Abstract
The Council for a Livable World, is a Bulletin contributing editor.
The scene: A small roadside restaurant in Kudunkulum, in southern India. It's a hot afternoon with the temperature touching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. An outsider, a man in his 40s, sits facing a group of locals, all sipping tea and discussing community problems like frequent power shutdowns and the lack of job opportunities. The conversation shifts to why there is no industry in the vicinity. One fellow asks why, with a five-hour power cut every day, would anyone open a factory here. Another says how good it would be if there were a power plant nearby.
Yes! says the man facing the group–and there is a nuclear power plant coming up. It will attract industry, bring jobs, and end power outages. Wiping sweat from his brow with a towel, he looks disgustedly at the motionless blades of the ceiling fan.
This man, from India's Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), has been sent to talk up the benefits of nuclear energy to people living near Kudunkulum, a site in the Tamil Nadu state in southern India where a $3 billion nuclear power plant, imported from Russia, will be built.
His name is Palaniswamy, and he is an employee of the AEC's Nuclear Safety Committee from the nearby Kalpakkam nuclear power plant–one of a group of employees assigned to develop a positive image of nuclear energy among the residents of Kudunkulum. When asked about possible dangers, Palaniswamy replies amid guffaws: “I have worked in a nuclear plant for 20 years. Do I look like I am suffering from a dangerous disease? You think if there was any danger from the plant, would I send my children to a school a stone's throw away?” The questioner's doubts are laid to rest.
The reasons for the AEC's public relations offensive–a job it has not done well in the past–are many. This is the first site India has chosen for a new nuclear plant in more than 10 years.
The last time a fresh site was identified there was a massive public outcry. Kaiga on India's western coast was the scene of sustained agitation by anti-nuclear activists who were fearful of nuclear energy as well as by those who were upset by the prospect of relocation. Construction, which began in 1989, is now partially complete. One of Kaiga's two reactors is scheduled to go critical by early 2000.
For three months after announcing that construction would start at the Kaiga site, the AEC faced a situation more volatile than handling fissile material. As a reporter for the Press Trust of India who covered the demonstrations over a three-month period, I saw a variety of protests, including hunger strikes and blockades. Fed up with agitation, the then-chief minister of Karnataka state ordered a public debate between environmentalists and AEC scientists to decide the future of the plant.
The debate was heated. The environmentalists had many reasons why the plant should not be built. They said the site was in an ecologically fragile zone very close to prime fishing grounds in the Arabian sea. Besides, they said, the area was heavily populated, and enforcing a one-mile exclusion zone around the plant, as required by Indian nuclear safety rules, would be difficult.
The AEC's counterarguments were not as forceful–it argued chiefly that the plant would generate power.
However, after more than a two-year delay, the AEC started work in a slow and laborious manner. By then the environmentalists had managed to extract guarantees about the relocation of residents and compensation for the loss of the fishing grounds. The AEC went ahead with its plant-building activities, but it was severely bruised by the incident.
This time, the AEC and the NPC (the Nuclear Power Corporation, an AEC subsidiary that manages India's nuclear power program) are not taking any chances. When I visited the commission's headquarters in Mumbai (Bombay), a top AEC scientist told me, “We only hope some environmentalist does not take up the Chernobyl issue.” In fact, the Kudunkulum plant will be of the VVER-type, very different from Chernobyl's more unforgiving rbmk design. India is importing critical components like the reactor core, sealing, and vver technology. Russian experts will work alongside the AEC to put up the plant.
As of now, an Indo-Russian team is in the process of putting together a detailed project report. “If all goes well, work on the plant should commence in 2001-2002,” the AEC scientist told me.
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Back at Kudunkulum, the PR exercise appears to have borne fruit. Since the beginning of 1999, workers from the AEC have conducted several visits to the area and become friendly with the local populace. The latter sense a golden commercial opportunity–land prices are already rising. The people I spoke to feel that the “electricity factory” will bring prosperity to their sleepy little town.
Thambiraja, a 20-something law student who is part of a loosely organized environmental group, said, “We have seen the nuclear power plant at Kalpakkam work. There is no danger from it to anybody. On the other hand, hundreds of locals there have got jobs and many more have opened small shops to cater to the plant employees. We are in favor of the nuclear plant.
“We had one point of disagreement, over the fate of a lake near the plant site, but this has been addressed by the atomic energy people. They have agreed to fence it off.”
Hadn't he heard of Chernobyl? “Yes,” said Thambi, “but that was an accident. The AEC experts who came here said the safety mechanism at this plant will be different from the Russian system.”
It is doubtful that the nuclear weapons tests India conducted in May 1998 were of any benefit to the country, but they have been a boon to the NPC. The tests renewed government interest in the nuclear power program, and fresh commitments were made in the 1999-2000 budget to fund Indian nuclear power plants. By mid-2000, four 220-megawatt plants will begin supplying power to the national grid–two at Kaiga and two at Kakrapur in Rajasthan state. In addition, work on two 500-megawatt units at Tarapur in Maharashtra, and two 1,000-megawatt plants at Kudunkulum is due to start in the next two years. Russia has agreed to loan India 85 percent of Kudunkulum's estimated $3 billion cost.
The AEC is pleased with the reactions of the people of Kudunkulum to its public relations exercise. Considering the positive reception for this new nuclear power plant, Kaiga seems like a bad, but distant, dream.