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From Kakodkar to Jairam Ramesh, every administrator seems to have made a case for the safety of the nuclear reactor within days of the meltdown in Japan. While citizens groups and environmental organizations have called into question the safety of the reactors, the administration response is perhaps knee-jerk. But the timing certainly raises questions of accuracy and credibility.

For years, nuclear energy protagonists have talked about our learnings from Chernobyl, how safety features and protocols had been developed, how accidents and attacks have been simulated and how these reactors can deal with anything - from earthquakes to missile attacks. The design of advanced reactors in US and Europe were supposed to be able to deal with these. Japanese reactors were just as good. After all, Japan - and Japanese reactors - had been designed to deal with an expected earthquake. For a country that knows the impact of an atomic exposure first hand, safety features were high - perhaps among the best in the world.

And, yet, the Japanese reactor failed. Its mechanisms broke down, and it went into melt down. As nuclear administrators around the world are wont to do (those in Chernobyl acted similarly and then we said we had learned from it and would not do so again), the Japanese first went into denial. It was only after the meltdown was imminent that the first wisps of admission were revealed that something was wrong. Yet, there was nothing to worry about. And we still do not know the extent of the calamity. It continues to reveal itself.

With the failure of the reactors that were designed to be safe, it is imperative that the modes of failure be analyzed and reactor designs be reassessed. At this point in time, the modes of failure of the reactors have not been completely analyzed - even the global nuclear energy community is only getting to understand the extent of failure. Such a process takes months. Our experts have not yet had time to understand these modes of failure and whether there is new understanding that develops as a result of such failure in terms of reactor design. And yet, within a couple of days, the Indian administration was vouchsafing that our designs were safe.

Let us first realize that the Indian Atomic administrators have little credibility - even among the nuclear reactor proponents. They have consistently over run costs and time-schedules. Second, the reactors in Japan were developed to be earthquake resistant since they were expecting a massive earthquake (though a different one, which still is waiting to happen). And yet, they failed. Third, modeling safety features or chemical plants - let along nuclear reactors - takes weeks, as any plant design consultant will tell you. But the India administrators - Kokadkar et al - were able to point out that the reactors were safe from a design perspective.

How did they know? Does this not suggest that the statements were more PR that technical? That we really do not know? 

And does this not show, even further, that the nuclear administrators cannot be trusted? With our lives, with our society, with our energy, with our future? 

- Sanat Mohanty