France Peddles Unsafe Nuclear Reactors to India, Drawing Protest
By Kumar Sundaram
Truthout, Friday, January 29, 2016
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34627-france-peddles-unsafe-nuclear-reactors-to-india-drawing-protest?tmpl=component&print=1
On January 26, French President Francois Hollande was the chief guest for
India's Republic Day ceremony, where India showcases its military hardware
in a colonial-era parade in its capital. Meanwhile, in Jaitapur on India's
western coast, farmers and fisherfolk were protesting against Hollande's
visit, arguing that the nuclear reactors that India is importing from France
threaten their lives, livelihoods and the local ecology.
The Joint Declaration: Localizing Risk, Siphoning Off Profit
In a joint declaration issued on January 25 in New Delhi, the two
governments reaffirmed their commitment to go ahead with a long-pending
nuclear deal. As per the declaration, the intense negotiations to finalize
the commercial agreement are expected to conclude by the end of this year,
and the construction of six European pressurized reactors (EPR) imported
from France is to begin by early 2017.
The new twist in the declaration is the "maximum localization" of the
project and "technology transfer" for the same. Although the government of
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have proudly included these new
terms and added a "Made in India" tag on the Jaitapur project, it actually
means that the French industry would be transferring the burden of its most
controversial reactor design at a time of its worst crisis.
The safety vulnerabilities of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) - the huge
iron core where radioactive fission takes place - came under serious
questions, raised by France's own nuclear safety regulator Autorite de
S*rete Nucleaire (ASN) in April 2015. Later in 2015, Areva, the French
reactor builder, had to ask the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend
certification review for EPR design. The United States has been postponing
certification for EPR since 2007. The Finnish regulator has taken Areva to
court on this issue, and Finland has canceled the order for its second EPR.
Just two days after the publication of ASN's report, Modi reaffirmed the EPR
deal from France during his visit to Paris in April 2015. It is exactly this
controversial component - the RPV - that an Indian private company L&T will
now be building, with no experience in the nuclear sector at all.
Insurmountable Risks of the Jaitapur Nuclear Project
The current phase of negotiations on Jaitapur is about the price of
reactors, which remains a major sticking point. Although the former chief of
India's Atomic Energy Commission promised a tariff of a maximum of 10 US
cents per unit for the electricity produced in Jaitapur, independent experts
have claimed it will be much higher (20 to 30 cents per unit). This means
the government of India would use taxpayers' money to keep the price
competitive. If we go by the cost of EPRs in the United Kingdom, each Indian
reactor may cost as much as $8.9 billion. Two reactors in Jaitapur's first
phase will cost as much as India's total expenditure on science and
technology (including the departments of space, science and technology,
biotechnology, and research for the entire country). A diplomatic cable
revealed by WikiLeaks quoted the general manager of the Nuclear Power
Corporation (NPCIL), saying that India is paying a "high" price for
Jaitapur.
However, the concerns of the local community in Jaitapur go beyond the cost
of the project. Jaitapur is located in the stunningly beautiful Konkan
region, replete with verdant plateaus, magical mountains and undulating
hills, lagoons, creeks, the open sea and infinite greenery. The NPCIL has
labeled nearly 65 percent of the land as "barren," despite the fact that
Konkan is one of the world's 10 "biodiversity hotspots," sheltering over
5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 of mammals, 508 of birds and 179 of
amphibians, including 325 globally threatened species.
Altogether, the nuclear park would jeopardize the livelihoods of 40,000
people. The annual turnover of Jaitapur's fishing villages is about $2.2
million. In Nate Village alone, there are 200 big trawlers and 250 small
boats. Nearly 6,000 people depend directly on fishing and over 10,000 are
dependent on ancillary activities.
The community is apprehensive that the elaborate security arrangements
around the project would block the fisherfolks' use of the two creeks of
Jaitapur and Vijaydurg. The fish population will also be affected since the
nuclear plant would release a massive 52 billion liters of hot water into
the Arabian Sea daily, raising the local sea temperature by 5 to 7 degrees
Celsius.
