A Perspective on the Nuclear Uproar in India
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Image: vikas Khot
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TROUBLE IN UTOPIA Jaitapur is a palm-fringed village on the Arabian Sea coast where the Indian government wants to build the proposed 9900 MW nuclear power plant
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he fishing trawler’s groaning engine is abruptly shut down a couple of nautical miles off the coast of Sakhri Nate, a seaside hamlet fringed with palm trees and mango groves. Sakshil Kotawadekar, 25, stands on the deck under the broiling sun, surrounded by a group of men untangling a spidery web of fishing nets and sorting their catch. “Look, that thing there,” he says, pointing at a lighthouse perched atop a barren cliff along the jagged coastline. “It threatens to rob us of our lands, our livelihoods, our way of life. It will imperil our very existence.”
Kotawadekar isn’t describing a haunted lighthouse. Adjacent to it is the site for the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power plant to be built by the French state-owned company Areva. In all, six 1,650 MWe (megawatt electrical) European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) will be installed by Areva in phases within the next 15 to 18 years, with the first two reactors expected to come into operation by 2018-19. At full capacity, this plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district will trump Japan’s 8,200 MW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant to become the world’s largest nuclear power project.
Local fishermen like Kotawadekar, who owns two trawlers and whose family has been in the trade for generations, fear that the project could cause irreparable damage to the region’s environment and marine ecology. The plant is expected to guzzle 52 billion litres of sea water every day — 15 times Mumbai’s daily water supply — and disgorge the same volume five degrees warmer back into the sea. Environmentalists say that would push away marine life along the coast into deeper waters, depleting the catch and forcing local fishermen to go further out into the sea.
Ratnagiri boasts an annual catch of 1,25,000 tonnes of a variety of fish, including pomfret, surmai (kingfish), bangda (Indian mackerel) and rawas (Indian salmon), but with the project, those numbers could dwindle significantly. Environmentalists also fear that the radioactive waste generated in the nuclear plant could permeate the alluvial soil, stunting the local mango, cashew, rice and jackfruit plantations.
Image: Vikas Khot
Ground Zero The proposed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant site is guarded round the clock by a police outpost
Ever since Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave the go ahead to the project’s environmental clearance in November, a rash of virulent anti-nuclear protests has rocked the region. Hundreds of local activists, mostly farmers and environmentalists opposed to the project, have been arrested, many of them in overnight raids. Some of those spared have been slapped externment notices and barred from entering the region for fear of inciting violence.
The growing opposition to this project is a litmus test for Maharashtra’s Congress-led government headed by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who is keenly projecting the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant (JNPP) as the state’s definitive solution to its growing electricity crisis. He travelled to Jaitapur last month, shepherding a team of scientists, experts and officials, in a last-ditch effort to mollify protestors and allay fears about environmental and safety concerns — but without success. The opposition to this project has grown fiercer in recent days after an earthquake-generated tsunami smashed into nuclear power plants in Japan, raising the spectre of a possible nuclear meltdown and raising alarm about similar threats at India’s seaside nuclear plants.
Safety First
C.B. Jain, the project director of JNPP at the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), dismisses those concerns. Though located on the seashore and a seismic zone, the plant is proposed to be built at an elevation, which makes it less vulnerable to the threat of tsunami waves.
EPR is one of the world’s “safest reactors”, he claims, designed to even withstand the high-speed impact of a commercial or military aircraft. “The EPR design is a direct descendent of the tested and proven N4 and KONVOI reactors from Framatome and Siemens/KWU, the most modern and most powerful reactors in France and Germany,” Jain says.
But despite such assurances, safety remains the paramount concern given that EPR is an untested reactor the world over. “Why should the people of Jaitapur be subjected to the high risk of proving out an unknown reactor in their backyard?” asks Dr A. Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.
More than anything else, the project is heavily criticised for being carried out under a shroud of secrecy.
Several crucial technical questions about the project remain unanswered. One of them is whether NPCIL has devised a coherent strategy to deal with the spent fuel coming out of the plant?
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