As the Japanese nuclear disaster stares the world in its face, the unrepentant power elite and the nuclear elite in particular, is attempting to downplay the threats that are in store for us in future. An particularly belligerent representative of the Indian nuclear establishment recently attacked CNDP (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace) activist Praful Bidwai on television, calling him a ‘nuclear illiterate’. While the world watches in horror, predators are active in stepping up their disinformation campaign. Given that India’s record of maintaining minimum safety standards on even the simplest of things is not a patch on the Japanese (leaving aside its world record in corruption!), there is no other way but to demand an immediate moratorium on all further nuclear activity in India. The anti-nuclear movement has raised this demand already in relation to Jaitapur and Haripur in West Bengal.
Meanwhile, here is Praful Bidwai on the Jaitapur project, after his return form a field investigation.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Praful! the nuclear illiterates are illiterates in every other field. Our knowledge of the consequences of nuclear power is enough to decide whether it is socially good or not. Go ahed! people are with you. Nuclear power is NOT environmentally clean ..that is clear now..it is a monster with a monstrous power..humanity should learn to use less enrergy to sustain nature . There is a need for a paradigmatic chnage in the context of what constitutes development.
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Over the last 4 decades, there have been repeated warnings of the danger of nuclear technology, as well as a series of incidents—Windscale, Fermi I, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl—that demonstrated the real-life consequences for millions of people. But nothing could stop the drive by the ruling elites of one country after another from investing billions in nuclear power generation. UPA govt in India has been so obsessed with the ‘renaissance’ that no sane voice is respected..
Let us also learn from Germany which is hypersensitive to nuclear peril even at the calmest of times. Its reliance on nuclear power is not great: 17 plants account for around a quarter of electricity generation (see chart). France’s 58 plants, by contrast, produce three quarters of the country’s electricity. Yet Germany’s anti-nuclear movement is lively. The transport of nuclear waste provokes angry blockades; after the Japanese disaster, more than 100,000 people demonstrated against nuclear power across Germany..
In India we are still waiting for more disasters…Let CNDP lead a nation-wide campaign without any delay
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Within two days of the Prime Minister ordering a safety review of all nuclear plants in the country with respect to natural disasters (http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/15/stories/2011031562771500.htm), the nuclear top brass have responded that what happened in Japan cannot happen here (http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/17/stories/2011031757791400.htm). We are assured that the review is on and `more conclusive’ answers will be given after the Japanese experience has been thoroughly analysed. The tone has been set, arguments will be made about how India cannot be Japan, not a review of existing plants’ vulnerability to earthquakes, cyclones, floods, or tsunamis.
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How does the anti-nuclear lobby plan to meet the growing energy deficit in India? Hydro-carbons are limited by geography to the middle east and other conflict zones. Renewable energy require large amounts of land and given procedures in land acquisition in India, it will not be a happy outcome. People thinking that a reduction in transmission losses will help are living a pipe dream. Reduction in transmission losses to a large extent will improve health of SEBs not help overcome power deficit. Transmission loss is an euphemism for power theft in India.
Another aspect to consider is the nuclear incident in Japan happened at a reactor nearly 30-40 years old. Technological changes as well as safety measures have changed over time. The number of people hurt in Japan due to nuclear issue is minimal considering the impact of earthquake and tsunami. A lot of coverage in non-japan media is speculative in nature and is creating hysteria rather than offering any solutions. Japan with respect to energy is actually in a worse off as compared to India (we at least have ample coal reserves).
Using coal has its own issues – even the cleanest of coal technologies will give out green house gases, respiratory issues etc. India’s energy policy has to be well thought off not some thing based on transient emotive calls.
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The `well-thought out’ energy policy of the pro-nuclear lobby is usually a mix of business-as-usual projections with TINA arguments. That hardly answers the question of safety of nuclear energy. Business-as-usual scenarios are unsustainable. They are also grossly inequitable.
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Dark Lord,
There are two separate issues involved here. One is the larger question of energy needs – which we will return to with a longer response, maybe with a full post, as the questions you raise are also questions that many people have. At present, let me just say that our energy needs are now what you imply they are: Some people ‘need’, apparently scores of airconditioners, shopping centres and malls need to keep lights on all night ‘for security purposes’, while others have to ‘steal’ electricity to light one or two light bulbs! We will have more serious battles in coming decades, if not years, on who has the right to consume how much electricity or energy, more generally, and what counts as necessary energy consumption. The second question concerns the range of issues related to nuclear energy. These range from its being very very expensive, tied to high levels of secrecy, centralization and control and being environmentally destructive. This is apart from the fact that it is dangerous for people living anywhere near it – and as Chernobyl and Fukushima show, there is no distance that is far enough. Fukushima radiations have now reached California and the US West Coast. And of course, there is then the question of hazardous nuclear waste: France dumps its waste in India, and where exactly do you propose to dump yours?
