent of 300 million special drawing rights (approximately $462 million). Accurate estimates are not yet available, but the economic loss due to Fukushima has probably already exceeded this figure and will end up being in the billions of dollars. Furthermore, while the Indian liability bill allows the operator of the plant a limited right of recourse in the event of an accident caused by a design failure, this does not extend to the damage done to the plants themselves; in Fukushima, four units have been irreparably damaged by the accident and subsequent cooling-operations.  In India, if one of the expensive reactors being sold by Areva — currently about USD 8 billion apiece in the international market — is damaged by a design-defect, it is the public sector Nuclear Power Corporation, and indirectly the Indian people, who will be left holding the bag.  

The Fukushima accident also reveals the safety implications of building large nuclear complexes. In Jaitapur, the Indian government would like to establish six nuclear plants—each nearly four times larger than Fukushima Daiichi I. Similar mega-nuclear complexes are planned in other parts of the country — including Mithi Virdi (Gujarat) and Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh) — which have been promised to American companies. From a safety standpoint, a nuclear complex is a terrible idea; not only is the potential damage from an accident at a complex much larger than the potential damage from an accident at a single reactor, but an accident at one reactor can damage co-located reactors and hamper emergency operations in the entire complex,. The nuclear industry regularly promises that safety is its number one priority but builds such complexes just to reduce costs and logistical overheads. 

The safety concerns regarding nuclear power that have been so vividly brought out by the accidents at Fukushima following the tragic earthquake and tsunami are only one of the problems with the vast nuclear expansion that the nuclear establishment and the current government are proposing. Also at stake is democracy at multiple levels, as seen from the “cash for votes” scandal in parliament, the loss of citizens’ right to demand adequate compensation from international nuclear vendors under the Nuclear Liability Law, and the beating up, arrest and police firing on locals of Jaitapur (leading to one death), whose concerns about the safety of the reactors to be built on their lands have been further justified by Fukushima. Nuclear ambitions come with high costs that cannot be measured only in dollars. 

(M V Ramana and Suvrat Raju are physicists with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. Ramana is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Power in India, forthcoming from Viking Penguin) 

Courtesy : Infochange News & Features, April 2011

Strange Love : For the Nuclear Industry

The Indian Government has completely smothered the rights of its citizens in the interests of the nuclear industry

---

On 26 April, the 25th anniversary of the disastrous accident at Chernobyl, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a high-level meeting with the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and several other senior members of his government, including the Minister of Environment and Forests and the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). This meeting reviewed the status of the proposed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant, which has been the focus of severe public opposition. The concerns raised by many local and national groups, in this context, have only been reinforced by the nuclear accident at Fukushima. However, instead of conducting a meaningful review, the Government simply held a press conference and reiterated its determination to go ahead with the project. This is unfortunately just the latest example of obduracy at the highest levels of this government when it comes to the question of nuclear power.

Three years ago, the Government of India staked its survival on a civil nuclear deal with the United States. This deal, which was initiated in 2005 by Manmohan Singh and George Bush without any public consultation, was opposed by many, including the Left parliamentary parties. Although the first UPA regime was dependent on the Left for its survival, the Manmohan Singh Government chose to risk a vote of confidence to force the issue. Even at the time, there were allegations that the Government won this vote using bribery. The recent WikiLeaks revelation that an employee in the US embassy was shown a chest of cash before the vote has only served to aggravate suspicions, not only of such corruption but also of the role played by the US in this saga.

The Government claims that it undertook all these actions for the sake of energy. In a press release, the Prime Minister’s Office justified its insensitive Chernobyl Day announcement on the same grounds: ‘India’s energy needs are vast and growing and nuclear energy is an important clean energy option.’

Earlier, in mid-2008, during the parliamentary debate on the trust vote, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee explained that the Nuclear Deal was essential to avoid a cataclysmic shortage of power in the future. Without the deal, he claimed, by 2050 “our energy deficit would be 412,000 megawatts”.  Mukherjee then went on to tell Parliament that, by a curious coincidence, the deal would provide India with almost exactly this amount of power and “reduce the deficit... to only 7,000 megawatts.” In other words, the deal would allow the Government to embark on a frenzy of nuclear construction amounting to roughly two-and-a-half times the country’s total current installed power generation capacity in four decades.

In fact, estimates of both the deficits and contribution of nuclear power were questionable and seemed engineered to influence the debate on the deal. In 2008, Anil Kakodkar, secretary of the DAE, presented these figures for the first time in a talk in Bangalore where he also claimed that the deal would allow India to expand its nuclear programme by more than a hundred times by 2050. The history of nuclear energy in India offers no precedent for such an increase, although it does provide many examples of grand pronouncements. The first secretary of the DAE, Homi Bhabha, predicted that India would produce 18–20,000 megawatts (MW) of nuclear power by 1987; when 1987 came around, India’s nuclear power production capacity was stuck at 512 MW—less than 3 per cent of Bhabha’s projection. In the 1980s, the DAE launched a ‘profile’, claiming that it would install 10,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2000, but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s review of this programme in 1998 found that the ‘the actual additional generation of power… was nil in spite of having incurred an expenditure of Rs 5,291.48 crore’.

