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How Safe Are Our N-reactors?

An Indian Chernobyl? AERB cites 130 reasons why it's possible.

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How Safe Are Our N-reactors?
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HOW safe are our nuclear plants? When Dr A. Gopalakrishnan, outgoing chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), posed the question last fortnight, the response was general alarm. "Many of our nuclear installations have aged with time and have serious problems. Our efforts to find indigenous solutions, despite our capabilities, are not well-organised or focussed," he said, while remitting office on June 16, and accused the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) of having "uniquely failed in bringing together these strengths and coordinating them for the benefit of the nuclear sector".

According to the ex-chairman, the current safety status of the nuclear installations under the DAE "is a matter of great concern", a concern which increased after the AERB "studied and documented more than 130 safety issues in these installations which warrant urgent corrective action". The AERB report, based on 700 internal references, was submitted in November 1995. The nine-month exercise, conducted over 10,000 hours, suggested the need for improvement in the old reactors, emergency core cooling systems and containment systems. "Urgent corrective action" was recommended in some issues, especially at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPC), Uranium Corporation of India Limited, Indian Rare Earths Limited, Nuclear Fuel Complex, and the Heavy Water Board.

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Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Dr R. Chidambaram reacted instantly: "We've a very high standard of safety. There have been comprehensive responses from the NPC and the BARC." Ninety-five of the issues raised in the AERB report relate to NPC. "Such issues have been handled in the past. It is an ongoing process in reactor safety. We follow AERB regulations. In case of serious problems, reactors are shut down. Cases regarding upgradation of safety are discussed and taken up along the way," says Y.S.R. Prasad, managing director, NPC. Referring to the AERB report, he says 55 issues have been taken care of already, another 30 are in progress, while 10 are related to feedback on reactors under construction.

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Gopalakrishnan, however, compares the situation to a 65-year-old man who looks healthy but suffers occasional chest pain. Says he: "The pain may go away in five minutes, but one day it will take him, if unchecked...all I have done is some serious stock-taking and evaluation and now it is for them to do the house-keeping."

After the Three Mile Island disaster in America in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, there was introspection in the Indian establishment. Task forces were appointed to look at safety, but many of the issues raised then still persist according to sources in the establishment who, however, ascribe present revelations to "personal differences".

Indian nuclear power plants continue to be the least efficient in the world and the most dangerous in terms of safety, according to the US-based Safe Energy Communication Council. "Despite its strong scientific infrastructure, technical delays and cost overruns have stalled the Indian nuclear programme... By the early '90s the government cut its goal of 10,000 MW of nuclear power by the year 2000 to 6,050 MW. Yet by the end of '95, the rated capacity of the country's 10 reactors totalled only 1,695 MW, contributing less than one per cent of India's commercial energy."

Defending his stance, G.R. Srinivasan, director for health, safety and environment, NPC, says: "Even if a highly unlikely accident takes place, our nuclear power plants are so designed that the public domain would suffer no harmful exposure." But American newsreports continue to nail India for having some of the world's most "accident-prone and inefficient nuclear facilities", four decades after it launched its nuclear reactor programme.

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Gopalakrishnan blames the lack of safety and accumulation of serious issues over the years on "an accommodating and captive regulatory agency which has made compromises all along". He has also called for the enactment of an Atomic Energy (Safety & Regulation) Act, under which the AERB is clearly restructured as an autonomous statutory body. "...the AERB is officially and distinctly a subordinate organisation of the DAE. It is tantamount to making the regulator subservient to those he is supposed to regulate and control independently, a situation which makes a mockery of the spirit of regulation."

At a conference held in June 1994 by the International Atomic Energy Agency to finalise the Convention on Nuclear Safety, India became one of the first nations to accept the Convention after Chidambaram signed it in September 1994.

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According to Article 8 of the Convention dealing with regulatory bodies:

  •  Each contracting party shall establish or designate a regulatory body entrusted and provided with adequate authority, competence, financial and human resources to fulfill its assigned responsibilities.
  •  Each contracting party shall take appropriate steps to ensure an effective separation between functions of the regulatory body and those of any other organisation concerned with the promotion or utilisation of nuclear energy.

    Yet India remains the only country among nuclear and threshold nations where the regulatory authority is subordinate to the bodies it's supposed to regulate. "The AERB is like a slave expected to judge his master. We are challenging this," says B.K. Subbarao, a Ph. D in nuclear technology. He is shortly filing a writ petition on behalf of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) on the larger issue of nuclear safety. "The right to life and the right to know should be sufficient grounds to make public the AERB report documenting over 130 issues in our nuclear establishment," he says. "

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    From what we read, matters are pending for 17 years. If they are serious, they should refute each of the 130 cases. We cannot accept sweeping statements, general denials and vague assurances that all is well in our installations," says Yogesh Kamdar, vice president, PUCL.

    The Official Secrets Act cannot be invoked to cover mismanagement of technology which is an imminent danger to all forms of life, he says. A report earlier this year alleged that storage tanks holding radioactive waste from Cirus and Dhruva, BARC's research reactors in Trombay, and its plutonium reprocessing plant had developed leaks. One such tank had been emptied under AERB's orders two years back, and welded joints in two others have begun to give way. According to the report, the nine storage tanks contain two lakh litres of liquid radioactive waste collected over many years. It also predicts a catastrophe worse than Chernobyl in case of a major leak.

    When last heard, BARC tried to clarify some of the issues mentioned in the AERB report in a statement issued on June 21: "The radioactive liquid waste storage facility employs the principle of multiple barriers. The tanks, required to have a very high standard of integrity, are housed inside secondary containers known as vaults. The inner surface is lined with stainless steel. There's no question of storing radioactive waste in a tank with 'defective welds'." It also said that a safety analysis of the installations at BARC, including Cirus and Dhruva, have already been carried out and that there is "no situation for an emergency in the public domain".

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