With the India investing its future in the Nuclear deal, based on the premise that nuclear energy will solve India’s growing energy wants, it is important that there be greater public debate vis-à-vis the feasibility of nuclear energy and the implications of energy policy beholden to nuclear energy.

An earlier article in thesouthasian.org, reviewing global trends and realities concluded that nuclear energy is not a feasible solution to the world’s energy wants. This conclusion gains greater strength based on M. V. Ramana’s article pointing to the European trend of getting out of nuclear energy.

In an article written in 2003, Ramana says:
Two weeks ago, Belgium became one more European country to decide to phase out nuclear energy. The bill, presented by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s cabinet and passed by both houses of Parliament, orders the shutting down of Belgium’s seven reactors after 40 years of use and bans the construction of new ones. The first reactors will be dismantled by February 2015, the last by 2025.

Belgium is just the latest of five EU states planning to phase out nuclear energy. The others are Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. Seven other countries — Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal — have either abandoned nuclear power or never established programmes. The only EU countries that officially maintain faith in nuclear power are France, Britain and Finland.

Finland’s nuclear policy seems primarily to end dependency on Russian technology. The British policy is also at a tenuous state with numerous subsidies – overt and embarrassingly covert as reported by The Guardian on 18/7/05 – supporting a competitive price for nuclear energy. France, thus, has become isolated in its pursuit of energy policy.

As discussed in an earlier article, nuclear energy seems like a possible solution for 3 decades or so – given the amount of high and moderate grade uranium currently known and estimated to exist. However, the costs of nuclear energy compares very unfavorably to other sources even today (In India, cost of nuclear energy compares quite unfavorably with other sources of electricity.) and when one accounts for radioactive hazards as well as cost of dismantling nuclear reactors and storage/disposal of nuclear wastes, this option is an unfeasible one. With the world now moving away from nuclear energy, does India have an ace up its sleeve that it has decided to invest in nuclear energy?

Scientists and technocrats in India have constantly pointed to Thorium and its fast breeder reactors. There are numerous myths in those claims and India’s closed nuclear energy community has been unwilling to discuss it – and why should it with thousands of crores of tax payer money available to these agencies without any accountability – as pointed out by the Auditor General of India.

Thorium, a naturally occurring radioactive metal, as well as uranium, can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Given a start with some other fissile material (U-235 or Pu-239), a breeding cycle similar to but more efficient than that with U-238 and plutonium (in slow-neutron reactors) can be set up. As analyzed in Bunyard’s article and by articles in The Uranium Information Centre; American Scientist Sept/Oct 2003; Storm van Leeuwen, J.W. and Smith, P., August 2005, Thorium presents some advantages over Uranium but big problems too.

Thorium, abundantly found in Australia and India is about 3 times more abundant than uranium. The hitch with using thorium as a fuel is that breeding must occur before any power can be extracted from it, and that requires neutrons. Some engineers have proposed using particle accelerators to generate the needed neutrons, but this process is hugely costly, and the only practical scheme at the moment is to combine the thorium with conventional nuclear fuels (made up of either plutonium or enriched uranium or both), the fissioning of which provides the neutrons to start things off.

Previous work on thorium elsewhere in the world did not lead to its adoption, largely because its performance in water reactors, such as the first core at the Indian Point power station, did not live up to expectations. Given this history, it may come as a surprise that thorium-based nuclear fuels are once again being considered, this time as the means to stem the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons. Using thorium to prevent plutonium build up, requires the fuel to be configured differently than in most past experiments. Those trials incorporated highly enriched uranium (now discouraged because of proliferation worries) and presupposed the spent fuel would be reprocessed to extract its fissile contents. Neither practice is now envisaged. The thorium-based fuel assemblies currently being designed are different from past examples in other ways too. For example, they can withstand greater exposure to the heat and radiation inside the core of a reactor, without exploding, which allows more of the fertile thorium-232 to be converted into fissile uranium-233.

But whether enough energy to generate neutrons can be supplied by a particle accelerator on the scale required is an unanswered question, as is whether any government is willing to take on the risks involved in financing such a gigantic project.

In addition, powdered thorium metal is often pyrophoric and should be handled carefully. Thorium disintegrates with the eventual production of "thoron," an isotope of radon (220-Rn). Radon gas is a radiation hazard.