Not only have no lessons been learnt from these past failures, but, on independent grounds, the DAE’s current projections are technically infeasible. They rely on untested technology, and are based on erroneous calculations.

Given this background, there are good reasons to doubt both the projections of energy shortage for 2050 and the ability of nuclear power to meet it. However, even the process of trying to set up nuclear power capacity to the extent possible imposes many economic and non-economic costs on society that India can scarcely afford.

‘WE HAVE TO KEEP THE INTERESTS OF FOREIGN COMPANIES IN MIND’

The key feature of the deal was that it gave India access to nuclear technology in the international market. The Government plans to use this new freedom to import several large reactors from the very countries that helped secure the deal, including of course the US but also France and Russia. France seems to be first in line. The six reactors that the Government has promised to import and install at Jaitapur are called EPRs and are being sold by a French company called Areva. Each EPR—an abbreviation for Evolutionary or European  Pressurised Reactor—will produce 1,650 MW, which is almost one-third of India’s total nuclear-power-generating capacity today, and about four times as much as that of the Fukushima-Daiichi I reactor.

The Government’s hurry to seal this deal has been puzzling because no EPR is in commercial operation anywhere in the world. Apart from two EPRs in China, where construction has not advanced particularly, there are two other EPRs under construction in Olkiluoto (Finland) and Flamanville (France). These two have already run up costs of over $7 billion apiece. In the US, the EPR is caught up in regulatory hurdles. It has not cleared the regulatory process in Britain either.

Why then would India rush to buy these exorbitant reactors from France? The answer was laid out clearly by Kakodkar. Writing for Sakaal Times, in Marathi, he candidly explained that ‘we also have to keep in mind the commercial interests of foreign countries and of the companies there… 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’.

In fact, the nurturing of foreign business interests has been of such importance to the Indian Government that it has often been willing to take away the rights of its own citizens. Before they sell anything to India, these companies would like to wash their hands off the consequences of any disaster at their reactors. To enable this, the Government spent the entire 2010 monsoon session of Parliament passing a nuclear liability law whose primary purpose was to prevent victims from being able to sue suppliers for compensation in the event of an accident.

‘I HOPE THEIR PROFITS WILL TELL THE TRUE STORY’

In May 2010, Robert Blake, a senior official in the US State Department, sternly told the Indian Government that the US expected India to pass legislation “consistent with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC)” since this “would provide a very important legal protection and open the way for billions of dollars in American reactor exports and thousands of jobs [in America]”. Four days later, India’s Foreign Minister SM Krishna genuflected in front of the US-India Business Council, assuring it that, “The Government [of India] is committed to put in place a nuclear liability regime… [and] we look forward to US companies investing in India.”

The interests of reactor manufacturers are clear: a nuclear accident can cause so much damage that they would go bankrupt if they were forced to pay adequate compensation. For example, in 1982, a study by the US-based Sandia National Laboratory concluded that a worst-case disaster at the nuclear plant at Indian Point, near New York, could lead to economic damages of almost $300 billion (in 1982 terms). Neither GE nor Areva can afford to pay such amounts. Indemnifying them, however, is not only unfair, but also dangerous. Manufacturers are less likely to be punctilious about improving safety if they know they will not be held responsible for the fallout of an accident.

A second involved party is the ‘operator’ of the nuclear plant, which, in India’s case, will be the public sector Nuclear Power Corporation. In the future, it is possible that large business houses like the Tata Group or Reliance might enter this business, and they too are unlikely to be able to bear the costs of compensating victims adequately.

So, the issue of nuclear liability involves a three-way conflict of interest between the supplier, the operator and the victims. The Government sought to resolve this conflict by bringing in a law that channels liability to the operator and caps it at Rs 1,500 crore even if the magnitude of damage to victims exceeds this amount. While the law completely denies victims the right to sue the supplier, it also contains an interesting quirk: the operator has a limited ‘right of recourse’ that allows it to recover some costs from the supplier in the event of an accident.

The story of how this quirk made its way to the Indian bill is both interesting and revealing. The Government first prepared a draft law that, almost to the word, followed the US-engineered CSC. This convention requires all signatories (except the US, which is exempted by a special ‘Grandfather clause’) to pass laws that indemnify the manufacturer of a nuclear plant unless it has explicitly accepted responsibility in a contract.
However, the draft Indian bill deviated at one point: it allowed the operator to recover costs from the manufacturer if an accident were to result from the ‘wilful act or gross negligence’, of the supplier. The CSC did not contain the two words ‘gross negligence’ and the US was livid. The prominent American lawyer Omer Brown told a newspaper that, “The differences between negligence, gross negligence and wilful act are as clear as the differences between a fool, a damn fool and a goddam fool!”

