In an attempt to create consent for the Indo-US Nuke Deal, its proponents have launched a concerted campaign to project nuclear energy as the panacea for all India’s energy problems. They make out that scientific good sense is all in favour of the Deal; and that any opposition to the Nuke Deal is merely politically motivated and predetermined by the anti-US-ism of the Left. Liberation takes a closer look to find that there is more to these tall claims than meets the eye.

The Left’s anti-American ideological blinkers preventing it from seeing or recognising that George Bush, according to Manmohan Singh India’s best friend among the US Presidents”, is graciously doing India a favour. For an India that has come of age and has a 10% growth rate, the Nuke Deal is the answer to India’s energy hunger, besides being a technology free of environmental and safety hazards, and therefore the world’s preferred solution to climate change. Or that’s what we’re told by those out to sell the Nuke Deal to us.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently declared, “It is clear that India is an energy deficient country and requires energy from various sources…nuclear energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy which we can have, keeping in view the worldwide concerns of climate change, carbon emissions and high technology cost of moving to other sources.”

At a seminar in Delhi on environmental concerns, Dr R Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister and Member of the high-power committee on climate change bridled at the suggestion that nuclear energy might be unsafe: “Nuclear power is safe and it is preposterous to suggest otherwise…Increasing its share in the energy mix is good for cutting on greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.”

Even West Bengal’s CM from the CPI(M), Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, asked at a gathering of industrialists for his opinion on the Nuke Deal, declared, “As far as I am concerned, we should go ahead with nuclear power, it just cannot be avoided”, and said that he felt scientists and experts should be left to decide on the Deal (a tacit rebuke to those who maintain that the decision on the Deal has far-reaching political implications for the nation and must therefore be taken by Parliament). He added for good measure that he did not believe in “blind anti-Americanism” and saw nothing wrong in doing business with US corporations.

Let us examine and assess some of these claims.

Will the Nuclear Deal help India achieve energy security?

Today, nuclear energy generated by India’s 17 reactors accounts for 4.1 gigawatts (4120 megawatts), which is just 3% of India’s total electricity-generating capacity. This has belied the ambitious promises that were made for India’s atomic energy programme since its inception in the 1950s. The nuclear establishment expected nuclear energy to generate 43.5 GW by 2000 – and yet it has managed to generate a fraction of that estimated capacity. What is the problem?

In terms of resource allocation, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has been pampered – cornering a lion’s share of the country’s science and technology allocation. India envisaged a three-stage atomic programme: the first phase involving heavy-water reactors fuelled by natural uranium in Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) and reprocessing spent fuel to separate plutonium that could be recycled as new reactor fuel. The second and third phases required the DAE to develop fast breeder reactors (FBRs) that could use thorium; India has very large thorium reserves but poor uranium reserves.

Effectively, we have yet to graduate past the first phase, though in 2005, the DAE commissioned and commercialised India’s first two 540 MW PHWR plants at Tarapur. India’s only test-scale FBR was set up in 1985; had to be shut down between 1987-89 due to technical problems; and has functioned continuously at best for 55 days at a time in 2000.

In most countries, ‘civilian’ nuclear programmes have actually been a cover for developing bombs; and India is no exception. India’s nuclear energy programme was derailed by the surreptitious use of plutonium from reprocessed spent fuel of the Canada-supplied CIRUS reactor for developing a bomb. The detonation of the bomb in 1974 was followed by sanctions and setbacks in terms of the international reluctance to share technology and render other cooperation to India’s nuclear programme. Apart from this, there have also been economic and other factors which have impeded India’s development of nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Deal will allow us to import uranium and Light Water Reactors (LWRs) – will this solve the problems of India’s nuclear energy programme?

Even according to the optimistic estimates of the Planning Commission study (Integrated Energy Policy 2006, Planning Commission), nuclear energy even after the Deal will only add 7% to India’s total installed capacity of electricity by 2021. Even if one accepts the more ambitious estimates being projected by the government now, nuclear energy will still account for less than 9% of India’s total installed capacity by 2020. And these are merely the most optimistic estimates, which, going by past experience, may well be quite inflated.

Further, as we will see, this projection does not take into account the forbidding costs of nuclear energy. Imported LWRs are very expensive; and our increased dependency on imported uranium will jeopardise our fuel security. If India is serious about achieving fuel security, we ought rather to concentrate on researching ways of utilizing our thorium reserves, and on developing our renewable energy capacities, in addition to improving our coal-based energy generation in terms of efficiency and environmental sustainability.

If nuclear power even in the best case is not going to provide more than 9% of our energy requirements, we are clearly going to continue to rely heavily on other fuels like oil, gas and coal. In any case, nuclear energy can only generate electricity; we’ll still need other sources of fuel for transport, fertilizers, petrochemicals and so on. Trading off good relations with West Asian oil-producing countries for the mirage of ‘partnership’ with the USA can hardly be good policy for India’s energy security.

