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Nuclear Accident Evacuation Blues: Moving India's millions

By S.G.Vombatkere

07 May, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Populations and nuclear power plants

People need water for drinking and water for agriculture (including livestock) for survival. Civilizations have accordingly flourished near sources of water. The need for water grows as populations grow. India, with 17.5% of the world's population having 4% of the world's fresh water, is among the most highly water-stressed countries. As urban and industrial demand and consumption of water grows by leaps and bounds, polluting water bodies by turning good water into “grey” or “black” water, this water-stress gets magnified for poor rural and urban populations, which together constitute around 75% of India's 1.2 billion population. Worse, climate change threatens to increase the already severe water-stress.

In this scary scenario, thermal electric power generation and nuclear power plants (NPPs) in particular, requiring enormous quantities of water for cooling, compete with populations for water.

Following the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, the dangers from releases of radioactive elements from NPPs due to accident and consequent need for emergency evacuation of large populations have come into public focus worldwide. The reports indicate that around 100,000 people were evacuated from a radius of 20-km around Fukushima. In the context of an unfortunate but eminently possible “Indian Fukushima”, the figures would be much higher, given that India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Evacuation as part of disaster management

The nuclear establishment chooses its NPP sites as a compromise between the mutually conflicting criteria of maximum availability of water and minimum population. The IAEA operating and safety guidelines mandate emergency plans that should be made known publicly and rehearsed periodically. Appendix V para 2 of “ Emergency Exposure Situations ” of IAEA Safety Series No.115 (1996) states, “ Emergency plans shall be prepared which specify how the responsibilities for the management of interventions will be discharged on the site [and] off the site ... ... ”, and in Appendix V para 3( f), “prior information be provided to members of the public who could reasonably be expected to be affected by an accident ”. However, the details or even the existence of emergency evacuation plans for each NPP are not known, because even these are kept secret by paranoid management.

In case of an accident at a NPP, emergency population evacuation calls for at least the following major considerations: One , immediate dissemination of information to affected populations to impress a sense of extreme urgency upon them to submit to evacuation from hearth and home. This calls for political good sense and strength based on information from honest scientists and engineers; Two , short-notice availability of sufficient numbers of buses and trucks depending upon the numbers of people with their immediate personal belongings and the distance to the destination, and the administrative authority, competence and machinery to commandeer them; Three , periodically updated (and dummy-rehearsed) plans to determine how many people from which “source” area will be sent to which designated safe “destination” area(s), and logistic arrangements at start-point(s), en route and destination(s), especially including fuel for vehicles; Four , information to populations and administrative authorities at destination areas for emergency mobilization of infrastructural and logistic support, especially water, food & fuel, and shelter, to minimize social disruption and tensions due to sudden influx of huge numbers of people; Five , first-aid and medical care for people exposed to radioactivity; Six , contingency funds and their allocation and disbursement to pay for transport, fuel, water, food and other essentials for evicted populations; Seven , independent and reliable radioactivity monitoring at critical locations, with communication systems, and Eight , setting up a command and control centre for carrying forward disaster management, including media management.

This is undoubtedly a challenging task in any country and mind-boggling in India, if there is to be any semblance of orderliness that was witnessed in Japan. The “normal” scene in India during emergencies is chaotic, with many thousands of people suffering all kinds of deprivations – fighting among themselves for the driblets of relief materials when provided by government; the double whammy of their protests about the poor relief provisions being suppressed with police force; and complete absence of the elected representatives or senior bureaucrats. Corruption, especially in relief operations, is legend in India. Therefore Lokpal / Lokayukta oversight should be made mandatory for disaster management to ensure that relief materials and moneys reach the right destinations and right people , and the disaster management team should formally be made responsible for probity.

Is emergency evacuation assured ?