In such a scenario, insisting on nuclear energy is like suggesting that since we do not have enough food to eat, we should eat poison!
But let me make a modest proposal about the liability of the nuclear establishment and of nuclear opinion makers. They should prove their point of safety by demonstrating it. Let us make it mandatory for them to live within the same range from these plants as unsuspecting populations are made to. In these days of internet and other connectivity, they do not need to be in the safety of Delhi or Mumbai. They can be given private helicopters to fly to these cities to attend urgent meetings that the nation cannot presumably do without. That will help build popular confidence in what they say:)
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a) “We will have more serious battles in coming decades, if not years, on who has the right to consume how much electricity or energy, more generally, and what counts as necessary energy consumption.”
There is NO RIGHT TO CONSUME ENERGY (or rather people who pay for energy have the right to consumer it). We pay for the energy because someone produces it. It is not free (unlike opinions). People who have multiple air-conditioners, use malls have to pay for it and in case they are not paying for it, the price must be extracted from them, which by the way is a totally different issue.
b) Safety – nuclear radiation concerns – Radiation reaching California etc
A quote doing rounds in US – “Remember how in the 50s and 60s we exploded over 600 nuclear weapons in the open air over Nevada and the radiation spread all over the Eastern US and eventually ended all life on earth? How the eight legged rats will be fighting the two legged cockroaches?”
All that the anti-nuclear lobby wants to do is somehow put up a moratorium on nuclear power based on an emotional response to Japan. FYI, there has not been a single death till date due to nuclear radiation at Fukushima nor do you see the Japanese asking for closure of all their nuclear power plants. Fukushima was built in the 1970s and there have been changes in safety standards / designs from then on (including having the water reservoir at higher level than the plant so that cooling can be done using gravity rather than pumps).
“But let me make a modest proposal about the liability of the nuclear establishment and of nuclear opinion makers. They should prove their point of safety by demonstrating it. Let us make it mandatory for them to live within the same range from these plants as unsuspecting populations are made to.”
India is a free country. If people do not want to live near nuclear plants, they are free to sell and move on. Pretty sure that any land near a power plant fetches better pricing than anything far away. I have a counter-proposal. Those against nuclear power should be made to endure 18 hours erratic power cuts for a few years. It will pretty much convince the nuclear lobby that Indians love being in the dark.
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Nigambab, thank you from the bottom of my heart for this provocative post.
I sit here in Goa, south of Jaitapur, where, I am afraid, like in Gurgaon and Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, nobody gives a shit whether Jaitapur comes up or not, so long as they have their air-conditioners and lights on in every room. This is India, the home of Jugaad Capitalism, and you know and I know what will happen if an earthquake happens in Jaitapur and the wind and rain takes the bloody stuff 300 kilometres south, but you try telling that tro one of my buddies in Margao who’s more interested in the new phone he’s upgrading for and telling you, come on man, don’t worry so much because he’s buying frozen chips made in the USA and manufactured in Punjab…
I love this country baby, which is why, every chance I get, I hit the feni bottle…
Given the kind of spin-doctoring I’ve on the news-channels every night – Praful Bidwai, in fact, was not even allowed to speak and then, unless I missed it, never called again! – and the recent spate of articles in both the TOI and IE ‘scientifically’ justifying nuclear energy – the worst of course being those saying how the breakdowns in the Japanese plants would provide lessons to future safety – this post is truly wonderful.
You raise two points very eloquently in response to Dark Lord’s equally penetrating comments and they bear repeating, only so long as this discussion leads to qualitative and forceful action – in this case, nothing short of stopping Jaitapur permanently – regardless of what American and French interests may dictate – and calling for a comprehensive (and not fake) citizens’ Environment Impact Assesssment!
Kindly note that even our FabIndia MoEF admitted a few days ago what all of us knew a few years ago – that EIAs were largely a farce. Exaggeration? You doubt this? You have a few crore to blow?
You come to Goa, buy me the feni and pass the money around, and everyone from the CM who has a finger in the mining business, down to his peon, who probably owns a few trucks in Quepem, and you can start mining without even the EIAs.
The EIA will be done by an outfit with offices in Hyderabad and now Ponda, Goa, that has several templates it offers to the rogue mining industry all the way from Goa to Jharkand, where Goan mining companies are doing to the adivasis there, what they have already done to the adivasis in Goa…
Ah, but I digress…
Nigambab, you rightly hone in on the upwardly mobile, privileged class and their skewed assessments of ‘need’.
It’s not just the light bulbs though, and this is what is really sad. It’s also a question of drinking water. Go to any one of ten spots in your city, where the underprivileged live, and watch the squabbles and wars that take place over water, while two blocks away, a servant will be washing two cars in a driveway, while sprinklers gush over a garden.
