The smoke alarm that went off at the 220MW Kaiga nuclear power plant in Karnataka’s North Uttar Kannada district could well have been an alarm bell for the proposed 10,000MW nuclear park in Maharashtra’s Jaitapur. Thankfully, in the Kaiga case, there was no fire behind the smoke and so the unit, shut down immediately after the
alarm went off, will restart in a week’s time after some checks. We have not been told, however, what set off the smoke alarm, though a report is expected. On Jaitapur, which witnessed widespread protests by those residing in nearby villages, minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh appears to have changed his mind. The “green” minister had earlier given it the go-ahead, even after the catastrophic nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima, but now he appears to be in favour of a comprehensive rethink. The agitation against the Jaitapur nuclear park had started long before the Japan earthquake/tsunami struck, but the protests intensified after the Fukushima disaster. The Maharashtra government, however, led by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and senior minister Narayan Rane, had gone all out to convince villagers that nuclear power was a hundred per cent safe and trying to crush the protests. They even refused permission to the protesters to hold a memorial meeting to commemorate victims of the Japanese disaster, and several people were arrested and jailed. Mr Ramesh had at that time still been in favour of the nuclear park coming up there.
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, all countries with nuclear power plants are reconsidering their programmes. Even China, which has the largest nuclear programme on its agenda, is having second thoughts. Only in India did the authorities insist that everything was safe. One wonders at the scientific basis for such confidence. There are also huge controversies around the EPR (evolutionary power reactor) technology that will be used for these plants. Major problems with this have been reported from Canada and South Africa. It is in this context that Mr Ramesh’s letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting a rethink on Jaitapur assumes significance. This does not even take into account the gigantic rehabilitation effort that will be needed to resettle the estimated 27,000 families that will be affected. Besides its pious intentions, the government has still not come out with a concrete blueprint on this.
One other issue that Mr Ramesh has raised, and which needs to be considered without any loss of time, is the need to separate India’s nuclear regulatory body from the parent department of atomic energy. At present, and in fact ever since its formation, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board has functioned under the wing of the department of atomic energy. Many scientists had pointed out the anomaly in such a position as it makes a mockery of the presumed independence of such a board. Most other regulatory bodies, like those in the insurance and telecom sectors, are independent of their parent ministries, but not the AERB. Now that Mr Ramesh has suggested that public confidence in nuclear energy might improve if the regulator were not answerable to the department of atomic energy, it is to be hoped that the government will finally see reason. The AERB had, meanwhile, set up a high-level committee late last month to assess the preparedness of all existing Indian nuclear plants to handle various situations arising out of national disasters. One hopes its findings will be made known soon. Jaitapur, which falls in an earthquake zone of 4 magnitude (the highest is 5), but surprisingly the project’s votaries have put it in zone 3. That, however, can in no way change the reality.