'What is appalling is that the safety recommendations are yet to be
attended to, even in September 2000'
Rediff: Do you think India's nuclear power plants are money guzzling? Is it not a fact that after spending so much money in the past three decades,
the energy produced is just three per cent?
Dr Gopalakrishnan: 'Money guzzling' is a poor definition. If you mean, "Do you feel it is a waste of taxpayers' money to expand the nuclear power programme", that can be attempted to be answered.
My answer is that the nuclear programme needs to be much more tightly
planned and controlled, under the careful financial and parliamentary
scrutiny before large amounts of additional public funds are committed.
It certainly should not be left to be run the way it is by the
Department of Atomic Energy.
Now that India has declared itself a nuclear weapons power, it is high
time that we separate our nuclear activities clearly into civilian and
military components and let the civilian work be scrutinised and funded
like any other power sector project in terms of investments and returns
on investment, and more importantly, on the basis of per kilowatt-hour
price for nuclear electricity and what it means to public safety.
In doing so, there should be transparency in the details of costing of
all inputs for nuclear power. All subsidies coming indirectly into this
programme will have to be included in the costs. Then only one can make
a choice on how much of nuclear power to set up, as against how much
coal-based power NTPC should be funded to set up, and how much
hydropower NHPC can be funded to set up.
After all, the NTPC, the NHPC and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India
Limited are all public sector power companies. The limited amount of
taxpayers' money that is available for investment in power must go to
these three organisations in proportion to their overall economic and
environmental merits, and not with a step-motherly attitude to NTPC and
NHPC alone, as it is today.
Rediff: Last year you had said that the threat of a serious nuclear accident at our nuclear plants is real. Can you elaborate?
Dr Gopalakrishnan: I was chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board from 1993 to 1996. In 1995, the AERB under me brought out a comprehensive document on
the safety of DAE installations. It was subsequently accepted by the
Atomic Energy Commission and passed on to the DAE to take corrective
steps. The contents of the report were all based on earlier analyses and
committee findings of the DAE and their organisations, and not any new
evidence generated by the AERB.
What this report brought out is the fact that many serious safety
deficiencies in our early-stage installations were identified as far
back as in 1979 and 1987 by the DAE. But these deficiencies had not been
rectified even at the time of the report in 1995.
Rediff: Has the government or the DAE now implemented
the safety suggestions?
Dr Gopalakrishnan: What is appalling is that the more crucial of the safety recommendations are yet to be attended to, even in September 2000. The deficiencies
pointed out and prioritised in the 1995 AERB report have certainly
placed the safety levels of some of our installations well below the
norms that are internationally applied for deciding on the continued
operation of nuclear facilities.
The DAE is postponing the repairs because of several reasons. In some
cases, it will necessitate very long shutdown of a facility, for
tackling some of the problems well enough. Then there are technologies
that have not yet been indigenously developed. In certain instances
spare parts and equipment are denied to India.
But certainly the government will provide the funds needed, if only the
DAE will come forward with a plan to do the urgent rectification. Theunderlying reason for the current state of affairs is a scorn on the
part of the DAE for any independent view from outside. The total lack of
awareness on the part of the public, a lack of effective media interest
and activism, as well as the newfound strength of the Indian nuclear
establishment as the 'bomb-maker' and the consequential influence they
have on the current government have made the DAE pretend that it knows
everything.
Rediff: Can a Chernobyl-type accident take place in Indian nuclear power plants?
Dr Gopalakrishnan: I have said earlier also that a Chernobyl-type accident is very unlikely
in Indian nuclear power stations. What is not realised is that away from
all the sensationalism of Chernobyl, there are lesser accidents which
could still release moderate amounts of radioactivity into the very
crowded areas surrounding some of our less safe installations at Madras,
Trombay or Tarapur, which could be devastating to a large number of
people.
The Madras Atomic Power Plant reactors that are operated without
effective emergency cooling systems are situated right outside Madras.
The danger is that unlike other countries, we have nuclear weapons work
and plutonium-producing reactors operating right next to crowded areas
of Bombay.
Dr A Gopalakrishnan