This is the good life exported to us, sold to us every evening by brilliant cricketers and bad actors, and we all buy in it, then find ways of elaborately rationalizing this, sometimes even cloaking it in theory…
“We will have more serious battles in coming decades, if not years” you write! How true…I picture a horde of people, say five thousand, armed with empty buckets, storming the walls of a gated colony and heading for the giant water tank, while others empty out the swimming pool…
Your second point is related to issues surrounding nuclear energy. Its high costs, and thanks to it being embedded in the business of making bombs that need planes to drop them, the levels of secrecy, deceit, and even collusion inherent in the enterprise. And if this was not enough, then the factthat it is environmentally hazardous, and far worse than a cigarette for people living anywhere up to 30 kilometres away, if not more…
There is a third that you forgot to mention, perhaps the most important one – if they are not to do, that is, to you and me and hundred others what they are trying to do to Binayak – and that is, put into place the draconian measures as Praful says, to clamp down on protest and dissent…
Have we forgotten that leading up the first so-called public hearings on the issue, the state and central government threw a security blanket over Jaitapur and its environs, barred journalists, activists and concerned citizens, and brought in hired help for the so-called public hearings…
I wish I wasn’t just a stupid old Goan drunk. If I was someone as important as Madhav Gadgil for instance, the scientist Praful mentions in his presentation, the chair of the panel set up by the MoEF to assess damage being done to the Western Ghats, I would first tell ol’ Kakodkar nicely over the telephone, hey boss, this plant, we don’t want it, Itell you this like a good scientist and a good human being, then still if the guy won’t listen, I’ll walk to Jaitapur and stop it…
Maybe that’s why I have the bottle and Madhav Gadgil holds the chair…
In Goa, we laugh…because in Goa, the expert panel set up by the MoEF, chaired by Gadgil, says we have to look at ‘sustainable mining’.
Sustainable mining???? This after at least 25 respected Goans presented perhaps the most devastating critique that ever hit this Goan rogue industry in the nose? Give me a break, let me get back to the bottle…
Come to Goa is what I have to say, some young concerned kids now organize trips through the Goan arm of the Western Ghats, starting the tour over breakfast in the south of Goa, where the forests are lush, then showing them over a coffee break the mining that’s started there four years back, then showing them the mines that have already destroyed the forests and water sources in the north of the state, after lunch.
Most throw up when they see the pit up in the hills going down 27 metres below sea level, surrounded by barren hills with a speckling of even Australian acacia and casuarina…
Ah, but I digress again…
What most of us are saying in the bars in Goa, is that regardless of the Madhav Gadgils of this world, regardless of FabIndia politicians with good hearts who want to protect the noble savages, the will of Industry, of industries, who, making money from money, market and sell us ‘needs’ – and all the upwardly mobile folk, who after years of starvation under Licence Raj, buy into this illusion, and buy and buy with vengence, then a thousand Jaitapurs will be lost…
If you fight this, or try to fight this, they will silence you.
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Dark Lord, “If people do not want to live near nuclear plants, they are free to sell and move on. Pretty sure that any land near a power plant fetches better pricing than anything far away. I have a counter-proposal. Those against nuclear power should be made to endure 18 hours erratic power cuts for a few years…”
Your appalling ignorance is matched only by your simple-minded arrogance. What are you, how old are you, and on which planet do you live?
Land near a nuclear plant is acquired by the state, not sold at high market rates; farmers cannot just “move on” once their land is sold/acquired, what are they to move on to? The Fast Track advertisement world, which is clearly your universe? And most people in this country whether they are for or against nuclear plants have barely any electricity; most would be happy for 18 hour power cuts which gives them 6 hours of power a day. And not because there isn’t enough energy generation – there is plenty for those who can pay to consume it, which you call a “right”. In other words, in your universe, someone somewhere should give up their lands, their ways of life, their futures,because you can pay – not those dispossessed people – but the energy companies, for your malls and multiple air conditioners. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay for the devastated earth, and if the string of natural disasters in this century haven’t taught you anything, nothing will.
And if you read just a little, a few words now and again when you have a moment off from your mindless consumption, you would know that even if every current and proposed nuclear power station on earth operated at maximum output for an entire year, an impossible best-case scenario, that would still generate only 4% of the energy we consume.
That consuming”we”, of course, is not the residents of Jaitapur and Narora and Jaduguda – but then, who gives a f*** about them, right? You certainly dont.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, it is not only you who will “pay the price”, which is quite different from shelling out the cost.
Even with renewable sources of energy that remain relatively untapped (sun, wind), the earth just cannot meet unlimited and exponential increase of energy “needs” which are in fact not needs at all, but totally unsustainable life styles.
