[jivika] A disaster project for Tamil Nadu and Kerala

On October 6th 2006, the authorities of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant planned to hold a secretive public hearing at the Tirunelveli Collectors office. They had published a small advertisement in the most obscure Economic Times newspaper, which is not read by anyone there. The Koodankulam authorities planned this so that they could manipulate the outcome of the public hearing as they wished. It was not to be as some 700 to 800 people had turned up for the public hearing and the group included many rural women who were not reluctant to speak their minds. In fact, they were so sincere to the cause, articulate and hence very forceful.   Some sections of the crowd started shouting slogans, asking the Koodankulam authorities not to kill the Nature, not to kill the people and to terminate the whole nuclear power project at Koodankulam. It was so noisy and confusing that nobody could speak anything or hear anybody. Several members of the public approached the district collector and expressed their concerns both individually and collectively. Some members of the public also asked for a Tamil translation of the Environmental Impact Assessment report and public hearing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala. Several members of the public raised objections to taking the Pechiparai dam water (which is in Kanyakumari district) to the Koodankulam plants. The EIA clearly mentions that the dam water would be taken to the plant through embedded pipes. When some members of the public brought this to the collectors attention, the nuclear authorities claimed that they were not going to take the dam water but would use desalination plants instead. When the unambiguous dam water plan in the EIA was pointed out, the nuclear authorities claimed that the EIA was outdated. Then the question was how they could conduct a public hearing with an outdated EIA.   So this shows that the EIA is outdated and also the authorities are trying to somehow push for the project in a hurry.   The Koodankulam Project will have a devastating effect on Kerala coast and on the Tamil Nadu Coast. The commissioning of this project will be the end of Gods Own Country. People living in Kerala right from the Tamil Nadu border till Kochi will all be affected by radiation, since the Koodankulam project is a mega project. The fish catch will go; only dead fish will be there for the fishing community to catch that will be the end of the fishing community. People living on the coasts will be prone to various kinds of cancers, and the tourism will also come to an end since the westerly winds will bring with it all the radioactive waste to the coasts of Kerala. And no foreign or Indian tourist will like to risk in a radioactive zone. In total it will be the death knell for Kerala. The Kerala government cannot allow commissioning such a dangerous project. They must immediately demand cancellation of this nuclear power plant for the sake of millions of keralities living on the coast.   The People are demanding that the DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) and the Government of India respect the Right to Life and Livelihood of our farmers, fisherfolks and others of southern Tamil Nadu and Kerala and cancel the Koodankulam project forthwith. The focus should be on renewable sources of energy such as solar power and wind power, and regain the status of our country as a world leader in sustainable development and appropriate technology. As we all know a Nuclear Reactor is a Radioactive waste-making machine. A typical 1000 Mega Watt Nuclear reactor creates about 250 pounds of spent fuel that is the nuclear waste. A small amount of electricity is also produced. However looking at the economics, that is the cost of mining the radioactive ore, the cost of production of the nuclear fuel (milling, enrichment, and fuel fabrication), the cost of construction of the power plants, the cost of cancers, leukemias, and birth defects caused by numerous radiation releases during power plant operation and during each phase of the nuclear fuel cycle, the cost of storing and/or reprocessing the used reactor cores, the cost of transporting them between each stage, the cost of cleaning up and "decommissioning" the reactor, and the cost of catastrophic failure if the reactor cores are dispersed into the environment. One has to bear a heavy cost. Do we need such power plants??? No, not at all.   The people of southern Tamil Nadu and Kerala would like to bring your kind attention to the great dangers the Koodankulam nuclear power plant will pose to our health, safety, our childrens well-being, to our natural resources, and to our overall environment. The people of Kerala along with  brothers and sisters in Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi districts of Tamil Nadu, have been demanding the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Government of India to respect our Right to Information and to release the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the Site Evaluation Study, and the Safety Analysis Report that are claimed to have been done for the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project back in 1988. Even though these studies are now outdated and many changes have been brought about in the project, we have the right to know what the government and the Indian nuclear establishment really argue. Even more worrying is the fact that the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has been sidestepped by the DAE in getting proper permission for setting up the