Over in India, and in a fit of wild optimism, the Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin has declared his country plans to build ‘up 12 to 14 nuclear reactors in India’. He must have missed the news that ‘eleven of India's 17 nuclear power reactors are operating below optimum capacity due to a lack of sufficient supplies of indigenous uranium’. The fuel for those 12 to 14 new reactors is going to have to come from somewhere, Ambassador Kadakin. Still, there should be plenty to go around when the nuclear ‘renaissance’ finally takes off, yes?

Or maybe not. China ‘operates 11 reactors and has 17 under construction, but has 124 more on the drawing boards’. Unfortunately, this is ‘raising questions about its ability to find the uranium it will need, at home or abroad’. Sound familiar? Maybe they could ask Alexander Kadakin for some advice and reassurance. Goodbye Oil Crisis, Hello Uranium Crisis.

In the UK, the consortium looking to build new nuclear reactors at Sellafield in the North West of England have said that ‘a final decision on whether to build a 3,200 megawatt nuclear plant in the U.K. won't be taken before 2015’. 2015? If this is the nuclear industry moving with haste to help in the battle against catastrophic climate change we’d hate to see it moving slowly.

Never fear, however. In (another) fit of wild optimism, Ignacio Galan, Chairman of Spanish energy group and consortium partner Iberdrola SA said ‘the new nuclear plant in the U.K. won't be operational until 2018 to 2020’. That’s a decision made in 2015 and then two state-of-the-art nuclear reactors built and operational (if the designs get approval) three-to-five years later? That’s some weapons grade confidence Senor Galan has going on there. If only we could harness it to generate electricity we could close down the nuclear industry overnight.

Posted by Justin at 9:48 AM | Permalink

India’s government has placed a Nuclear Liability Bill in the Winter Session of the Parliament. The bill, going against various Supreme Court judgments, aims to put a cap on the liability amount that private companies will have to pay towards damages in the case of a leak or accident.

The bill is unconstitutional. It goes against the ‘polluter pays’ principle and the precautionary principle, and is therefore contrary to the provisions of Article 21 of the constitution, namely “Protection Of Life And Personal Liberty: No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

Greenpeace India has commissioned a report on the proposed Nuclear Liability Bill. Soli Sorabjee, previously attorney general, agrees with the campaign demand of ‘Drop The Bill’. His opinion: “In view of these Supreme Court judgments which are part of Indian jurisprudence and whose thrust is for the protection of victims of accidents as part of their fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution, there is no warrant or justification for capping nuclear liability, as is sought to be done. Any such move will be in defiance of the aforesaid Supreme Court judgments and will be contrary to the interest of people of India and their fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution.”

Sorabjee holds several offices in organizations of national and international repute. In India he is Chairman of Transparency International and Convenor of the Minority Rights Group. On the international circuit, he is Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Commission since 1997, a member of the United Nations Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities since 1998. Sorabjee served as member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague from 2000 to 2006. In 2002, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan for his defence of the freedom of expression and the protection of human rights.

All of this is happening 25 years after the Bhopal Gas tragedy. The survivors and the people impacted by the slow poisoning of the chemicals left at the plant site are still fighting for justice and the companies involved are evading liability. With nuclear plants, the dangers are graver and thus to pass a bill that caps liabilities is bordering on the ludicrous.

Currently American plants are at the planning stages. Westinghouse and GE hope to construct their nuclear site in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. If the suppliers and designers do not take financial responsibility in case of an accident only the operator, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, is left to pay this huge amount. The Bhopal tragedy’s cost was more than $3 billion.

The movement has snowballed and more and more lawyers and politicians are endorsing Greenpeace India’s demand of dropping the bill. Hopefully, India will follow the right way and do away with introduction of this partial regime!

(This post is by Orsi Kralik, nuclear campaign blogger for Greenpeace India)

Posted by Justin at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over 55 workers at the Kaiga Generation Station in Karnataka were exposed to an excessive radiation dosage when they drank from a water cooler. How did it happen? The water had been mixed with tritium which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, used in research, fusion reactors and neutron generators. Tritium is a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food, water, or absorbed through the skin. It’s also used in making hydrogen bombs.

