Open Forum
New Delhi, 20 April 2011
Nuclear
Safety
LESSONS
FOR INDIA
By
Dhurjati Mukherjee
Environmental pressure
groups in India
and other parts of the world are calling on their respective Government’s to
abandon their nuclear power plants following the radiation leak in Japanese
installations. Even the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) recently
stated that the radiation problem in Japan was serious and confirmed
that 20 per cent of the world’s 442 working commercial nuclear stations are in
areas of ‘significant’ seismic activity.
Nonetheless, one has to
agree that while electricity demand has been increasing rapidly as also the
need to counter climate change by shifting from thermal to nuclear (and also non-conventional)
power, the threat of a catastrophe from a natural, or other, disaster cannot be
ignored.
The Japanese earthquake
has severely affected three plants of the Fukushima Dalichi Nuclear Power
Station, over 220 km North-east of Tokyo.
The authorities have been trying to cool damaged reactors in various ways but
have not been successful in this regard. High radiation has been hindering
work.
Furthermore, western
nuclear engineers have said that there is a possibility of release of mox, a mixed fuel, into the atmosphere which
would produce a more dangerous plume than the disposal of uranium fuel rods at Fukushima. The Chairman
of the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission too has pointed out the damage to the Japanese nuclear reactor was
indeed more serious than Tokyo
acknowledged.
Meanwhile, Japan plans to import about 150 tonnes of boron
from South Korea and France to mix
with water to be sprayed onto the damaged reactors, as water can be used to
stop a meltdown if the zirconium cladding on uranium fuel is compromised.
Importantly, the Fukushima catastrophe has
forced Governments to review their nuclear policy and also the safeguards. German
Chancellor Merkel has ordered a review of seven of the reactors built before
1980 and reports indicate they may be shut down. China has said it will not totally
abandon its nuclear plans but will go slow on implementing them.
Perhaps every country is
waiting to study the effects of Fukushima and
how Japan
tides over the crisis. There is also a belief that full investigation of the
sequence of events in Japan
may eventually make nuclear energy safer.
However, Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin made plain that his country would continue to develop
nuclear power as global energy balance is impossible without it. According to
him, the Japanese nuclear power plants had obsolete equipment 40 years ago.
True, protective systems
of modern nuclear plants have undergone a drastic change with present reactors
having a higher level of protection. As pointed out by Russian and French
experts, Russian reactors, particularly the NPP-2006 project for the Leningrad
NPP-2 and the Baltic NPP cannot have any developments like those at the Fukushima nuclear power
plant in principle.
Significantly, post
Fukushima Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has ordered the Nuclear Power
Corporation of India (NPCI) and four task forces to carry out a technical
review, particularly the safety systems of all the 20 nuclear installations.
Notwithstanding that the
pressurized heavy water reactors have different designs from those of the
boiling water reactors (BMRs) in Fukushima
along-with diverse cooling systems. The
Tarapur Atomic Power Plant has two US-made BMRs but these have been renovated
and upgraded with additional safety measures. These have a passive heat removal
system which does not require power, so it will continue to cool the reactor
when there is a total power blackout, according to Atomic Energy Commission Chairman,
Srikumar Banejee. As the ‘thermo-syphoning’ feature gives the reactor a grace
period of eight hours.
As such, a major section
of experts have found all reactors to be completely safe. In fact, during the
Bhuj earthquake on January 26, 2001 the Kakrapar Atomic Power Plant continued
to operate safely without interruption. Also, after the 2004 tsunami, the
Madras Atomic Power Plant was safely shut down without any radiological
consequences.
Importantly, plans are
afoot to set up 22 new reactors of which six are under construction. In fact,
there has been a nuclear renaissance with an additional 17 countries wanting to
join the nuclear energy bandwagon. In all, 62 new reactors are under
construction. This would push up the nuclear energy production by a few hundred
gigawatts in the coming decades, if current plans materialize.
Though the Japanese
catastrophe and also the earlier ones, specially the Chernobyl accident, which
epidemiological investigations revealed might have caused 4000 cancer deaths
over some years, these are far less than the impacts of thermal power on human
health.
A US Clean Air Task
Force estimated last year that air pollution from coal-based power plants could
have contributed around 13,000 premature deaths during 2010 and more than
20,000 heart attacks per year. This is at variance to the claim by anti-nuclear
activists in India who found
that there were “tens of thousands of deaths” caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
Yet, radiation control
remains a big problem. As radio-activity contains particles or radiation that
can disrupt the molecular structure of cells, leading to changes that may
produce cancer. The US Environmental Agency said that among 10,000 people
exposed to 10 millisieverts radiation in Japan (over and above natural
radiation), five to six might die of cancer, though it did not reveal how many
would be affected. This figure may add up to another 50-100 persons in the
short and long term. But researchers estimate that around 2000 may die due to
non-radiation causes.
Studies on animals
suggest radiation exposure can cause genetic effects that may be passed down to
the next generation. But the IAEA found that survivors of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
gave no indication of this. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a
Japan-US research organization tracking the long-term effects of radiation on
children of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claimed there
was no statistically significant increase in major birth defects or other
untoward pregnancy outcomes among children of survivors.
Nevertheless, a
scientific paper published in the journal, Radiation Research
2010, by a team of Japanese researchers found increased mutation rates
at certain locations of the genomes among children of atomic energy survivors.
Clearly, the justification
in favour and against nuclear installations advanced by diverse section of
experts needs to be further investigated. Specially, the consequences of the
Japanese catastrophe need to be thoroughly investigated as also the safety
standards required before a nuclear option is considered.
In India’s case, the design of Areva’s EPR reactor
for the Jaitapur nuclear project in Maharashtra
needs to be reviewed along-with the safety standards, more so because its
reactors are untested as yet. ---- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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