Koodankulam project. And the mandatory Public Hearing has not been conducted to this day. The Public hearing has to be conducted not only in Tamil Nadu but also in Kerala. The first attempt to conduct a fraud public hearing at Tirunelveli was stopped by the people. They have been demanding further that the DAE and the Government of India respect the Right to Life and Livelihood of the farmers, fisherfolk and others of southern Tamil Nadu and Kerala and cancel the Koodankulam project that will jeopardize the soil, water and air of southern India and the health and well-being of the people there who already have a high incidence of cancer and other natural radiation-related illnesses. The discharge of hot water with radioactive pollutants into the sea will increase the temperature of the seawater and damage the health of the fish and the people who eat that fish. Our fishermen will lose their livelihood and sink further into poverty and misery. And the already malnourished farming families will stand to suffer even more. Moreover, the southern tip is also seismically vulnerable and has had quite a few small tremors. There have also been minor volcanic eruptions in Tirunelveli district. Cyclones, huge monsoon thunderstorms, unrelenting sea erosion, and increasing global warming can also prove to be potential dangers. Now even there are threats of tsunami. Inadvertent human-errors and deliberate human-made disasters pose additional threats. Terrorism has become an unfortunate part of our daily reality with the proliferation of extremist outfits and violent communal groups around the country. The so-called war on terrorism alienates people even more and drives them to desperate acts. In case of an accident or an attack on the Koodankulam nuclear reactors and the inevitable nuclear radiation, people who live directly south of Koodankulam will be literally trapped inside a big nuclear contamination cage. Caught between the rough and deep sea and the source of deadly contamination, the people of Kanyakumari would be convoluting inside their death cell. Fleeing westward into Kerala would not help us much because there is no natural barrier that could guarantee against the spread of nuclear contamination. In fact, the Western Ghats mountain range recedes considerably towards its southern end with few lofty summits or groups of high hills. Geographers and meteorologists agree that the West Coast of the peninsula has the dampest and most uniform climate throughout the year. It is open to the westerly winds from the ocean, and is shielded from the desiccating winds of the Deccan plateau by the Western Ghats. The recent Supreme Court judgment that information relating to nuclear installations in India could not be made public in the national interest is very disconcerting to us. This only shows that the authorities are in reality not willing to distinguish between the so-called peaceful use of nuclear energy and military purposes. This outrageous Supreme Court decision reinforces the anti-people and anti-democratic tendencies of the DAE. In its typical authoritarian manner, the DAE keeps on increasing the number of reactors at Koodankulam from two to six and now to eight.  They are also planning a reprocessing plant there. Keeping the civil and political societies in the dark, the DAE is acting with no transparency and accountability whatsoever. They even threaten their opponents with the Atomic Energy Act of 1962. All this is done under the cover of the Official Secrecy Act. The Koodankulam nuclear power plant coupled with the sand mining operations of the Indian Rare Earths Limited and other private parties on our shores is threatening our fisherfolk's lives and livelihood. Our agricultural land, our water resources, our air, and our food chain are all going to be contaminated by the additional burden of radiation that will emerge from the Koodankulam nuclear power plants.   The Indian government has sought to site not one but two monster Russian nuclear reactors of the VVER1000/392 type, a very short distance away in the village of Koodankulam. The villagers in Koodankulam are poor fishermen; many of them have either been convinced that they may obtain jobs in the new reactor project, or have been intimidated into silence. However, opposition to the project is now growing. There are grave and serious unresolved technical and safety questions in the Russian VVER-1000/392 reactor design chosen for the Koodankulam project. (discussed below). If these important technical and safety questions are to be resolved satisfactorily, it would cost an additional US $ 1-2 billion, in addition to the present cost of US$4billion, (16,000 crores of rupees approximately). It is an undesirable drain of India's hard - earned revenue. It is sure to affect India's overall development in the next millennium. Moreover, the decommissioning cost will be not less than US $5 billion, an avoidable burden on the future generations. It is essential that the Detailed Project Report now in preparation, deal with these problems, and that it be released in full for public comment. Accidents in nuclear power plants can never be ruled out. Unlike accidents in other engineering fields, accidents in nuclear power plants would always be devastating as was the case with the Chernobyl accident in the former USSR. The Chernobyl accident affected badly farm life and forests in Sweden over 2000 Km from Chernobyl. An accident in Koodankulam plant would affect not only the Tamilnadu and Kerala States but also the entire Indian sub-continent and even neighbouring Sri Lanka.          