The incident took place on November 25, when the number one reactor was under shut down for maintenance. Officials said their suspicions were confirmed when not only workers who worked in the radioactive areas of the reactor but also those who did not work in the radioactive zones had a high dose of tritium in their routine urine samples.

Top officials with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited blamed the incident on ‘an insider's mischief’. They alleged that ‘an insider had mixed tritium in the drinking water in the water cooler kept in the operating island of the first unit’ at Kaiga.

Here is a Greenpeace Canada Report on tritium and its effects.

This is a case where insurance liabilities do not apply - after all the government is not planning to insure against malevolent acts by disgruntled employees! Insurance companies will not pay for such acts. It is a perfect example of liabilities not working.

This is isn’t the first time something like this has happened. As Dr. Sangamitra Gadekar from India’s anti-nuclear journal Anumukti says: ‘Another pet sentence from the nuclear establishment is that all such accidents are studied and their lessons learnt. In 1991 on July 27, something very similar took place at the heavy water plant run by the Department of Atomic Energy at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan.’

YB Ramakrishna from India’s Citizens for Alternatives to Nuclear Energy adds: ‘Tritium can easily get into the food cycle through water. The people here eat the food they grow along this river. Has any one gone and checked them out? The district collector made yet another statement that the radiation is easily treated by having Iodine tablets and drinking a lot of water. Drinking more and more tritiated water? All seem to be worried about the employees. What about the people living in the vicinity who will die subsequently from cancer if their consumption of tritium through the food they eat is never ever measured?”

The official explanation of a ‘disgruntled’ employee causing ‘mischief’ raises more questions than it answers. The issue is much larger than it appears. Kaiga’s operators should immediately admit the tritium concentration found in the water cooler, the amount of tritium ingested by the workers, the estimated doses for the workers, and the source of the tritium (even if it were a malicious act: where did the tritium come from?)

The high radiation levels in some of the employees were found because it is only they who go through routine tests. What happens to the people living along Kali River, especially in the downstream who spend substantial time standing in water to catch fish and eat it? A baseline health study done by independent, international experts must be conducted.

Finally, there must be much more transparency in and around the Kaiga. India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is the perfect example of how not to run a nuclear watchdog.

(This is a guest post by Orsi Kralik, nuclear campaign blogger for Greenpeace India)

Posted by Justin at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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On October 2nd - which is Gandhi’s birthday and India’s most famous national holiday - activists held a rally in Delhi against nuclear power. The situation was pretty bizarre for the government as on September 29th the Prime Minister decided to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Homi J. Bhabha, the father of India's nuclear program. Three days later the government went into selective amnesia and forgot Gandhi’s ideas on the nuclear issue.

Nuclear energy is presented as the foremost solution for the nation’s lack of energy security, military security and overall national security. All this in a country where hundreds of millions of people do not have food security, water security, sanitation security, and other basic needs for life and human dignity.

The Indian government has signed nuclear agreements with a number of countries such as the United States, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Mongolia and so forth. India is now projected to generate an additional 25,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020 with American plants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, Areva plants in Maharashtra, and Russian reactors in Tamil Nadu. But it’s not for the first time that India has come out with such projections. Let’s put this in perspective. In 1984, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had a dream of generating 10,000 MW of electricity by the year 2000. Never mind that Homi J. Bhabha had dreamt of 20,000 MW by 1987.

It’s 2009 and India still produces only somewhat more than 4000MW.

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Gandhi Jayanti was a perfect day for organizing this rally and reminding the government about the incoherence of its policies and targets. Unfortunately, government acknowledgment is hard to come by. As Gandhi himself said: ‘They are ready to garland my photos, but never ready to follow my advice.’

(This is a guest post by Orsi Kralik, nuclear campaign blogger for Greenpeace India)

Posted by Justin at 5:16 PM | Permalink

What is the link between coal power and nuclear power?

I mean - apart from the fact that they are both dirty sources of energy proceeding from fossil fuels that exist in limited amounts on the planet.

And also apart from the fact they are both a threat to the environment; the first one because of the amounts of CO2 it releases into the atmosphere, the second one because of all the dangerous substances released at the surface of the planet - both throughout the nuclear fuel chain and the ever-lasting radioactive waste it leaves behind.

