THE JAITAPUR NUCLEAR PLANT by Joaquim Correia-Afonso

The supposedly “people-friendly” Congress government at the Centre is moving ahead with plans to build the world’s largest nuclear power project on an earthquake hotspot, putting millions of Indians at risk. Jaitapur, near Ratnagiri in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, where the project will come up, is said to be located bang into a seismic zone susceptible to “very strong” seismic activity.

The Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh says that the Centre was open to putting in place additional environmental safeguards to protect the proposed nuclear reactors in Jaitapur. Didn’t Japan, a technologically advanced country, put in place sufficient safeguards to prevent a catastrophe? But a combination of a deadly earthquake and a devastating tsunami that ravaged the country’s northeast coast, made child’s play of all the safeguards, creating a nuclear crisis of dangerous dimensions, a nuclear catastrophe.

A major earthquake is followed by aftershocks. The major earthquake, of 8.9 magnitude, on 11th March, in the region of Fukushima and Sendai, about 240 Km northeast of Tokyo, was followed by a number of aftershocks, some very strong. These were, in turn, followed by more earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 and thereabouts near Shikuoza, about 120 Km southwest of Tokyo, which has rattled the Japanese capital. The epicentres of the two quakes seem to have been quite far apart, about 350+ Km from each other.

There were 92 earthquakes in 20 years in Jaitapur, that is, an average of 4 to 5 per year. According to scientists, the ground there is unstable. There is no guarantee that the government’s safeguards will protect the people and the ecologically sensitive Konkan coast from a nuclear disaster. The 1993 quake experienced in Jaitapur left about 9000 people dead. Needless to say, the Congress bigwigs, whether in New Delhi or in Mumbai, were not affected.

One of the residents of a village 20 Km from Jaitapur remembers that the earth shook and the road outside his house just vanished, forming a gorge. What if the earth shakes again and the ground below the nuclear plant caves in? Will the plant stand? Even with the additional safeguards that will be put in place, will the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant withstand the impact of large natural disasters, such as tsunamis and earthquakes?

The proposed energy park is particularly dangerous as the gigantic nuclear development will rely on a brand new type of mega-reactor that has not been approved for use anywhere in the world. The plant would, moreover, be an environmental disaster, destroying one of India’s greatest natural landscapes, destroying the habitats of tigers, elephants and thousands of other species. In the event of a major earthquake, as in Japan, the devastation would be mind-boggling.

Isn’t the Government of India being irresponsible, insensitive to the interests of the local people, by persisting in going ahead with the project, despite knowing very well the problems that it may create, the ecological destruction that it will bring about? That the plant is, in fact, an environmental disaster? Why should this controversial project continue? Why not give it up?

China has suspended approval of 28 planned nuclear power plants while it revised safety standards. It is also going through safety checks at all existing plants. Even an advanced country like Germany has already decided to decommission almost half of its nuclear plants and put a stop to planned extensions, reversing a controversial decision to expand its nuclear programme. Isn’t it time for India to make the same decision?

It appears that in this age of Information Technology, the importance of big projects is measured in terms of Mb and Kb (Megabucks and Kickbacks). The more the Megabucks involved and the more the Kickbacks derived, the faster comes the approval. Is it that kickbacks prevent the kick out of the project?