The DAE promptly circulated a note to the parliamentary committee studying the bill, recommending that this clause be deleted entirely. However, this note was leaked to the press by progressive members on the committee, and it led to an outcry. The DAE had to retract its suggestion, with its secretary calling the note a “mistake”.

However, the Government was not done with its mischief. The final report of the committee pretended to strengthen this clause by stating that the operator could demand recourse if the accident were to result from a ‘latent or patent defect’ or the supply of ‘sub-standard material’ by the manufacturer. However, it also recommended that the word ‘and’ be appended to the clause just above this, which referred to the existence of a contract between the supplier and the operator. This way, both conditions would have to be met. In effect, it meant that the right of recourse could only be exercised in the unlikely event that the supplier had signed a contract accepting responsibility for an accident!

When this came to light, the Government was again forced to backtrack. However, its machinations to protect multinational vendors continued. The Union Cabinet recommended to Parliament that the ‘and’ be deleted but replaced with the qualifier that the operator could demand recourse if an accident were to result from an act of the supplier ‘done with intent to cause nuclear damage’. Under this provision, the operator would have to prove deliberate sabotage to win damages; which supplier would deliberately cause its reactor to malfunction?

Although the Government had to delete the ‘intent’ clause under public pressure, it continued to look for ways to protect suppliers. One option that has been widely discussed in the business press is for the Government-controlled Nuclear Power Corporation to voluntarily give up its right of recourse in the contracts it signs with companies like Areva.

These ridiculous contortions are a revealing indicator of the motivations of the Government and its efforts to satisfy foreign companies at any cost. The Prime Minister has been quite forthright. In attempting to reassure international manufacturers after the passage of the Nuclear Liability Bill, he said: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating… much will depend on how the rules are formulated… I hope their profits will tell the true story.”

‘WE WERE UNABLE TO VISIT THE SITE BECAUSE OF AN AGITATION BY LOCAL PEOPLE’

Those who live near sites where the Government plans to put up nuclear plants, unsurprisingly, are unwilling to risk their lives and livelihoods for the sake of these profits. In Jaitapur, at the public hearing for the environmental impact assessment, inhabitants of the area overwhelmingly opposed the project. Expectedly, the environment ministry cleared the nuclear complex anyway, citing among other reasons the interests of “global diplomacy”.

Locals have continued to protest this imposition. According to media reports, of the 2,375 families eligible for compensation, only 114 have accepted the package offered by the government. When Maharashtra’s Chief Minister visited Jaitapur in February, he was rebuffed by a large number of protestors.

In December, one activist died when he mysteriously met with an accident involving a police jeep. In April, another activist died in police firing, and a yatra from Tarapur-to-Jaitapur led by activists and several eminent citizens was blocked by the police. Several others, including the sarpanch of Madban, a village close to the proposed reactor site, have been served notices asking them to leave the area. According to media reports, Narayan Rane, a former chief minister of Maharashtra, threatened activists from neighbouring districts by saying that “No outsider who comes to Jaitapur to oppose the project will return”!

Similar protests have started at other sites where the Government plans to showcase the wondrous results of the Nuclear Deal, including the two sites reserved for US-made reactors—Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh and Mithi Virdi in Gujarat. In Mithi Virdi, villages have barricaded roads leading to the area, to keep government surveyors from entering the territory. At Kovvada, according to media reports, a Navy helicopter crew was confronted by fisherfolk who were under the impression they were from the DAE. At Haripur, a site earmarked for Russian reactors, a member of the DAE’s site selection committee told the press: “We were unable to visit the site because of an agitation by local people.”

In all these locations, one major concern is the impact of reactors on the livelihoods of local inhabitants. At Jaitapur, for instance, the land around the reactor site is very fertile and there is a large fishing community in the vicinity. Farmers grow a variety of crops, including cashew nuts and Alphonso mangoes. All of them are concerned that the mere presence of the reactors and their routine operations would impact agriculture and fishery.

The greater concern at this point, however, is the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, as demonstrated by the multiple accidents at the Fukushima reactors and the earlier one at Chernobyl. Such an accident could devastate the area. Chernobyl had long-term impacts on human health and the environment, including the contamination of large tracts with various radioactive elements. An area of over 3,000 sq km (almost 80 per cent the size of Goa) still remains officially evacuated because it is contaminated with a radioactive element called cesium-137. A surrounding region that is thrice as large is designated as an area of strict radiation control, requiring decontamination and the control of intake of locally grown food. It takes 30 years for the radioactivity from cesium-137 to halve, which means that relief would be a long time coming. A recent large study carried out by the US National Cancer Institute found that thyroid cancers continued to occur among those who, as children, were exposed to another radioactive element called iodine-131 following the accident.
The accident in Fukushima showed that no reactor is immune to devastating accidents and that the highest price for a mishap is paid by local inhabitants. Does the Indian Government, which has worked so hard to protect the interests of the international and domestic nuclear industries, even care about them?

-Suvrat Raju, MV Ramana

+++
The authors are physicists with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. Ramana is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (forthcoming from Viking Penguin)

Courtesy: Open Magazine  18-24 May 2011