The folks who are cheering over the Indo-U.S. accord on civil nuclear cooperation live a world away from Jadugoda, the Jharkhand village where India’s uranium mine is situated,writes Sunita Dubey. This article was published in Siliconeer Magazine

Continuing with that thought, Sunita posits, It is these hapless villagers who continue paying a terrible price in terms of toxic health hazards after being made the sacrificial lambs of a government policy where jingoistic hubris trumps compassion or accountability.

The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal may be considered groundbreaking and historic by many in India and the United States, but this euphoria must not shroud the misery of thousands of people suffering the effects of uranium mining in India due to poor technical and management practices in existing mines.

While major newspapers and television stations in India celebrated a major political victory by India as it covered the announcement of the Indo-U.S. deal, contrast this with an incident which happened Dec. 24.

Thousands of liters of radioactive waste spilled in a creek because of a pipe burst at a Uranium Corporation of India Limited facility at Jadugoda, India. It neither made newspaper headlines nor did UCIL come to know of the disastrous leak till alerted by the local villagers. Such are the realities of nuclear facilities in India.

Callousness of UCIL. The Dec. 24 accident is the latest example of UCIL’s callousness, which occurred in a small village inhabited largely by displaced families whose lands were acquired to construct two of the three storage dams, also known as tailings ponds. Based on the experience of similar accidents in other countries, the negative effects on human and environmental health will impact not just Jadugoda, but several communities living downstream, perhaps even hundreds of kilometers away.

UCIL had no alarm mechanism to alert the company in cases of such a disaster. Instead, the villagers who had arrived at the scene of the accident soon after the pipe burst informed the company of the toxic spill.

The toxic sludge spewed into a creek for nine hours before the flow of the radioactive waste was shut off. Consequently, a thick layer of toxic sludge on the surface of the creek killed scores of fish, frogs, and other riparian life. The waste from the leak also reached a creek that feeds into the Subarnarekha river, seriously contaminating the water resources of the communities living hundreds of kilometers along the way. This is not the first such accident. In 1986, a tailing dam had burst open and radioactive water flowed directly into the villages.

A similar disaster in 1979 in the United States at Church Rock, N.M., had also left many people and their environment scarred for years altogether. More than eighteen months after the accident, there were strong indications that the radiation and other pollutants had penetrated 30 feet into the earth. A report by a Cincinnati-based firm brought in as a consultant by the EPA warned that at least two nearby aquifers had been put “at risk. “

According to Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center in New Mexico, though remediation/ clean-up in Jadugoda will depend upon local conditions, it is essential to monitor the situation very carefully. Some of the immediate steps which need to be taken include immediate sludge removal from the river bed, as river beds are usually very permeable. The communities downstream should also be warned to not use the water till it has been established to be safe. It can take several months for the water to become safe again.

Since 1967, when UCIL first started uranium mining in Jadugoda, the lives of people have been inflicted with unknown diseases, deaths and poisoned environment. The foundation of these mines has been laid on lies and misinformation by UCIL about the impact of uranium mining, radiation and toxicity in Jadugoda. Till the ’90s the tailing ponds (where uranium mine liquid waste is stored to evaporate) was in close vicinity of areas in the villages used as children’s playground, open grazing area and other public use. The radiation levels and related sickness were never revealed by UCIL, even though for years the local population has suffered from the extensive environmental degradation caused by the mining operations which are also responsible for the high frequency of radiation-related sicknesses and developmental disorders found in the area. Even though India’s Atomic Energy Act states that there should be no habitation within five kilometers of a waste site or uranium-tailing pond and even though Jadugoda has been in operation for more than 30 years, seven villages stand within one and a half kilometers of the danger zone. One of them, Dungardihi, begins just 40 meters away.

Questioning Legitimacy: It was only in 1996 when a group of people working in the mines and living in close vicinity started questioning the legitimacy UCIL’s free rein to pollute the environment and lives of indigenous people. This led to the formation of a local anti-uranium mining group called Jharkhandis Organization Against Radiation whose mission is to resist further nuclear development, and to educate the local Adivasis about the dangers of radioactivity. JOAR is also a winner of the 2004 Nuclear-Free Future Resistance Award. Even after the documentation of severe damage caused by uranium mining in Jadugoda in a documentary titled “Buddha Weeps In Jadugoda” by Shri Prakash, UCIL still admits to no wrongdoing, claiming that none of the prevalent congenital diseases in the area are due to the radiation from their uranium mines and milling operations.

Though some clean-up effort has been taken up by UCIL, the there are no alternatives for villagers to escape this radioactive fallout. Most of these poor villagers are already displaced from their lands more than once. They do not have any access to safe drinking water, and the creek, which got poisoned after the spill, was their only source of water. Even in these circumstances, not much is expected from UCIL to help this poor community. The perseverance and struggle of the Jadugoda community has led to international recognition of their problems. They have connected with other indigenous communities from all over the world, suffering the similar fallout of uranium mining. In December 2006 indigenous peoples from around the world who are victims of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear dumping came together at the Navajo Nation for the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, which called for a global ban on uranium mining on native lands. Representatives from Jadugoda gave testimony about the alarming number of babies who are stillborn or are born with serious birth defects, and of the high rates of cancer that are claiming the lives of many who live near the uranium mines.