Jaitapur has highly fertile land, which produces rice and other cereals, and
arguably the world's most famous mango, the Alphonso. Cashews, coconuts,
kokum, betel nuts, pineapples and other fruits are found in abundance. The
land is also quite productive in terms of its use for cattle-grazing and
rain-fed agriculture.
The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for Jaitapur, conducted by the
government-run National Environmental Engineering Research Institute
(NEERI), did not even look into the crucial aspects of radiological
releases, decommissioning and nuclear waste, besides summarily neglecting
the vital issues of ecosystems and livelihoods, terrestrial ecosystems and
farming, mangrove forests and the fragile marine ecology and fisheries in
the region. NEERI admits it does not have any expertise in radiation-related
issues and it just mentioned in its report that all the stipulations of the
government's nuclear regulator would be followed. The then-minister for
environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, had himself termed these EIA
assessments a joke. Even that environmental clearance, granted on 35
absurdly weak conditions, was given only for a period of five years, which
lapsed as of November 2015. Citizens groups and independent experts have
demanded a fresh EIA in place of an extension.
India's nuclear regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), is
itself a toothless body, which depends on the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
for its finances and human resources, an agency, which it is supposed to
supervise. India's newly proposed nuclear regulator - the Nuclear Safety
Regulatory Authority - would be an even weaker body than the AERB, according
to the former head of AERB, Dr. A K Gopalakrishnan. In fact, India is the
only country to further dilute its already lax safety regulation under the
AERB to accommodate foreign-imported reactors, as Areva's EPR might not even
pass the licensing procedures of the existing AERB.
Safety concerns at Jaitapur are legitimate and extremely serious. The EPR
design has come under severe criticism from the French nuclear regulator,
ASN. In April 2015, the ASN warned Areva about some very crucial
vulnerabilities in its design. It has found the reactor pressure vessel (or
the core of the reactor) to be vulnerable. Yet two days after the
publication of ASN's report, Prime Minister Modi reaffirmed the commitment
to buy the EPRs during his visit to Paris.
Independent experts and the government's own institutions have also
cautioned about active seismic fault lines in the region passing exactly
beneath the proposed reactor site. There have been 92 earthquakes in
Jaitapur over the past 20 years.
The Indian government has managed to acquire land for the project by
pressuring farmers and luring a handful of landlords. Despite land
acquisition, the farmers in Jaitapur continue to resist. Most villagers
either work on others' land or provide rural services to the agrarian
community and do not get any compensation when villages are dislocated for
"development" projects. Tabrez Soyekar, a young fisherman, was killed in an
indiscriminate police shooting in April 2011, during a peaceful protest.
Hundreds of activists and eminent citizens, including the former Navy chief
of India and retired justice of the Supreme Court of India, were detained
during a protest march.
Thirteen village councils in Jaitapur passed unanimous resolutions against
the project as recently as November 2015. It is utterly hypocritical for
both countries to laud each other's democratic credentials for international
diplomacy if the democratically elected village councils are neglected
violently.
A Violent Nuclear Expansion in India
India is one of the few countries today that appears to have missed the
global post-Fukushima shift away from nuclear power. Even France itself, the
poster child of the nuclear energy lobbies, has decided to reduce the ratio
of nuclear power in its national energy basket from 75 percent to 50
percent. Independent energy experts in India, including a former top
official in the Ministry of Power, have argued for a decentralized energy
framework that would suit India better, as the majority of its population
still lives in villages scattered across the country and transmission losses
in centralized Indian grids are staggering.
The 2015 World Nuclear Industry Status Report concludes that, after the
Fukushima accident, the international nuclear industry has faced its worst
crisis globally. The industry is looking at India as a big market where they
can compensate for their losses and revive their fortunes. India has become
an attractive market for global nuclear corporations, where the government
is mortgaging its financial and environmental health to welcome them. This
includes channeling the accident liability to the public; undermining
environmental, geological and safety laws; and ignoring the measured advice
of independent experts.
