Daiichi Disaster And The Implications For India
By VT Padmanabhan
15 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Chernobyl nuclear explosion that occurred on 26 April 86 was probably
much smaller than the ongoing Daiichi disaster in Japan. The Chernobyl
crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans raining radionuclides all
its way. Around 10th May, radioactive iodine from Chernobyl was
detected by the Health Physics laboratories at Kalpakkam and
Koodamkulam.
Three reactors in melt down. Several others are critically ill. Nuclear
scientists will measure and estimate the quantity of materials leaked
to the environment in about a week. Climatologists and space
scientists will keep us informed about the movement of the plume over
the planet on a regular basis. After two months from now,
reproductive epidemiologists will start reporting the incidence of
abortion in contaminated places. Pediatricians will tell us the
stories of malformed children after about three hundred days. Infant
leukemia and thyroid cancers will start showing up in about two year.
Solid cancers will be visible after about five years. Heart diseases,
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and many many more diseases will also
increase. In short, the unthinkable has happened in the North East
Coast of Japan.
After the II World War, this is the first time the US Army has withdrawn.
Twenty five years ago, on 26th April 1986, a 1000 MW reactor in
Chernobyl spewed up 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 radioactive
particles in the air. Each one of those particles has the potential
to cause miseries in the form of debilitating diseases like cancer and
mental retardation. Millions of people have been moved out of highly
contaminated areas, almost all places on the planet received part of
the cloud. Places with high rainfall received higher doses. If these
particles were equally distributed on the planet, there would be a
trillion particles on each square meters of earth.
In about two or three weeks, a 1000 MW(e) reactor will start
operating at Koodankulam in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu on the
East Coast of India. A second reactor is nearing completion there;
when the campus matures, there will be eight reactor each fission
about 3 kg of 235uranium and producing 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
particles every day.
Scientific evidences against Koodamkulam and the Fast Breeder
Prototype reactor being erected at Kalpakam are available in the
public domain. They have been examined and rejected by the scientists
of Indian and Russian nuclear establishment. Japan’s quake proneness
was often quoted in the arguments for these reactors. In the public
hearings and the press statements, the safe operations of reactors in
Japanese campuses like Daiichi have been quoted. We were told that
nothing significant happened in Japan. Now that something has
happened, we need to do something immediately. There is not much time
left. Only a few weeks.
There is yet another serious problem at Koodamkulam. There are 450
fishermen families living in CASA Nagar township which is only 1.2 km
from the fencing of the nuclear campus and about less than 1.5 km from
the stack of the reactor which will release about one trillion
(1,000,000,000,000) radioactive atoms every second, when the reactor
will operate. The township was built for the victims of 2004 Tsunami
by donations from the Churches Auxiliary for Social Action, the social
service organ of the Protestant Churches in USA. The only other place
where people were living in such close proximity was the construction
workers colony at Chernobyl. Such construction is illegal in Tamil
Nadu and India. CASA India and the NGOs involved have been informed
about this problem. There are only two options left now. Either the
reactor should not operate or people, especially children and young
people, should not be allowed to live there.
The first reactor at Daiichi was 40 years old. It was to be
decommissioned early this year, its license was extended for another
ten years. India has one of the oldest reactors in the world at
Tarapur, near Mumbai. Tarapur I with an installed capacity of 160 MW
was commissioned in 1969. Like Daiichi, its life was also extended
for another ten years. This is a first generation atomic reactor,
which lacks many of the safety devices in the newest ones. All the
old reactors must be shut down immediately for a review of safety and
if necessary decommissioned.
People in the Indian subcontinent are in one way little safer than the
Japanese, the installed nuclear capacity of the subcontinent is less
than 4,000 MW, which is less than one percent of the total electricity
(3%, in India). The nation should be grateful for the first
generation leadership of the nuclear science establishment in India
for delaying the ambitious nuclear agenda of the Central government.
The neew generation leadership is behaving little more aggressively.
They must learn their lessons from Raja Ramanna, MR Srinivasan,
Aiyengar etc.
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