From: sanjeevnayyar
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]
1 comment:
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.
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