Besides Jaitapur, massive and intense anti-nuclear protests have arisen in
Koodankulam, Mithi Virdi and Kovvada, where Russian and US corporations are
setting up nuclear power plants. Local communities in other places like
Chutka, Fatehabad and Mahi Banswara have also been agitating against the
nuclear projects. The government has resorted to brutal crackdowns and
repression against these consistently peaceful protests. More than 8,000
people in Koodankulam are facing fabricated police cases under colonial-era
sedition laws and charges of waging war against the Indian state. The police
have killed, arrested and harassed villagers indiscriminately, including
women and children. They surrounded the Idinthakarai village in 2012 and
disrupted its vital supply lines that deliver goods, including food and milk
for children and medicines, to force the village to surrender. One of the
first steps that the new government under Modi took in 2015 was to come up
with a "confidential" report by the Intelligence Bureau, naming Greenpeace,
the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, and other anti-nuclear and
environmentalist organizations "anti-national."
India's Nuclear Imports Are More Than Just Reactor Supply Agreements
The anachronistic nuclear expansion in India, defying economic common sense
and the global shift away from nuclear energy, actually stems from the
strategy that the country's elite have adopted to achieve international
legitimacy for India's nuclear weapons.
In exchange for India's inclusion in the global nuclear weapons club, the
Indian government promised 10,000 megawatts of nuclear contracts to the
United States ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in
September 2008. It made similar promises to France, Canada, the United
Kingdom and other countries for an exemption from the NSG rule disallowing
countries that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). India had been facing an international embargo since 1974 for using
imported technology and material for its nuclear tests.
France was the first country to sign a nuclear pact with India after the
NSG's exemption. It had been exploring nuclear sales to India for a long
time. A feasibility study in Jaitapur for Areva was conducted as early as
2003. France was among the very few countries in the world that did not
criticize India's nuclear tests in 1998. But it needed the United States to
do the heavy lifting in the NSG and the International Atomic Energy Agency
to open the gates of international nuclear commerce for India.
Escalating Nuclear Arms Race in South Asia
The so-called "nuclear civilian deal" sets the wrong precedent for potential
proliferators by diplomatically embracing India in the international nuclear
order, despite being a non-signatory to the NPT and Comprehensive Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty. It will also boost India's nuclear weapons capacity by
freeing up its domestic uranium reserves entirely for weapons purposes.
Nuclear weaponization in South Asia has defied the expectations of nuclear
deterrence theorists that the introduction of nuclear weapons in the region
would bring restraint. Soon after the nuclear tests in 1998, South Asia saw
a fierce border conflict in Kargil in 2002. Declassified documents and
WikiLeaks cables have revealed that Pakistan and India actually came close
to contemplating nuclear use during that war. The Indian nuclear arsenal has
also been growing with the introduction of nuclear submarines and long-range
missiles. India has consistently been one of the top five arms importers of
the world for the last several years.
The evolving political situation in South Asia also makes peace in the
region much more fragile. India is now ruled by an ultra-nationalist
political formation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP's Narendra Modi,
India's prime minister, contested the last elections under the slogan of
teaching Pakistan a lesson and revising the two cornerstones of the Indian
nuclear posture - the "no first use" policy and the minimum credible
deterrence doctrine.
Modi Government's Nuclear U-Turns and Misadventures
For its entire 10-year stint in the opposition, the BJP opposed the United
Progressive Alliance's nuclear policy, but nuclear deals have become matters
of pride for Modi's foreign sojourns. It has gone further than the previous
government in placating the nuclear lobbies.
On Republic Day in 2015, to please the chief guest, US President Barack
Obama, the Modi government effectively surrendered the option to sue nuclear
vendors in case of an accident. Now, in 2016, with France's help, Modi's
government seems bent on finalizing an extremely dangerous and destructive
nuclear project.
Kumar Sundaram is senior researcher with the Coalition for Nuclear
Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), India, and can be contacted at
pksundaram@xxxxxxxxx.
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