John Kerry’s visit and the Nuclear Impasse! MG Devasahayam US Secretary of State John Kerry has come with an agenda to protect and promote US business interests. Most important of these is the Indo-US nuclear deal that is yet to take-off. Most serious of the impediments is US supplier’s being not happy even with India’s weak nuclear liability law and want waivers. Pursuing this is one of John Kerry’s important tasks. Presently US nuclear plants on the table are 6000 MW Mithivirdi (Westinghouse) in Gujarat and 10,000 MW Kovvada (General Electric) in Andhra Pradesh. Both the sites are mired in serious environmental and safety concerns and local public is putting up stiff resistance. With the US government finally allowing Westinghouse to share confidential technical information with the Indian nuclear authorities, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) India are getting ready to start a technical evaluation of Westinghouse reactor. This could be prelude to the US nuclear company and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) getting into an early works agreement. Ironically John Kerry’s visit is taking place when India’s nuclear energy programme is under severe drubbing and there is an impasse. Despite tall claims of ‘nuclear renaissance’ and arguments that nuclear power is “an important element in India’s energy mix” all that the India’s nuclear establishment has to show after 45 years of slogging is a mere 2.5% of India’s installed capacity and a little over 1% of actual electricity generated! In 1969, the nuclear establishment had predicted that by the year 2000, there would be 43,500 MW of nuclear installed capacity. Achievement that year was a mere 2720 MW. As of now this stands at 4780 MW! This dismal performance was despite allocation of huge funds that are not called to account. Indo-US Nuclear deal was originally meant to increase nuclear power capacity to 64,000 MW by the year 2032, which itself was utopian and impractical. Initial agreement was for 40,000 MW at the cost of USD 150 billion of taxpayer’s money. Then for no explicable reasons other than the ‘successful’ signing of Indo-US deal, the nuclear establishment went paranoid and their estimates hit the sky and pierced beyond. A document prepared by Department of Atomic Energy in 2008 titled, "A Strategy for the Growth of Electricity in India” pegged the target of 275,000 MW nuclear power capacity by 2050! These plants when located on canals/rivers will suck up massive quantum of water for cooling and maintenance at the cost of millions of acres of irrigation. For every 1000 MW nuclear plant, around 40,000 acres will go without irrigation! Besides, vast population would be deprived of drinking water. On the coastline it would mean a 3,000 MW nuclear complex every 50 KM. Farms and fields will dry up, grain production will plunge, millions will go thirsty and coastlines will vanish only for nuclear plants to generate gigawatts of power for the ‘development’ needs of Malls and MNCs! Irony is that the eight year old Indo-US deal has not brought in even one MW of nuclear power so far. It now transpires that the American companies-GE or Westinghouse-have their major equipments and components manufactured by Japanese companies under the US-Japan industrial agreements and India would need a separate agreement with Japan if the deal with US is to take-off. Hence the recent visit by PM to Japan. Whether Japan will enter into such agreement despite PMO falling head over heels to fast-track Japanese infrastructure projects, is a multi-billion dollar question. Even the much touted French-Areva 9900 MW super-mega project at Jaitapur (Maharashtra) may not take off for two simple reasons. One, the cost has gone through the roof making it totally unviable and two, local population is at war with the state against land acquisition. Despite all these exercises in futility huge amount of unaccounted tax-payers money is being drained and the public deceived by false propaganda that nuclear energy is the best option. Let alone the gullible public, even ‘intellectual elite’ have fallen for this fallacy! Indeed Adolf Hitler was on dot when he said: "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." Pursuit of such ‘big lies’ and chronic underperformance of the Indian nuclear establishment is largely due to its warped and secretive institutional structure. The entire establishment comes under the PMO and functions under a veil of secrecy. The regulator, AERB formed in 1983 to overlook matters of safety in the sector is not an independent body but reports to DAE, which is part of PMO, thus undermining its own effectiveness. A recent CAG audit report castigates AERB for doing nothing except prescribing codes, guides and safety manuals. In the event, safety of nuclear installations in the country is at great peril. This reality has come into sharp focus in the Russian-built Koondankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) wherein there are specific issues of the quality of the reactor and parts. Earlier there were reports of welding in the core region of the pressure vessel and corruption in the Russian company, Zio-Podolsk in connection with the supply of substandard systems and components. What is worse, control and instrumentation system of the plant is suffering from serious flaws and is getting tripped during tests after emanating spurious signal/noise. According to World Nuclear Association, an international body that promotes nuclear business around the world, due to delays in the delivery of the control system documentation by the Russians, NPCIL cut open the containment structures of the Reactor pressure vessel and instrumentation /control cables were laid in the same tray making the system unreliable. According to experts “if reactor is under operation and if the control and instrumentation systems is not reliable, then it would lead to a catastrophic release of energy in a short time interval. Or the fission process can become uncontrollable and the nuclear reactor will turn into a nuclear bomb.” Despite such huge hazards and risks this plant is enjoying waiver from nuclear liability! It is evident that the substandard quality of components and systems in KKNPP and their non-reliability has been within the knowledge of the nuclear establishment ever since commercial operation was first scheduled for December 2007. The reactor and other core equipments had arrived at the site by mid-2005. There was no struggle or agitation till July 2011 (post Fukushima) and even then it was ruthlessly put down within couple of months. Yet, despite announcing repeated datelines by the Prime Minister, Minister of State in PMO and nuclear bigwigs there is no sign of commissioning the plant. Repeated tests appear to have failed and everything has been kept under thick blanket of secrecy. Supreme Court while giving green signal to commission the plant has directed AERB and NPCIL that KKNPP should not be made operational unless quality of various components and systems are ensured because their reliability is of vital importance. This caveat has put nuclear establishment in a fix, because they are just not able to rectify the flaws and make the plant operational. Situation is such that Dr. A.Gopalakrishnan, nuclear doyen and former Chairman of AERB has publicly called for opening of the reactor and its stringent inspection by an international group of experts before even considering the commissioning of the plant! The tragedy of India’s nuclear energy programme is that despite such humongous hazards and risks directly affecting the very lives of millions, this Russian plant is enjoying waiver from nuclear liability. Now super-power USA also wants the same. Can there be a bigger insult to the Indian people? Can there be a worse form of travesty?
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 08:10:02 +0000
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