Monday, January 31, 2011

Nuclear Cover Up by Dr A Gopalkrishnan

जान ३०, २०११ 

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Friends :                                                                                                     January 29,2011
 
                A  brief  article  of  mine , titled "The  Nuclear  Cover-Up"  is  published  in  the  latest  issue  of  INDIA  TODAY  which  has  hit  the  stands  today . The  issue  is  dated  February 07, 2011  but  it  is  already  on  sale. For  your  information , I  have  reproduced  below  the  text  of  this  article . Regards --  Dr.A.Gopalakrishnan , Former  Chairman , Atomic  Energy  Regulatory  Board , Govt. of India  

 

     

The  Nuclear  Cover-Up   

By

Dr.A.Gopalakrishnan

Dr. Anil  Kakodkar  served  as  Chairman  of  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission (AEC) during  the  crucial  years  from  2000  to  2009 . During  his  tenure , in  around  2004 , the  Department  of  Atomic  Energy (DAE)  formulated  a  nuclear  power  plan , which  concluded  that  India  can  generate  a  total  of  192,530  GWe-years  of  electricity  from  the  net  available  natural  uranium  and  thorium  resources  in  the  country ,  by  following  the  three-stage  Bhabha  plan .  The  2004  DAE  plan  projected  that  this  totally  indigenous  program  will  deliver  208,000  MWe  of  installed  nuclear  power  by  2052 , without  having  to  import  any  uranium  or  nuclear  power  reactors  from  abroad  beyond  the  first  two  VVERs  from  Russia . 

Following  the  July 2005  visit  of  Prime  Minister  Manmohan  Singh  to  Washington , the  government's  foreign  policy  focus  shifted  to  establishing   an  Indo-US  strategic relationship , even  if  it  meant  the  trading  in  of  a  part  of  the  nation's  sovereignty  and  its  hard-earned  self-reliance  in  the  nuclear  sector . In  return  for  this  strategic  bear-hug , the  government  agreed  to quid-pro-quo  arrangements  to  purchase  a  significant  number   of  power  reactors  from  the  US , as  well  as  from  France  and  Russia . The  corporate  houses  in  India  and  abroad  and  their  Federations  and  Business  Councils  who  were  eager  to  import  nuclear  reactors  to India  were  active  collaborators  in  shaping  this  change  of  policy . Among  the  facilitators  were  also  some  politicians , senior  bureaucrats , and  scientific  stalwarts  from  India  and  abroad  who  saw  some  benefit  in  it  for  themselves . Somewhere  along  the way , the  top  officials  of  the  AEC  and  the  DAE  were  also  co-opted  by  the  PM  to  help  him  justify  his  drastic  redirection  of  India's  nuclear  policy.

To  help  the  PM , the  DAE  came  up  with  a  trumped  up , revised  nuclear  power  plan  in  July  2008 , which   was  revealed  by  Dr. Kakodkar  in  his  address  to  the  Indian  Academy  of  Sciences . This  plan  was  centered  around  the  baseless  argument  that  importing  40,000  MWe  of  Light-Water  Reactors (LWRs)  between  2012-2020  is  an  absolute  necessity  to  avoid  a  412,000  MWe  shortage  in  electric  power  availability  in  2050 , which  would  otherwise  occur . In  effect , this  was  concocted  by  suppressing  some  of  the  realistic  possibilities  for  electricity  generation  from  available  non-nuclear  sources , and  thereby  creating  an  artificial  deficit  which  was  then  filled  by  imported  nuclear  power  reactors . Interestingly , according  to  DAE's  2004  plan , the  same  total  electricity  demand  in  2050  was  promised  to  be  met  wholly  through  indigenous  efforts  in  nuclear  power , national  &  imported   coal  and  natural  gas  to  fuel  power  plants , and  by  setting  up  renewable  energy  &  hydro  power  units .

In the face of  mounting  opposition  to  the  unproven  French  reactors  to  be  set  up  in  Jaitapur , Dr. Kakodkar (now  retired  from  the  AEC) has  given  an  interview  to  a  Marathi  daily , on  January 5, 2011. He  appears  to  have  said, " It  may  be  asked  why  we  don't  concentrate  only  on  uranium  import  and  why  are  we  taking  foreign  help  in  other  nuclear  areas.  Here , we  must  realize  that  we  have  to  take  into  consideration  the  interests  of  certain  foreign  countries  and  their  industries  also . From  their  point  of  view , if  there  is  more  real  business  interest  in  other  areas  of  nuclear  technology  apart  from  uranium  sales , then  India  has  to  consider  this  aspect  seriously . Such  give &  take  arrangements  are  inevitable  when  we  wish  to  get  India  recognized  as  a  nuclear  power  and  remove  the  nuclear  restrictions  on  our  country ." (Translated  from  Marathi) .

From  the  above , it  is  clear  that  the  arguments  for  nuclear  reactor  imports  stated  all  along  by  the  government  and  in  its  2008  revised  nuclear  power  plan  were merely  an  eye-wash  and  a  cover-up . The  import  of  reactors  was  the  price  that  the  PM  paid  as  a  quid-pro-quo  arrangement  for  the  NSG  clearance , which  has  now  landed  India  in  the  precarious  position  of  becoming  the  dumping  ground  for  hitherto  un-built &  untested  high-cost  nuclear  reactors  like  the  French  EPRs  at  Jaitapur  which  could  endanger  the  lives  of  several  thousand  people  in  and  around  Maharashtra  in  the  coming  years. 

[Dr.Gopalakrishnan  is  a  Former Chairman  of  the  Atomic  Energy  Regulatory  Board]


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    1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    Arun Shourie had already commented on this much earlier and had also worked out the cost of Nuclear power.
    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/necessity-is-the-mother-of-fabrication-too/248747/

    It seems that this govt. is incapable of doing anything correctly.
    I am struck by where this "private-public-partnership" rubbish is taking us: Rather than robust competition and all-round improvement,( especially from an era of "socialism"), we have descended to a level where only money matters, at any cost.