Nuclear safety…

The myth and the reality

An energy often touted to be absolutely safe….

Atomic power station Kaiga

Bihar Uttar Pradesh Jharkhand Odisha Madhya Pradesh West Bengal0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Households Electrified (in %)

Households Electrified (in %)

Households electrified

Bihar Uttar Pradesh Jharkhand Odisha Madhya Pradesh West Bengal88

90

92

94

96

98

100

102

Villages Electrified (in %)

Villages Electrified (in %)

Villages electrified

Why not?

Cost of connection

Monthly expenses

Unsuitable supply

Lack of awareness

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Homes in Madhya Pradesh

Homes in Madhya Pradesh

Households that do not pay the bill

Bihar Jharkhand Madhya Pradesh Odisha Uttar Pradesh West Bengal0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

% of households that do not pay their bills

India has vaulting nuclear

ambitions…

…from the present 5000MWe to

20,000MWe by 2020

Nuclear chain

reaction

Nagasaki 1945 Aug

9th

Controlled fission

….The Chicago

Pile1942

The first ever……..

Three mile island,

Pennsylvania – a watershed

event

March 28 1979

Light water reactor

What went wrong?”

A combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures

Chernobyl – a manmade catastrophe of epic proportions

26th April 1986

A test that went terribly wrong.

A combination of design and human errors

Forty one deaths due to fire and radiation.

Four thousand cancer deaths.

The aftermath

Untold miseries

Unending

sorrowsInnocent victims

Fukushima

11th March 2011

Tsunami submerged the sea water pump and the

core heated up.

1 rad = 0.01 J/Kg

INDIAN SCENARIO

koodamkulamVVER - 1000

23rd June 2012

• Tritium leak in RAPS.• Given a 30-minute permit, worked

there for five hours instead. • Told to drink lots of water and cool

drinks. 

April 2011

• Fire alarms blare in the control room of the Kaiga Generating Station in Karnataka.

•  Comments by officials alternately say there was fire, that there was only smoke and no fire, and that the fire was not in a sensitive area

November 2009

• Fifty-five employees consume radioactive material after tritiated water finds its way into the drinking water cooler in Kaiga

• “Somebody deliberately put the tritiated water vials into a drinking water cooler” – Anil Kakodkar, chairman AEC

January 1992

• Four tons of heavy water spilt at RAPS

December 1991

• A leak from pipelines in the vicinity of CIRUS and Dhruva research reactors at the BARC.

• Results in severe Cs-137 soil contamination. Local vegetation was also found to be contaminated

• Contract workers digging to the leaking pipeline were reportedly not tested. They could not be traced.

July 1991

• A contracted labourer mistakenly paints the walls of RAPS with heavy water before applying a coat of whitewash.

• He also washed his paintbrush, face and hands in the deuterated and tritiated water, and has not been traced since.

Problems plaguing Indian scenario

• From 1991 to 2011 more than 16 incidences

• Many go unreported• Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) has

ranked India 23rd out of 25 countries• Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

(AERB) is not an autonomous body as it depends on the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) for all practical purposes being subordinate to it .

• The AERB is also grossly understaffed.

• The secretary of DAE is the ex–officio chairman of the AEC (from Dr.Homi Bhabha to Dr. Sekhar Basu)

• The Atomic Energy Act of 1962. Under the provisions of the act, the government is permitted to deny information to citizens requesting details of nuclear power

• Nuclear safety regulatory authority bill 2011lapsed

It indemnifies the suppliers of the liability to pay unless the defect is the result of

willful negligence. How to prove the mens rea

is the million dollar question.

Nuclear (non) liability act

• Effectively caps the maximum amount of liability in case of each nuclear accident at 1500 crores to be paid by the operator (NPC)

• Clause 17- Victims will not be able to sue anyone. Only operators can.

• Clause 18- of the nuclear liability bill limits the time to make a claim within 10 years

• Clause 35- The operator or the responsible persons in case of a nuclear accident will undergo the trial under Nuclear Damage Claims Commissions and no civil court is given the authority. 

Stooping

to conquer

Safety measures

FROM THE SEATTLE CHIEF’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT

FRANKLIN……. • …This we know: the earth does not

belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Better be safe than

sorry

Thanks