The earth is flat, nuclear is safe

The Radioactive Exposure Tour highlights the need for caution when it comes to nuclear power in India

BY JYoTI SHANKAR

every time you visit India, you see the change, bigger malls, new flyovers, the lifestyle in the cities not very different to what you experience in the streets of any capital city in Australia, and, fewer power cuts. Move a bit further away from the cities and you realise that not much has changed. Dirt roads, constant blackouts, people struggling to make ends meet. And the paradox of progress hits you. Nuclear power is just another aspect of this big picture where the pursuit of economic ‘growth’ at any cost seems acceptable. India is power hungry. It needs power for its burgeoning millions, as well as for industries that supply cheap goods to the consumers in the developed world. And the government is pursuing this objective setting aside all its democratic principles. Nuclear power is portrayed as a greener option, but scratch the is revealed. to be created in areas such as Woomera and Muckaty, populated by Aboriginal communities, with little consultation.

These are the issues that were highlighted by Bhargavi Dilipkumar, a campaigner from the Delhi Forum, a platform for social movements, in her presentation at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She was in Australia participating in the Radioactive Exposure Tour organised by the Friends of the Earth. She visited uranium mines, met with Indigenous communities fighting to keep nuclear waste out of their backyards and saw firsthand the environmental impacts of this industry.

Julia Gillard recently overturned a long-standing decision of the Labour party not to supply uranium to India. While many Indians considered the earlier decision as racist, they are quite unaware of the ‘radioactive racism’ prevalent around the world. It is the poor and disenfranchised people who are disadvantaged when governments make decisions about nuclear plants and its waste disposal.

In Australia, the British carried out nuclear tests in the 1950s at Maralinga where Indigenous people have suffered the effects.

At Kundakulam, the epicentre of anti-nuclear protests in India, two nuclear power plants were set up with Russian aid. This coastal fishing community is on a seismic fault line and we can easily imagine what another occurrence like the 2004 tsunami could do. There is a tsunami rehabilitation colony in the vicinity of the plant, and thousands of others live within the 16 kilometre disaster evacuation range. The project that began in the 1980s met with many delays over the past twenty five years, including ones due to the Russian political situation, but is expected to be commissioned soon. The public protests have also been going on for this long. Last September, protests resulted in the deaths of two fishermen and many are still in jail for conducting a ‘war against the state’ and sedition, when in reality they were fighting for their rights of livelihood and for the future of their community. Concerns about the plant’s safety are rife. Nuclear waste is another big issue. Nuclear plants produce highly radioactive spent fuels with extremely long halflives. What this means is that these substances are harmful to humans for a long time and have to be stored appropriately. While it awaits permanent underground storage, or reprocessing, it is stored in cooling pools, and loss of cooling due to power failures can see disasters like Fukushima happen.

Nuclear power is the most waterintensive energy source, consuming typically around 20 billion litres per year. The impact of this on groundwater systems and ocean habitats are immense.

A recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has pointed out serious organisational and operational flaws. The AERB, being the regulatory body as well as the nuclear promotional body, faces conflicts in its dual roles.

The Fukushima Independent Investigation Commission identified absence of such separation as one of the factors that led to the Fukushima accidents.

India has 20 nuclear power reactors. However, there is no long