Japan's Nuclear Crisis Stokes Fears In India

[Hafizzz]

Japan's Nuclear Crisis Stokes Fears In India
Japan's Nuclear Crisis Stokes Fears In India : NPR

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, has stoked fears in India, which is about to embark on a nuclear reactor building binge that could increase the country's nuclear power generating capacity six-fold.

Top nuclear officials in India say the country's existing reactors are safe and that the next generation of power plants will be even safer.

But some Indian nuclear experts say the country's nuclear establishment is so secretive that it's impossible to say how safe the program may be.

Close Calls

Concerns about nuclear safety in India aren't just theoretical.

The country already has had some close calls, including an accident at the Narora atomic power plant not far from New Delhi in 1993.

"In our Narora station there was a major fire, which got that reactor pretty close to meltdown, frankly," says A. Gopalakrishnan. He was head of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board at the time.

Gopalakrishnan says the early-morning blaze knocked out all electric power to the plant, leaving the reactor temperature to soar out of control.

The reactor was being run by a group of young engineers who — in those pre-cellphone days — were cut off from contact with the outside world.

"So these seven or eight people in that control room in pitch darkness had to take the decision on their own, without any supervisory advice," he says.

They grabbed flashlights, climbed up inside the reactor structure and, luckily, took the right steps to get the situation under control.

"It was quite clear that this action which these engineers took, really saved a meltdown," Gopalakrishnan says. "Otherwise we had two major cities nearby, Meerut and Aligarh — those places would completely have had to be evacuated."

Learning Lessons

At the time, the cities of Meerut and Aligarh had a combined population of nearly 7 million people.

That, say many nuclear experts, is why India should be learning lessons from Japan's nuclear crisis. India may be less likely to face earthquakes as severe as those that hit Japan, but any accident could have a much greater human cost.

G. Balachandran is a nuclear policy consultant at India's Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.

A strong advocate of nuclear power, he says data from Fukushima show that there was a failure on the part of Japanese regulators to force the company to comply with tsunami-protection measures.

"That is the primary lesson to be learned," he says, "that regulations must be fully enforced, and absolutely enforced without any delay whatsoever."

Balachandran says that, like in Japan, India's regulatory bodies have a too-cozy relationship with the nuclear plant operators.

He points out that the chairman of the department that promotes nuclear power also sits on the board that is supposed to regulate it. He says the two authorities should be completely separate and independent.

Call For Transparency

Critics also complain that India's nuclear establishment needs to be much more transparent.

"Our nuclear establishment is directly related to our defense establishment," says Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Center for Science and Environment. "In the name of national security, lots of information about our nuclear establishment was not put out in the public domain."

That information, says Bhushan, includes environmental impact assessments dealing with issues such as safety and potential radiation hazards.

Bhushan says the issue is particularly urgent because India is preparing for a six-fold increase in its nuclear generating capacity by adding new reactors from the United States, France and other countries, many of which will be located near populous areas.

"After all, India is an extremely densely populated country," he says. "The number of people that will be affected if something like Japan happens — in India, it would be huge. So who will be liable if something like that happens? Will government bail out companies? Will companies pay us?"

The current head of India's Atomic Energy Commission, Srikumar Banerjee, wasn't available for an interview.

He recently told the Indian Express newspaper that Fukushima raised concerns for India's nuclear establishment, including the need to constantly assess its nuclear safety.

But Banerjee also told the paper: "You should worry less for nuclear energy than walking on the streets or driving in Delhi."

Mango Farmers Invoke Japan to Fight India Nuclear Plant
Mango Farmers Invoke Japan to Fight India Nuclear Plant - Bloomberg

The temple for the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, near Jaitapur on the western coast of India, seems a long way from Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi, where the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl continues to unfold.

For the crowd gathering amid the scent of incense and prayer lamps, the crisis is looming on their doorstep. Less than three miles away, the Indian government plans to build what would be the world’s largest nuclear-power plant and the villagers, fearing a repeat of the Japanese catastrophe, are here to protest.

Opposition to the development, to be built with Paris-based Areva SA (CEI), pits local fishermen and farmers, growers of the world’s most expensive mangoes, against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government as India struggles to bridge a power shortfall to maintain the second-fastest rate of growth among major economies. The site would generate double the power produced at Fukushima, even as that crisis prompts nations such as Germany to scale back their nuclear plans.

“After Japan, our politicians should realize that nuclear plants are not safe,” said Shobha Chavan, 40, a doctor and housewife in the nearby town of Ratnagiri. “In this region, earthquakes have happened. Businessmen and politicians want to build the plant because they want to build their bank balances.”
Giant Wave

Even before the 9-magnitude temblor struck Japan on March 11, sending a giant wave crashing into Fukushima, locals campaigned to stop the 9,900-megawatt development, arguing that hot water discharge posed a risk to fish stocks, while a security cordon would block access to the sea. The prawns, mackerels and king fish from the sea off Jaitapur are exported to markets from Europe to Thailand and Japan.

Now, protesters say Jaitapur could suffer the same fate as Fukushima, where Tokyo Electric Power Co. is struggling to contain radiation leaks after a partial meltdown. The planned complex sits in an area of seismic activity and state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India, India’s monopoly atomic generator, is underplaying the risk, according to Janhit Seva Samiti, a movement comprising hundreds of locals opposed to the plans.

