beyondbrics

It is not just people rich countries that are questioning their nuclear programmes in the light of the crisis at Japan’s earthquake-hit Fukushima power plant.

In India too, the disaster has prompted debate, not least because the authorities are planning a major expansion of the country’s nuclear power capacity.

With Indian TV viewers mesmerised by Japan’s struggle to avert nuclear meltdowns – following the failure of cooling systems at Fukushima, India’s state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation has rushed to reassure a jittery population that its own installations are safe.

In a statement, the NPC noted that “Indian plants have testified their safety towards severe earthquakes” in Gujarat in 2001, and during the tsunami of 2004.

India currently has 20 nuclear power plants, with a total installed capacity of 4,780 megawatts. But New Delhi plans to dramatically expand its nuclear power capacity – with a goal of 30,000 megawatts by 2020, after its ground-breaking civil nuclear energy deal with the United State ended its status as a global nuclear pariah.

“Other options to generate electricity are not enough,” Anil Kakodar, the former chair of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, told legislators in the state of Maharashtra, on Monday. “If we don’t use nuclear power we will have to import coal in the future. It’s time for a dialogue on the contribution of nuclear energy.”

But India’s plans – already facing fierce resistance from local residents near the designated site for one new plant – are likely to face even greater public opposition in the wake of the events in Japan.

Most of India’s nuclear facilities are pressurized heavy water reactors – a different type than the stricken Japanese reactors. The Indian reactors, the NPC says, “have multiple, redundant and diverse shutdown systems, as well as cooling water systems.”

The NPC also said that India’s two boiling water reactors – akin to those now in crisis in Japan – have been “renovated, upgraded and additional safety features back-fitted to the latest

The NPC said it is closely monitoring the Japan nuclear crisis and that it will integrate the lessons learned the unfolding events in Japan into India’s own nuclear energy facilities.

“NPCIL has a well- established operating experience review program in which international events are reviewed for their applicability in the Indian context, and corrective measures are taken,” it said.

Once information on the Japanese crisis is collected, “any reinforcement in Indian reactors will be implemented,” the company promised.

It remains to be seen whether such soothing words will be sufficient to assuage jittery Indians, or whether the citizens and politicians in this raucous democracy will have a serious rethinking about the wisdom of such an aggressive expansion of nuclear power to meet their pent up energy needs.

Indians are particularly sceptical about promises made by big business, whether state-owned or private. And with good reason: this is, after all, the country of the Bhopal chemicals disaster – the world’s biggest industrial accident.

Related reading
GE offers help to Japan, FT
Nuclear dawn now seems limited to the east, FT
Nuclear power: hell and high water, FT

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