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Wonder why our news channels never had something like this…
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Nivedita,
1. There is indeed a problem with how land is forcibly acquired by our government using the “eminent domain” clause. This is not particular to nuclear plants. Indeed, JNU itself is located on land that was acquired from village Munirka and I am fairly sure that nothing like fair compensation was paid for it. (I am quite sure though that many on the right-wing would cheerfully sign up to a petition to get rid of JNU on grounds that the land was acquired without fair compensation. :-)) At any rate, I think Dark Lord’s point was regarding those whose land was near the power station but not acquired.
2. I don’t think there is plenty of power for those who can afford to pay. Everybody that I know in my upper-middle class milieu pays for their power and water. (Yes, there are some like that too.) They are still subject to random shortages. In Chennai, my parents frequently buy water from private sources because the water supply (for which they pay) is often cut off without warning. When I asked my father whether complaining would help, he said no: the only thing that could help was someone from the ruling DMK alliance moving into our area.
There is indeed plenty of power and water for some in our system: those who are politically well-connected. They can use power and water indiscriminately and without payment. It is worth noting that the wastage in our system is mostly on account of those who use without paying for what they use — and for the most part, these are people who can actually afford to pay. Frankly, I think a system where everyone (malls included) has to pay for what they use would be more fair and less hypocritical than the current system.
3. Regarding lifestyle change, well, it sounds nice but impractical. My sister is a faculty member at JNU, one of the few without a car. She once complained to me that faculty members use cars to drive from one part of the campus to another part. I remember a “faculty lunch” organized by the previous vice-chancellor, B. B. Bhattacharya in January 2010. As my sister and I were walking past the VC’s house — my sister chose not to attend and we were returning from elsewhere — I was surprised to see the number of cars parked in the vicinity of the VC’s house. (I should add that most faculty members stay within the campus.) If this is the state of affairs in a campus where presumably most are “environmentally conscious”, then why would you think exhortations for lifestyle change will work elsewhere? And while you are complaining about malls and the like, why don’t you do a survey of your fellow faculty members at JNU to see how many of them use these facilities? You may be surprised.
4. The only reliable way of forcing a lifestyle change is to force people to pay for what they use. But every increase in petrol prices is opposed with the result that incentives to use the public transportation system is lessened. Our political system opposes every increase in railway fares with the consequence that trains are perpetually over-crowded. We oppose every increase in electricity rates with the result of encouraging people to use air-conditioners. (Of course, the supply will be erratic and so there will be a supplementary market in inverters and the like.)
5. Before you start fulminating (and I am sure you will), I am not a “free-marketeer” or whatever. FWIW, none in our family own a car or use a mall. But I do agree with Dark Lord’s basic point that the question of nuclear energy has to be thought through without recourse to emotion.
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Actually Suresh, far from fulminating, I am completely convinced by your powerful arguments, that have overridden everything I have learnt about nuclear energy for about 20 years from the international campaign against it.
1. Land acquired by the state for a public university and land acquired for nuclear plants (when nuclear energy has been proved to be neither clean, nor safe nor cheap), is exactly the same thing. Why didn’t I see it before – JNU is neither clean nor particularly safe, though very cheap, but still. Very similar to a nuclear plant.
And since Eminent Domain has been invoked in the past with impunity, before the voices of the dispossessed reached our ears, let’s by all means continue to legitimize it, especially when it suits us.
2. JNU professors use their cars to move around campus, and go to malls, and since they cannot be convinced ethically and morally to be environmentally conscious, how can any change be brought about ever, anywhere? Some crackpots (among whom I am no longer one, thanks to you) make an argument that you correctly dismiss, that life-style changes are brought about by strong state policies with regard to price of petrol for private cars, prohibitive pricing of cars accompanied by huge investments in public transport, etc etc but I agree with you now that unless we can personally persuade individuals to give up their bad habits one by one, nothing can change.
And of course, overcrowded trains and buses are absolutely on par with private cars, (several per family unit) and air conditioners. Let them all pay, and let them all eat cake.
3. The fact that there isn’t plenty of power and water for even those who can pay, has absolutely no relation to excessive and wasteful consumption of available energy, by malls and luxury hotels, no relation at all to massive deforestation and mindless urbanization that has led to the need for airconditioners in cities like Bangalore that never needed even fans about 10 years ago, no relation to any larger processes whatever.
4. So, I’m convinced. Let’s reduce all serious debate to what some individuals that you personally know do. That way, we can just stop asking any questions at all about unjust and inequitable distribution of available resources or the ecological catastrophe that is already upon us, and just go on “thinking through nuclear energy without recourse to emotion” i.e. endorse it without any further thought.
Whew. What a relief.
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