“Earlier, government officials used to say: ‘Look at Japan. It has so many nuclear plants in earthquake-prone areas and there have been no accidents,’” said Praveen Gavankar, a 57-year-old Alphonso mango grower who is also one of the leaders of the movement. “Now we are saying: See, we told you it was dangerous.” A box of a dozen Alphonsos can cost as much as $100 in the U.S.
Suffered Shocks

The area around Jaitapur, 420 kilometers (262 miles) south of Mumbai, is ranked as level three in India’s five-step scale of seismic risk, with five being the most severe, according to Nuclear Power Corp., or NPCIL. Konkan Bachao Samiti, another local group opposing the project, provided Bloomberg News with data showing the site is in a level four area. The area around Jaitapur suffered 40 shocks of magnitude 4 or higher from 1996 to 2005, the data show.

A. Sundaramoorthy, director general of the Geological Survey of India in Kolkata, was not available for comment after five calls to his office.
Fault Lines

A 1945 shock along the zone where the Arabian plate slides under the Eurasian plate sent a 2-meter (6.6-foot) high wave slamming into Mumbai, according to a December 2008 paper in the journal Current Science. The 800-kilometer fault, called the Makran subduction zone, could host “a very large earthquake, certainly as big as the one that occurred in Japan recently,” said Phil Cummins, professor of geology at the Australian National University.

Still, there are no active fault lines within a 30- kilometer (18.6-mile) radius of the Jaitapur site, according to a government report last year. That’s more than the 5-kilometer limit stipulated by India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Furthermore, the site sits on average 24.5 meters above mean sea level, reducing the tsunami risk, NPCIL say.

The company also claims water discharged into the sea will be at most about 5 degrees Celsius warmer and confined to an area of 0.28 square kilometers. There have been no adverse effects on marine life at existing coastal nuclear power sites, according to NPCIL.
Revisit Plans

Nevertheless, the company will “revisit” its plans after it gets more information from Japan, according to Chairman Shreyans Kumar Jain.

Areva didn’t immediately respond to requests to comment. The reactors at Fukushima Dai-Ichi were built by General Electric Co. (GE), Toshiba Corp. (6502) and Hitachi Ltd. (6501)

The Jaitapur plant would be the first to be built in India after the U.S. helped lift a more than three-decade ban on the South Asian nation trading in atomic equipment and fuel in 2008. The project, consisting of six 1,650-megawatt Areva reactors, will be built in phases, with the first set of two reactors scheduled to be completed in 2018, NPCIL said last year.

The company has capacity of 4,780 megawatts, less than 3 percent of India’s total. The government needs to boost electricity generation to plug a 10 percent peak shortfall and meet a target of providing power to all its 1.2 billion people. India’s $1.3 trillion economy may grow as much as 9.25 percent this financial year, the government forecast in February.
Legal Challenge

NPCIL bought 938 hectares of land from four villages for the project, about three times the size of New York’s Central Park. Still, the diggers can’t move in until compensation is agreed. Out of about 2,000 landowners offered money, just 154 accepted, according to Madhukar Gaikwad, the top administrative official of Ratnagiri district.

Protesters also say they are preparing a fresh legal challenge after a 2009 attempt to block the plan was dismissed by the Bombay High Court. If they can show the area is in a seismic zone and the project “would not serve the public purpose,” they can ask the court to stall the project, said Narinder Singh Vashisht, a senior Delhi High Court lawyer who specializes in real estate law.

“They can take advantage of the fallout of the Fukushima disaster as well,” he said.
Mushroom Clouds

Meanwhile, the protests continue. Colorful posters with images of mushroom clouds and warnings of catastrophes worse than those in Japan are plastered at intersections and on trees and shop fronts in the area. Security has been beefed up in the villages and police vans, each with 30 or so khaki-clad officers, are a common sight.

Two rallies near Jaitapur turned violent and 39 people were arrested, according to local inspector Dilip Boraste. All have since been released on bail, he said.

Protesters claim they are being targeted by the Maharashtra state government, headed by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. Gangadhar Mahadeo, 41, a farmer who claims to own 170 acres of land including five which are being acquired by NPCIL, said he was arrested and put in jail for nine days for protesting. He’s now on bail.

“I am ready to go to jail for a year if required but we won’t allow the plant to come up here,” he said.

Chavan didn’t return a call made to his mobile phone. His personal assistant Satish Lalit said the chief minister was unavailable because he was attending the state assembly.

Uddhav Thackeray, leader of opposition party Shiv Sena, has declared his support for the protesters. He’s scheduled to visit Jaitapur on April 9, Gavankar said.

Back at Hanuman’s temple, the crowd listens to the latest news from Fukushima as Milind Desai, the village doctor, reads aloud from a newspaper. A group of policemen watches, one recording proceedings on a video camera.

Then, a group of young folk singers with hand-held drums, cymbals and tambourines and dressed in brightly colored traditional costumes get to their feet. They perform a song dedicated to stopping the nuclear plant.

“No one can predict an earthquake,” says Desai. “Nature will do what it wants and the consequences will be the same for everyone.”

Too much to worry.

 

[Ammyy]

India only imports very little food from Japan and yet she decides to BAN imports while China imports so much food from Japan but yet only bans some Japanese import.

India import very little food from Japan so they ban all of them

China import so much food from Japan so they bans some of them


Whats your point for making this thread ????????