Instead of taking a leaf out of nuclear disasters around the world, the Indian Government is trying to dilute the liability Act, which will allow foreign suppliers to escape the stringent penalties in case of an accident
After the Fukushima meltdown in March 2011, a Japanese parliamentary committee was set up to go into the facts of the case. Its report, released in July 2012, shows that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, was a greedy utility operator which cut corners even after repeated warnings on compromising the plant’s safety. Yet, the Government’s regulatory agency worked in collusion with this firm. The Japanese Government too tried to give the impression that Fukushima was under control. The truth, as we now know, is that it was never under control — nor is it even today. Over 1,50,000 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters with no clue about when (if ever) they will return home.
And the bad news just keeps coming. According to a report in The Guardian, TEPCO admitted in August that about 300 tonnes of radioactive groundwater is escaping into the nearby Pacific Ocean every day. The report further reveals, “Currently about 400 tonnes of groundwater are streaming into the reactor basements from the hills behind the plant each day. The water is pumped out and held in about 1,000 storage tanks. The tanks contain 330,000 tonnes of water with varying levels of toxicity.”
The independent committee’s report points that the meltdown of the core at Fukushima plant was caused by ‘wilful negligence’ and was man-made due to collusion between the plant operator and the regulator. Therefore, terming earthquake and tsunami as the cause for the meltdown is not accurate. The reactor buildings are in a precarious condition and another earthquake may result in a collapse of the whole structure.
The most pressing task before Japan, now is the careful removal of over 1,300 fuel rods from the reactor. The situation is so critical that if these come in contact with each other, they can set off a catastrophic atomic chain reaction which would pale the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each day, hundreds of tonnes of radioactive spent coolant water have been leaking from makeshift drums lying in the open. The radiation levels have reached dangerous levels of 2,200 milliSieverts per hour. An unprotected person standing close to the contaminated areas would, within hours, receive a deadly radiation dose.
When asked why these leaks were not detected earlier, TEPCO brazenly replied that the equipment they have to measure radiation levels do not function properly and can only gauge up to 100mSV per hour. The Japanese are at their wit’s end on how to control the leakages (let alone start a clean-up) and have sought international assistance. Some experts have said that this is a global problem and the United Nations should intervene, since neither TEPCO nor the Japanese Government have the ability or the resources to resolve the crisis.
The new storage-tank leak presents a potentially more serious problem. The latest leak comes from one of the massive array of 1,000 above-ground storage tanks built inside the plant, which store water that has been pumped into the damaged reactors in an effort to cool the nuclear fuel inside.
Fukushima is clearly a disaster, and India must learn some lessons from Japan (whose 50 reactors have been idle since 2011) about how not to go ahead and hastily build reactors without a strong regulatory regime. Instead of taking a leaf out of incidences like the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, India is continuing in its pursuit of nuclear energy. In fact, our Government has been trying to dilute the provisions of the Civil liability for Nuclear Damages Act, 2010, by bringing in a ‘Rule’ which will allow the foreign suppliers to escape the stringent penalties imposed under the Act. Rather than act on the principle of ‘safety first’, the Government seems to be more interested in signing contracts with companies which are offering untested and expensive reactors to India.
“The delays in commissioning of the Kudankulam plant is directly related to faulty valves and components that have been bought from companies in Russia like Zio-Podolsk — whose procurement director Sergei Shutov was arrested for buying low quality and cheap raw material, passing it off as more expensive grade and pocketing the difference”, Anuj Wankhede, a prominent anti-nuclear activist said.
What is worse is the veil of secrecy that surrounds the civil nuclear energy space in India. Already, the Department of Atomic Energy has written to the Prime Minister asking that it be kept out of the purview of the RTI Act. Whither the transparencyIJ Are we really safeIJ
Meanwhile, people’s lands are being acquired — sometimes forcibly — to build new plants, but there is no semblance of any radiation-monitoring around the existing plants. “There are no ‘emergency drills’ carried out, the emergency preparedness plans exist only on paper and there are no proper roads, vehicles or specialised hospitals near the plants — except those for NPCIl officers and their families. There are no regular medical check-ups, and even when they are done once in a while, the records remain classified", claims Mr Wankhede.
The Comptroller and Auditor-General’s report last year on the functioning of the independent regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, is an eye-opener. It shows how the AERB is a toothless tiger — it does not have any powers to enforce regulation nor can it collect fines. It can merely advise or comment on failures. In fact, AERB is dependent on the data NPCIl gives it — the same NPCIl which it is supposed to regulate — and cannot independently verify the authenticity of this data!
The costs of building a nuclear power plant are high which countries such as India can ill-afford at this moment. But the costs of an accident are many times more, as human lives will be lost and generations affected.