The VVER-1000/392 design will be the first of its type any where in the world. It is nothing but propaganda to say that VVER-1000/392 design is a safe and proven design. The control system for this design intended for India is being developed by Siemens Germany as a new assignment and Koodankulam will be the testing ground for it. Problems with control systems and I&C in European VVER plants have been compounded and made worse by attempts to          The specific technical and safety problems of the VVER1000/320 series, are briefly outlined in the next paragraphs. It is clear that DAE and the NPC and AERB have not considered these problems and it is essential that they do so. The Detailed Project report is an appropriate forum in which to discuss these matters in detail, so that they may be the subject for a process of public comment.          The NPC has reassured us repeatedly that the design of plant chosen is 'completely safe'. According to Mr. S. K. Jain, chief engineer of the Koodankulam project, the Russian reactors are 'extremely safe' and have 'many significant safety enhancement features'. It may be true that the VVER-1000/392 reactor design that has been chosen has some advantages over some western- style reactors, and it is true that the VVER type reactor is not the same as the Chernobyl-type RBMK design. But the fact is that all reactor designs without exception are inherently risky. There is no reactor design and no reactor type that presents acceptable levels of risk for the society as a whole, and the consequences of any accident will last for hundreds of thousands of years. It is also the case that the VVER-1000 reactor design has quite specific safety problems which Mr. Jain's reassurances do nothing to clear up. The specific variant of the VVER 1000 design that has been chosen, the VVER1000/392 design, will be the first of its type anywhere in the world, and will therefore be a prototype. This means that India will be building two of a completely untried reactor design. The concerns over the collapse of Russian construction infrastructure outlined above, and the delays and cost overruns in other VVER projects are not even acknowledged by DAE. It is essential that these be taken into account. The VVER-1000/392 reactor design is based on the VVER-1000/320 reactor design, which has many operating reactors in Russia and Eastern Europe. A variety of problems have arisen with attempts to complete and 'upgrade' these reactors to so-called 'western' nuclear safety standards. While the commitment by the NPC to the latest international design standards is laudable, NPC makes no reference to the problems with the VVER1000/320 model which have been indicated in IAEA documentation, especially with reference to the R4K2 plants. It is not at all clear if adequate design changes have ben made in the VVER1000/392 design, to deal with these problems. These problems are set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency in a publication known as the 'Issues Book'. According to the Issues Book, these problems are the following: The possibility that the steel reactor pressure vessel may become brittle, due to the effect of neutron bombardment of the steel. This would make it possible for the vessel to crack open violently during an emergency. This would probably (according to safety analyses by the US- DOE) propel the head of the pressure vessel out through the containment roof, causing a major radio ecological catastrophe. The government, when the detailed project report is done, needs to ask very detailed and searching questions about steel composition, neutron flux, and RPV integrity. Concerns over RPV integrity and embrittlement have surfaced in hearings on US plant safety in the 1970s, and again in hearings on plant life extension in the 1990s. Concerns over RPV integrity in the VVER1000 plant design due to a high concentration of nickel in the welds opposite the core region have been outlined in the IAEA Issues Book [IAEA-EBP-VVER-05 March 1996p17] The possibility that control rods may fail to insert properly during an emergency. This has already occurred at a number of VVER-1000 plants in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as in French PWR plants. In many plants in France, costly replacement of the entire control rod mechanism has had to take place. Failure of the control rods to insert during an emergency is a serious failure, akin to having no brakes on a car. According to the IAEA, Rovno-3 has experienced control rod drop problems repeatedly. Problems have also been experienced in 1992 at the Zaphorozhye-1 plant. The possibility that small tubes in the plants steam-generators may fail, leading to uncontrollable leakage of very highly pressurized and radioactive primary coolant into the low-pressure secondary system. This can lead to a loss of coolant accident with subsequent core meltdown if it is large, as well as causing damage to other parts of the plant. This has been a concern with respect to the VVER1000 design since the early 1990s. Steam- generator problems, according to 1992 IAEA workshop, account for 21% of all VVER1000 outages. In 1982, half the bolts of the closure head of the steam-generator header at Rovno-1 actually sheared off. Problems with instrumentation and control systems and with properly integrating Western (presumably Siemens) control systems and Russian components, which have proven very difficult at the Temelin plant in Czech Republic, accounting for much of the large cost overrun. * Problems with the detailed plant layout that have resulted in there being a particular spot in the plant where main