Good ventilation of areas where thorium is stored or handled is therefore essential. Exposure to thorium in the air can lead to increased risk of cancers of the lung, pancreas and blood. Exposure to thorium internally leads to increased risk of liver diseases. Thorium-232 decays very slowly (its half-life is about three times the age of the earth) but other thorium isotopes occur in the thorium and uranium decay chains. Most of these are short-lived but much more radioactive than Th-232.

It is also important to look at the credibility of India’s nuclear establishment. The Department of Atomic Energy – India’s agency that has constantly presented nuclear energy to be the solution to India’s needs – has had a history of not living up to its statements and a reputation for not delivering and being unaccountable. Even though it continues to publicly claim that nuclear energy is the obvious choice for India (Frontline, March 30, 2001), internal documents of Nuclear Power Corporation have stated that “cost of nuclear electricity generation in India remains competitive with thermal [electricity] for plants located about 1,200 km away from coal pit head, when full credit is given to long-term operating cost especially in respect of fuel prices”.

Ramana points out that
The initial cost estimate of Kaiga I and II, which were originally scheduled to be completed in 1994, was Rs 730.72 crore. However, these plants became critical only in 1999. At the time of criticality, the cost of the project was estimated at Rs 2,896 crore. All the reactors built by the DAE have had cost overruns.

A 1988 study by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) of the Narora reactors listed 10 major heads of expenditure that had cost overruns of 188 per cent or more [CAG 1988]. The CAG concluded that the revision of costs by 95 per cent in 1982 and 64 per cent in 1985 indicates that the project got “approved on unrealistic cost estimates. Unrealistic cost estimates and optimistic time schedules make financial allocations and controls less meaningful.” Cost increases, though not of such a large magnitude, have occurred with nuclear reactors in other countries as well.

In effect, the nuclear sector in India has consistently lied to undersell costs to get favorable public opinion and economic analysis.

The Indian nuclear establishment has also had a rather pathetic history vis-à-vis disposal of nuclear storage. Jadugoda – a small community near on the rail link between Jamshedpur and Kharagpur – is the site for much of nuclear waste disposal. In a film made by Sri Prakash, there is documentation of nuclear waste sitting in leaking containers at the public platform on Jadugoda railway station.

The waste is disposed in open ponds around small adivasi villages in the area. The ponds are not secure and animals graze freely. Radioactive wastes thus enter the food cycle through animals and through leaching into the water table.

After over a decade of dumping, this area has the highest percentage of cancer patients, and cases of physical mutation. There are number of children with abnormal appendages, with asymmetric growth rates in different parts of the body and with mental illnesses owing to deformed neural systems. There is an abnormally high incidence of miscarriages.

One senior technocrat of the nuclear establishment is recorded arguing that these mutations are only owing to unhygienic lifestyle of the adivasis – surely a senior technocrat of a nuclear establishment should be more competent.

Given this history of waste disposal, how many communities in India would be willing to have a nuclear reactor – fast breeder or any other kind – in their neighborhoods? Bandra in Mumbai? CP in Delhi, perhaps? Or some other neighborhood in Bangalore that is willing to help increase the energy needs for the nation? It is important to ask whether each of us is willing to live in proximity to a nuclear reactor or next to a nuclear waste disposal pond – if not, it is exploitative and unfair to thrust this on others, especially those who will not even get much from the electricity being generated.

What plans does the government have vis-à-vis setting up these reactors, disposal of wastes – and given the history – who will pay for it?

Very clear indications point to this being a bad policy decision for the future of India:
1. It is a very expensive solution – where billions of dollars will be invested – that can only work for 3 decades at best. Even in the last decade, it is expected that nuclear reactors will be using among the lowest grade Uranium and Thorium resulting in even more radioactive wastes.
2. It is not a cost effective solution today – by NPC’s own documents – when compared to current alternatives and does not look like a cost effective solution in the near future either. It has no long term future as pointed above.
3. Thorium has not been proven to be a feasible solution. Even in India, it has not lived up to its expectations
4. The agency that is expected to run this process has a history of inappropriate estimates, non-delivery and absence of accountability. It also has a pathetic history of dealing with hazardous wastes and safety.

This policy, in effect, presents a solution that will at best work for a couple of decades but place future generations in heavy debt as well as expose them to enormous radioactive risks.

Ramana ends his article with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj
And it is worthy of note that the systems which the Europeans have discarded are the systems in vogue among us. Their learned men continually make changes. We ignorantly adhere to their cast off systems.

- Sanat Mohanty

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