The March 2011 disaster at Fukushima is known even to unlettered poor rural and urban Indians, thanks to television. They are best equipped to understand the implications of displacement by forced evacuation from places of their lives and livelihoods in case of disaster. This should also bother urban middle class folk who would be evacuated, but they are heavily influenced by corporate- and government-created hype of nuclear safety and the self-proclaimed competence of the Indian nuclear establishment.

The patently incompetent and callous manner in which the central and state politico-bureaucratic systems handle disasters like the annual flooding in Bihar due to rivers in spate, or cyclones on the Odisha or Andhra Pradesh coast, or earthquakes anywhere, inspires little confidence that handling nuclear emergency will be any better. The non-performance of government in evacuating the people from around the Union Carbide factory in the 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak disaster is typical. The fact that the civil administration calls for army help even for very localised emergencies involving single persons, like rescuing little children fallen into borewells, indicates that a serious emergency like a Level 7 nuclear accident will cause bureaucratic paralysis and political dithering. Even if only for this reason alone, NPPs are entirely undesirable.

However existing NPPs cannot be wished away. Therefore, in order to understand the magnitude of nuclear disaster evacuation, we may compare the populations around Indian NPPs with the population evacuated from around Fukushima by a government and a society that is well-ordered and efficient.

Safety and evacuation zones

Without going into the validity of the concept of “safe” or “acceptable” radiation dose, there is a walled-off or fenced-off area around every NPP called the exclusion zone, within which no casual human or animal entry is permitted for safety reasons. Apart from this, in case of a NPP nuclear accident, population (excluding livestock) evacuation may be ordered from an area of 20-km radius from the NPP depending on the spread of nuclear radiation. One wonders at the professional integrity and competence of India's nuclear scientists when we read of Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Dr.Srikumar Bannerjee's reaction to the Fukushima accident that it was “ purely a chemical reaction, not a nuclear emergency ”, and Nuclear Power Corporation of India's Dr.S.K.Jain's assertion that “ It is a well-planned emergency preparedness program ...” [Ref.1].

India has 20 operational and 9 under-construction reactors units in 8 NPPs, and 6 proposed NPPs. The populations and civil administrations in the area and region around every NPP needs to be aware of the magnitude of an evacuation operation in case of accident. Arati Chokshi [Ref.2] has made a study of population density data around the operational and proposed Indian NPPs. Figure 1 shows that the population 20-km around even the most remote NPP like Kaiga (Karnataka) is double that at Fukushima, while the population around Kalpakkam (near Chennai) and Tarapur (near Mumbai) is is 1.2 million and 1.5 million respectively.

Figure 1

These figures of populations are based on the 2001 Census. Growth @ 1.4% p.a in the decade since then, along with movements of populations for various reasons, will cause increases in these numbers. It is a moot point whether civil administrations are even aware of the need for and the magnitude of evacuation operations in the event of a nuclear accident at a NPP. Hopefully, the figures provided by Arati Chokshi may stimulate planning action in bureaucratic circles.

Taking evacuation seriously

Safety, health and well-being of people are among the primary responsibilities of State and Union governments. A Level-7 nuclear accident in India will make enormous organizational, management and financial demands on the nuclear industry and the civil administration. Given the lack of direction and blinkered policy of the Union government (including grotesquely inadequate terms in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill), one is left to conjecture at the effectiveness of population evacuation.

Real-time population and resource data periodically updated by local administrations, together with dummy rehearsals are essential for any meaningful real-time disaster management. Failing this, relief funds spent will mostly reach the pockets of corrupt officials who benefit from disasters, and corporations and NGOs that seek to maximize profits from disaster relief.

References

1. Latha Jishnu; “ How I stopped worrying and learned to love Fukushima ”; Down To Earth, April 1-15, 2011, page 58.

2. Arati Chokshi; < http://aratichokshi.blogspot.com/ >

Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere retired from active military service from the post of Additional Director General in charge of Discipline and Vigilance in Army HQ, New Delhi. He has a wealth of administrative and management experience gleaned from long military and Border Roads Organization service.

E-mail: [email protected]

 

 



 


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