ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Mega Nuclear Plant Hits Popular Opposition

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Praful Bidwai

KOODANKULAM, Tamil Nadu, Jun 11 2007 (IPS) - Even as the Indian government gropes in the dark for a coherent policy on energy and the environment, it is rooting hard for a highly unpopular nuclear power project here, close to the peninsula’s southern tip.

The project, which involves building six Russian-designed reactors of 1,000 Mw capacity each, will be India’s biggest nuclear power station.

It faces staunch opposition from the local people, many of them fishermen, who fear it will destroy their livelihoods, gravely endanger their safety, and physically uproot thousands of families.

At stake is the fate of India’s grandiose plan to produce as much as 275,000 Mw of nuclear electricity (more than twice the existing total power generation capacity) by mid-century, and the issue of granting clearances to potentially hazardous projects which are opposed by the people they are liable to affect adversely.

Also involved is the defence of elementary human rights and principles of environmental protection.

The conflict over the Koodankulam project came to a head last week with a statutory public hearing on an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report on four proposed new light-water reactors.

The other two reactors, for which an agreement was signed way back in 1988 between president Mikhail Gorbachev of the former USSR and then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, have been under construction since 2002.

The hearing, mandated by India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), is an essential component of the process of approving all major projects with large ecological impacts.

Its rationale is to secure the informed consent of the people after widely disseminating all relevant information about a project and allowing “every person” present to express his/her views about it.

On Jun. 2, more than 2,000 people from three coastal districts of Tamil Nadu turned up at the hearing and demanded to speak – despite an intimidating police presence .

Many protested violations of the MoEF-specified norms, in particular, the absence of 30 days’ notice, and wide publicity for the EIA summary translated into the local language (Tamil).

The authorities abruptly terminated the hearing within two hours, without recording “all the views and concerns expressed”, and reading “them over to the audience”, while explaining “the contents in the vernacular language”, as they are required to do.

“This termination was not provoked by violence or rowdy behaviour of the opponents,” says S.P. Udayakumar, a social scientist and peace studies scholar, based in the adjoining Kanyakumari district. “It seemed like a calculated move to deny the people an opportunity to express their views. This has greatly angered the public, which is already unhappy with the construction of the first two of the six reactors, which began five years ago.”

The two reactors were granted approval without an EIA or public hearing. Their construction involves mandatory land acquisition, restrictions on fishing, and grave apprehensions about environmental damage.

The local people, highly literate and aware of the dangers of nuclear radiation, are determined to oppose the project.

They believe the project sponsors are hiding the truth about its hazards, including radiation, future accumulation of large quantities of spent fuel, routine releases of toxic isotopes, and the potential for a catastrophic accident leading to a core meltdown.

“The people can hardly be sanguine because they know that the Koodankulam reactors are of Russian design, as was the Chernobyl reactor, albeit a different model”, says Udayakumar.

Neither the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC), a subsidiary of India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), nor the EIA, even acknowledges any hazards.

“This opacity has added to public fears about the project”, says Anton Gomez, of the Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry Fisherpeople’s Federation, based in the port city of Tuticorin.

The fate of the proposed four reactors at Koodankulam crucially hinges on the United States-India nuclear deal, which is under negotiation, and its approval by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.

If the deal does not go through, or if the NSG does not clear it by amending its rules, the four reactors cannot be built. (The earlier two reactors faced no such hurdle because NSG rules were not in force then.)

However, uncertainty about the four new units has not dampened the enthusiasm of NPC and the civil administration in demanding that they be approved at once.

“This has further exacerbated tensions between these authorities and the people”, says Manju Menon of the environmental group, Kalpvriksh. “Some of these tensions derive from the project’s location-specific problems.”

First, the Koodankulam plant is being built at the edge of the Gulf of Mannar, one of the world’s richest marine biodiversity areas, with 3,600 species of flora and fauna. Thermal discharges from the plant are liable to adversely affect this precious biological reserve.

Second, three large settlements lie within a five km radius of the plant: Koodankulam (pop. 20,000), Idinthakarai (pop. 12,000), and a new Tsunami (rehabilitation) Colony (pop. 2,000-plus). Its location violates the Department of Atomic Energy’s siting norms and a state government order of 1988, which declares a 1.6-km radius around the plant “prohibited”.

The next zone, in a five km radius, is a “sterilised area”, where “the density of population should be small.” Finally, “in the outlying area of 16 km, the population should not exceed 10,000.”

Koodankulam and Idinthakarai are just 2 – 4 km from the plant as the crow flies. The last row of house built for tsunami victims is less than one km away. More than 70,000 people live within a 16 km radius.

So either NPC will flagrantly violate its own norms, or thousands of families will be brutally separated from their livelihood as fisherfolk. “This is altogether too disgusting even to contemplate”, adds Menon.

Third, the plant is being built in a seriously water-stressed area. It originally planned to bring fresh water from a dam 65 km away. But the idea was dropped owing to popular resistance. It will now daily desalinate 48 million litres of seawater – an exorbitantly expensive, unproved, technology. This will send the electricity costs through the roof.

Koodankulam is also fraught with problems generic to nuclear power, including generation of radioactive waste, routine releases of radioactivity, and the possibility of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl.

Thus, the plant will generate large amounts of highly radioactive spent fuel. It will routinely release radioisotopes like iodine-131 and noble gases. It will expose hundreds of occupational workers to high doses of radiation – a silent, invisible poison that causes cancers and genetic deformities.

The reactors are also vulnerable to catastrophic core meltdowns that will affect India’s southern states and even Sri Lanka.

India is making “a Faustian bargain”, says Menon. “It is endangering thousands of livelihoods while promoting an ultra-hazardous technology. Ultimately, there will be a contest between the people’s will and the government’s obsession with nuclear power. If democracy has any meaning, the people should prevail.”