steam-lines cross with important emergency systems. A main steam-line break such as might be caused by a big primary to secondary leak, can here result in the main steam line rupturing, and in turn destroying other essential safety systems. It is essential that when the DPR for Koodankulam is done that this issue of design is tackled. We have outlined a series of specific issues that pertain to VVER-1000 safety. It does not follow from this that only VVER-1000 reactors or even only Russian reactors have these kinds of safety problems. These are in many cases problems that have been recognised for many years in Western (US, French and German) reactor designs also. It is simply the case that safety issues of one sort or another are inherent in ALL nuclear technology, and all reactor designs. We would oppose any specific plant design at Koodankulam. No plant type, and no plant design, is the right design, since all nuclear technology without exception is inherently unsafe. VVER1000 projects in Eastern Europe suffer from unreasonable escalating cost estimates and hence have become the subject of strongest controversy and opposition. The Temelin nuclear plant in the Czech Republic is currently three years late in start-up, and the cost escalation is expected to be over US$1billion (4,000 crores of rupees). According to recent Czech government reports, it will be at least another 2 years delayed and another US$1.2billion in cost overrun. It is quite possible that the Temelin VVER project will collapse. Opposition both at domestic and international level to the R4K2 project in the Ukraine has also been growing. The collapse in the Russian nuclear construction infrastructure is even more a cause for concern. Most of the best Russian engineers have left the country, and construction programs for nuclear reactors within Russia have all come to a grinding halt. It appears that the Department of Atomic Energy of India has not made a full and correct assessment of these serious developments and for reasons not known the Government of India is not being given a full and complete picture of these serious developments which are bound to reflect in the installation and commissioning of 4000 MW Koodankulam project. The temperature rise of the sea at Koodankulam is bound to affect fishing and the discharge of radioactive pollutants into the sea is bound to damage the health and the environment of the people there. The experience already gathered shows that while the Madras Atomic Power Plant at Kalpakam near Madras runs and discharges to sea at its present rated capacity of 350 MW, the sea water temperature rises from 85 to 140 degrees F. As a result, the fishermen at Kalpakam are able to catch only dead fish. More over, the radiation levels mounted from the nuclear waste discharge has already damaged the health of the people and the environment at Kalpakam sea coast. If 350 MW could inflict such a damage at Kalpakam, what would be fate of the fishermen and their environment at Koodankulam when 4000 MW nuclear plant (discharging roughly 6-7,000MwTh into the sea) goes into operation? Will it not turn the Tamilnadu coast into killing fields? The problem of safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel coming out of nuclear power plants, could not be resolved even by the developed countries. Public opposition to the construction of nuclear power plants led to abandoning the plans to construct new nuclear power plants in USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Sweden, Russia and other countries and it will be unwise for India not to learn from the experience in these countries which are already paying a heavy price for cultivating nuclear power to meet their energy requirements.   The additional fuel processing needed for feeding the Koodankulam nuclear plant would further pollute the already polluted under-ground water belt in Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh. The fuel needed for all the India's nuclear power plants is processed by the Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) at Hyderabad a land locked city. The present installed capacity of the ten nuclear rectors in India is 1845 MW. While processing the fuel for the existing 1845 MW capacity, the NFC is discharging daily 50,000 tons of nuclear waste water and much of this radioactive discharge has already polluted the under ground water belt upto 10 kilometres radius around the NFC. The Department of Atomic Energy itself has warned the people of Ashok Nagar village near NFC not to drink well water. If the present 1845 MW fuel processing has already polluted the underground water belt at Hyderabad, what will be the situation at Hyderabad if an additional 2000 MW fuel for Koodankulam is to be processed ? Will it not make Hyderabad a burial ground? By avoiding the costly Koodankulam project, India could also find funds for developing alternate sources of energy such as solar, wind and tidal power. Therefore, a relevant question is whether any nuclear reactor development of this kind is in the interests of the Indian people? We believe that the interests of the Indian people will be put to total jeopardy by the Koodankulam project and a public review of the entire project is urgently needed. The failure of the NPC, DAE and AERB to consider or even to acknowledge the safety problems of VVERs in Eastern Europe is a matter that is in urgent need of correction. These matters must be dealt with in detail in the project report, which must be made available for public comment in full. from: Ullash Kumar <rkullash_ooty@yahoo.com> reply to:jivika@yahoogroups.com