Untamed nuclear energy

In the aftermath of the massive devastation and loss of life and property in Japan, the world is now spooked by the Japanese nuclear crisis. The entire nation is working overtime to avert a crisis that could affect not just the Japanese nation, but the rest of the world for many years to come. While thousands of Japanese are still struggling for food and clothing as the nation is working to get back on its feet, the number one story across the globe is the possible fallout after explosions at one of their nuclear power plants at Fukushima.

The plant is only about 250 kilometers away from Tokyo, and should anything untoward happen, and the scientists and engineers fail to bring the situation under control, the loss of lives will be much worse.

I do not want to sound sensationalist, but the fact is that while the developed world has increasingly adapted nuclear energy as the next fuel of choice for power generation, it's done it without effective control and understanding of the entire process.

Let me elaborate. Nuclear power plants require massive, massive investments, but when their cost benefit analysis is done, scientists say that they will never stop producing electricity, at least not in the present era of humankind. However, the potential for damage is always under reported.

Coming back to Fukushima, the plant has suffered 4 explosions and two fires, and water is being poured over the plant to prevent overheating, and a 20 km radius zone around the plant has been evacuated to prevent exposure to radiation. Western media has begun using the word Chernobyl in their reporting already.

According to this report in Business Week, western nations, mainly United States and France, the biggest proponents and operators of nuclear energy in the world (Japan comes third), are still trying to finance a permanent containment structure over the Chernobyl reactor.

“For many years there’s been no talk of the issue of safety in nuclear plants, it’s been entirely economic,” said Walt Patterson, a nuclear safety expert at London-based Chatham House who wrote a book examining the widening industry in 1976. “The electorate is going to be a good deal less willing to invest in nuclear issues.”

Their push to develop nuclear energy in developing nations, such as India and China, seems to be exactly this, building multi-billion dollar nuclear power plants in these countries that will bring a rich windfall for companies such as GE, Westinghouse and Areva, while greatly protecting them on the liabilities front.

Till now, it seems, the nuclear power production companies were winning in convincing the world that nuclear energy is completely safe, and its only getting safer. However, the impending crisis in the Japanese reactor, considered to built with much higher safeguards and protection than say, Chernobyl for example, tells me that despite the most modern technology, humankind is still at the mercy of the Gods should things go wrong. Already nuclear power plants the world over have either been shut down to test/reinforce their preparedness, or are under a very thorough assessment of their potential to contain disaster, including India.

According to this article in Salon.com, pro-nuclear energy groups have been stressing for many years the safety of their wares, and how nuclear energy is the way to go. Even in the United States, where Barack Obama is pushing a new power strategy for the country which will be based on nuclear energy, two major questions have been - the carbon emission of these plants, and the basic question of their safety. Surely the Americans must still remember the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979. I totally agree with the Salon writer that PR for the nuclear energy has mostly been laden with spin. Obama cited Japan as an example of great nuclear energy management. What happens now to nuclear energy production and commissioning around the world, especially in the developing world where the potential for a cavalier management of nuclear energy is a strong possibility?

India and the United States have in recent times made parlays on the potential of nuclear energy in India, and they did sign an accord last year when American President Barack Obama was here, for developing many nuclear power plants across the country worth billions of dollars. This was termed a historic day in the relations between the two nations. During those days, the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy, and their supporters were very active to remind the government that despite all the promises of development and cooperation, the Government of India must not forget that the Americans were still shirking from their stake in the responsibility for the tragedy. I doubt if the Government of India listened then, though it seems that it has been listening now. In fact, my biggest reason to believe that the Government of India merely buckled under the pressure put by the US Government on behalf of their nuclear power companies is the weak Nuclear Liability Bill that the government pushed in the Parliament. This article by the Times of India has quite a decent report on what transpired when the bill was passed in August last year, and the arguments between the government and the opposition.

The Prime Minister of India recently said he has ordered a complete audit of the safety of India's all nuclear power plants, but the Asia Times article I linked a few paragraphs above only corroborates my own belief that nuclear safety is not taken seriously in India.

We are most disorganized and unprepared to handle emergencies of any kind of even much less severity," A Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) told Asia Times Online. "The AERB's disaster preparedness oversight is mostly on paper and the drills they conduct once in a while are half-hearted efforts, which are a sham," he said.

A culture of opacity surrounds India's nuclear establishment. It is not just the nuclear weapons program that is shrouded in secrecy. Little is known about the civilian nuclear program and the functioning of bodies like the AEC and the AERB. In the circumstances, the veracity of audits is hard to accept.

"Audits conducted in the past did reveal loopholes in safety measures at nuclear reactors but these findings were never made public," a senior official at the Kaiga nuclear plant told Asia Times. "Worse, there was little follow-up action."

Activists say they are not expecting anything to come of the prime minister's promised audit of nuclear reactors. "We can already predict the report - all we need to do is to listen what the nuclear establishment has been saying for the last few days and we will know what the report is likely to say," observes Purkayastha.

 That last line echoes the theme of the Salon article quite well, about the power the pro-nuclear power establishment has over the government. This brings me to opposition to the Jaitapur nuclear power station in Maharashtra.

Although there are a number of nuclear power plants planned across the country, to be built by the western companies but operated by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, this power plant has seen some very vocal and loud oppositions on grounds of safety, and the damage it will do to livelihood, flora and fauna. Although the power plant is planned in a location which is in Seismic Zone 3, it has experienced numerous small tremors, and three major quakes, with the biggest one measuring 6.2 on the Richter Scale.

Over the next few months, governments and nuclear power companies will probably go into overdrive to protect their image and claims, and the opposition to nuclear power should also grow stronger. No doubt the world will be taking a hard look at their own nuclear capabilities and plans as Japan tries to get out of this crisis, and I do hope they do, and the world extends all the help it can to them. Till now, from the way the international news reports sound, it seems that Japan has been fighting a lone battle to cope with the situation. That is most unfortunately.