Oh yes, and apart from the fact that both the coal and the nukes industry are committed to undermining all attempts to switch to renewable, clean, eco-friendly energy anytime soon.

No? No other ideas?

Continue reading "Coal and Uranium: Dangerous Liaisons" »

Posted by Aslihan at 7:25 PM | Permalink

Weird and whacky news from the nuclear industry continues to pour in, thicker and faster than George Bush on a skateboard. Let’s take look and see what’s been happening recently…

The Scottish National Party is calling for an investigation after it was revealed that there have been 165 leaks and fires at the UK’s nuclear plants over the last eight years.

A hundred and sixty-five leaks and fires? We don’t know about you but that gives us the mental image of the UK nuclear industry as a burning garden sprinkler. Spraying in all directions while on fire. Impossible and paradoxical, you say? It’s the nuclear industry we’re talking about here - it’s their job to attempt the impossible and paradoxical. They call nuclear power clean and safe for starters.

Elsewhere, Gwyneth Cravens, author of ‘Power To Save The World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy’ has been telling us just how convenient it is to store nuclear waste…

The world’s entire annual inventory could fit in one large townhouse.

Excuse our ignorance, but who in their right mind would want to store nuclear waste in a large town house? Even if you hid the stuff in the attic and the basement, in cupboards and under the bed, we doubt a townhouse could hold it all safely. Yes, if you were an idiot and piled the world’s entire annual inventory of nuclear waste into a big pile you probably could shovel it all into a townhouse. But it would be very, very wrong. There are lots of very good reasons why nuclear waste storage facilities are huge. For one thing, nuclear waste needs lots of space between the storage casks to allow the heat produced to escape. You don’t get townhouse architects to design these babies. We also liked this part…

Nuclear waste recycling, done abroad, drastically reduces volume, radioactivity, and the need for long-term disposal.

‘Done abroad’? Nice. She means it’s someone else’s problem. Out of sight, out of mind. In America it’s called ‘passing the buck’.

Meanwhile, the construction of the state-of-art fast breeder reactor being built in India is running as one would expect. It’s 40 per cent over budget, a year late and the taxpayer is paying the bill. Fast breeder reactors are supposed to herald a change in the way nuclear power works. It seems however, the more things change in the nuclear industry, the more things stay the same.

Have a great weekend!

Posted by Justin at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

St Petersburg Times: Captain Lus, a Russian vessel with radioactive cargo holed in collision
’The Captain Lus, a Russian vessel that regularly delivers radioactive cargo to St. Petersburg from abroad for subsequent reprocessing in Siberia, has collided with The Sundstraum, a Norwegian tanker, that was carrying chemicals. The Russian ship was en route from St. Petersburg to the French port of Le Havre. According to the preliminary investigation into the incident, the vessels share responsibility for causing the collision. Rashid Alimov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the international environmental organization Bellona, told The St. Petersburg Times that The Captain Lus, which was holed in the collision, was carrying 9 containers of urainum ore concentrate on board. The cargo totalled 182 tons in weight, but no radioactive leaks were registered.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Russian vessel with radioactive cargo holed in collision" »

Posted by Justin at 11:40 AM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Whitehaven News: 'Rogue' radioactive material to be sent to France
’This is the batch of eight Mox fuel assemblies made at Sellafield and later found to be "falsified" in its specification data after being shipped out to customers in Japan. The faked pellets scandal led to loss of business confidence in BNFL and for a time Japan refused to strike any further deals with Sellafield. The fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium, was sent back to Sellafield - seven years ago. Now, after several years "evaluating the best options", agreement has been reached with the government that the "rogue" fuel batch, along with a another eight, will be shipped to France for treatment - but not until 2014/15.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: 'Rogue' Sellafield radioactive material to be sent to France" »

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

China View: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria
’CAIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday that it has found traces of processed uranium in a second site in Syrian capital Damascus, Pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV reported on Saturday. The IAEA is investigating a U.S. intelligence report which claimed that a secret DPRK-designed nuclear reactor that Syria has almost completed for the production of plutonium.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria" »

Posted by Justin at 2:04 PM | Permalink