The Kudankulam Saga

With frightening ease the establishment has managed to confine the Kudankulam discourse to a local problem that concerns only a few illiterate villagers who have some very personal and trivial concerns. Spiced up a bit by 'foreign' funded NGOs, out to divert us from our shot at greatness and superpowerdom.

Civil society at large, the 'professional' intelligentsia as also the scientific community have been lulled into acceptance of a totally fake assurance that safety is not an issue.

Over the last few years public pronouncements have been of the type where the prime minister says he has full faith in the nuclear scientists of the country. This is followed a few days later by some employee of the Department of Atomic Energy, which controls all activities nuclear, saying he has full faith in the prime minister.

Not to be outdone Abdul Kalam pipes up shortly thereafter to the effect that he has full faith in the prime minister and the nuclear scientists of India, and that he has satisfied himself that all available state-of-the-art safeguards have been built into our nuclear power plants.

Therein lies the rub. State-of-the-art isn't good enough.

As we lathi-charge and fire tear-gas at the Kudankulam villagers, another voice opened up yesterday. In a prime editorial-page piece in the Hindu titled "The Real Questions", one Rahul Siddharthan, employed by a DAE funded outfit, came out strongly against scaremongering and suggesting that 'an independent safety regulator" is needed to reassure misguided, ignorant and ill-informed people.

Siddharthan does not present any personal credentials to show that he knows whereof he speaks. He cites instead an eminent authority on the subject, one George Monbiot, a zoologist, author and journalist. Said George has converted recently from 'neutral' to 'pro-nuclear power' because, hold your breath, no one died as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster.

The fact that radiation fallout forced the evacuation of about 160,000 people surrounding the plant and left about 132 square kilometers as a no-go zone, some of it uninhabitable for decades does not merit mention.

As I finished reading this mischievous work designed to misinform and obfuscate, Sajal Lahiri, the noted International Trade economist and Japophile,  posted a BBC news report that the Japanese have decided to totally phase out nuclear power.

Do we know something they don't or is it vice versa? If we do, we should capitalise on that by selling that knowledge to Germany and Japan.

Snippet: The other expert Rahul Siddharthan cites is Randall Munroe, the creator of the web comic XKCD.

Previous: Nuclear Business Opportunity
First:  The Nuclear Mess

The Nuclear Murders

P. G. (Plum) Wodehouse, the eminent English historian and biographer recorded for posterity, among other things, the accidental wit and wisdom of Bertie Wooster. One immortal gem goes:  
One man's You-Know-What is another man's Whatchamacallit.

The nuclear disaster unfolding  dramatically in hapless Japan has shaken everyone but evoked very different responses from countries in the nuclear power club.

First off the block was Germany, which withdrew the "carry-on" permission it had given in the recent past to seven of its nuclear plants past their planned age. Work on new plants was stopped pending a rigorous review of safety issues.

France which has the largest installed nuclear power base in the world and is reputed to have the safest of designs has not shown any signs of slowing down, but also has nothing new coming up.

The United States does not have anything significant under construction or development. There is no possibility that they will be rushing into anything fresh under the circumstances.

Most OECD countries are expected to embark on major 'review and rectify' programmes for existing plants and slow down whatever new plans they have in the works; at least until significant progress is made in resolving previously known issues as also new ones now thrown up by Fukushima.

Outside the OECD we have China and India. Given its stated goal to get away from coal and oil, China has major nuclear facilities under planning and development. In absence of any pronouncements, not much is known about what China does and less about what China thinks.

India on the other hand has already come up trumps.

The Indian nuclear establishment has declared with one voice that 'our plants' are safe. Some have even used the word 'safer'.

The planning commission has declared that we need to increase the share of nuclear power in our energy plans.

The environment minister has done a typical flip-flop. One day he proclaimed that there is a need for a fresh look at all our plans. Specifically, he said, the Jaitapur facility, which will be the largest anywhere in the world, should be rescaled.

The very next day, he announced that there is no real need for any change. Our technology is superior. Our scientists will make sure that we are at no risk.

The Prime Minister has made some vague remarks about reviewing safety systems and gone on to sign a fresh deal with Ukraine to buy mega quantities of Uranium.

In Maharshtra, where there has been stiff resistance to the Jaitapur complex, we have started killing protesters.

Next Nuclear Business Opportunity

First The Nuclear Mess

Unclear Nuclear

It is rather amusing to see everyone from Condi Rice to her many generations removed predecessor Henry Kissinger, not to mention ignorant politicians, sundry bureaucrats and petty statesmen, trying to rush India into operationalising the so called nuclear deal.  

The good Doctor, himself a bureaucrat of no mean standing, talks of not missing the bus. None of these worthies knows anything about the technology or the business they are pushing so vigorously.

The fact is that the last nuclear power plant was commissioned in the U.S. around decades ago. The famous bus, which takes off every day, has not had a paying passenger since 1973 when the last such project in the U.S. was initiated. This project has had all kinds of delays and will be commissioned only in 2012, maybe. Basically the market, which is the king in the U.S., has not found it prudent to fund any new projects since 1973 even though the country has a serious balance of energy problem.

This is not because there is a shortage of project proposals but because there are serious unaddressed concerns about waste disposal, costs and safety.

The waste disposal issue remains as far from a solution today as it was ten years ago. The capital and operating costs make sense only under extreme assumptions of assigning financial costs to non-financial aspects of fossil fuel based plants while ignoring all such issues of nuclear plants.

True some progress has been made during this period on the safety front. But even today, the best that can be said is that there has been no nuclear plant meltdown since the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island affairs.

On the other hand there can be no meltdown of a non-nuclear power plant . Surely it does not take a great mind to see the difference.

Having said all this, let me add that I would love to see nuclear power technology move from the wishful thinking stage to everything its proponents claim it to be so that India can really and truly become energy independent.

For now please let the Blueline bus, however attractive in theory, pass. It is lethal.

Next
The Undead Deal
First
The Nuclear Mess