Costs of Nuclear Energy

The DAE claims that nuclear energy is cheaper than energy generated by coal-fired plants. But this claim is deliberately misleading. M V Ramana of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development tells us DAE’s comparisons of the costs of generating electricity from nuclear reactors with those from coal-fired plants are biased and inflated because they are based on the artificial assumption that the coal plants are located far from the source of their coal. The fact is that “one-third of India’s coal plants are located right next to a mine pithead, and another quarter or more are within 500 km of one.”

Ramana continues, “Even the 1200-km claim does not hold up to scrutiny. Two researchers from the International Energy Initiative and I compared the cost of producing electricity at India’s most recently commissioned nuclear reactor, a 220-megawatt heavy-water reactor at the Kaiga atomic power station in the southern state of Karnataka, with electricity from a nearby coal plant that is 1400 km away from a mine. We found that the nuclear plant was about 8 percent more expensive at the government-determined rate of return on investment, which reflects the present value of future benefits and costs. At market rates of ROI, however, it could be 50 percent more expensive.”

Further, Ramana points out that this comparison does not account for the costs of cleaning up radioactive waste, though the cost of disposing flyash is internalized in the costs of coal-generated electricity. DAE omits to include the cost of disposal of radioactive waste on the plea that it is reprocessed. Reprocessing is however extremely expensive – Ramana estimates that the cost of reprocessing each kilogram of spent fuel from the DAE’s heavy-water reactors is in the range of Rs. 20,000-30,000.

Further, the DAE is not required to provide insurance cover against nuclear accidents, or to create funds to pay for clean-ups and compensation in case of accidents, as nuclear utilities in the US are supposed to do. The assumption is that the Government will pay in case of accidents: in effect, this is a huge subsidy.

The costs of imported reactors will further push up the costs; with such high costs it is inconceivable that the Nuke Deal wish ensure cheap electricity as is being promised by the Congress.

Even in other countries, the nuclear option has been crippled by the forbiddingly high costs. A 2003 study by researchers at MIT found that the cost of U.S. nuclear-generated electricity is about 60 percent higher than electricity generated from coal. Not surprisingly, the last reactor commissioned in the US was just over a decade ago. The US nuclear industry is heavily dependent on foreign orders – and the Nuke Deal with India is expected to boost it.

Nuclear Energy: Clean and Green?

The nuclear industry is attempting to make a comeback by selling itself as the solution to global warming – as a clean and safe way of reducing carbon emissions and greenhouse gases.

As we have seen, nuclear energy is nowhere close to replacing other fuels: at best it can produce electricity; while other sectors of the economy that are responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions will continue to do so.

More importantly, there is no safe long-term solution to the problem of radioactive waste from nuclear plants; this waste stays radioactive and poisons the lives of future generations for thousands of years. While coal-fired plants too pose serious environmental hazards, it is clear that nuclear technology which has no safe way of getting rid of radioactive wastes, can hardly be considered a solution.

As for safety, the memory of the Chernobyl disaster is enough to tell us otherwise. Not only were thousands killed; huge tracts of land were contaminated; agriculture had to be suspended and over a lakh people had to relocated. The devastating impact of a similar disaster in India’s countryside is terrible to imagine. Nuclear technology is too complex for it to be possible to anticipate and prevent accidents.

In India, most existing reactors have experienced accidents – for example the unexplained power surge at the Kakrapar reactor in 2004; the 1993 fire at Narora; the collapse of containment at Kaiga in 1994 – and any such accident could well cause a major disaster.
Further, there is ample evidence of congenital deformities, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and tumours caused by radioactive pollution in the area surrounding the atomic power station at Kota and the uranium mining area at Jadugoda.

Let’s not forget Enron

The sordid story of Enron has not yet faded from public memory. The MNC Enron was given a 2000 MW project in Maharashtra as a political decision, despite widespread protest against it. Fuel and power policy were changed to suit Enron, introducing the policy of using naphtha as fuel. Soon after, Enron’s Dabhol Power Corporation began supplying electricity to Maharashtra at a price seven times higher than other electricity costs in India. A huge crisis resulted for the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, and the plants using naphtha are no longer in use.

The high costs of nuclear power and its many attendant problems are being skated over now in order to make the Nuke Deal with USA look good – but this could have serious consequences for India’s energy sector later.

Many Western countries (such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), construction of nuclear plants has ceased and is being phased out. The jury is still out on nuclear technology. Before investing in imported nuclear reactors in such a major way, before tying ourselves down to a dependency on imported fuel that even in the best-case projections does not promise us any substantial energy gains, India ought to consider other options more seriously.

India can continue to try and develop nuclear technology and attempt to harness India’s thorium reserves in economically viable ways. India ought also to invest far more in improving the efficiency and reducing pollution in its coal plants. It would also be fruitful to invest seriously in renewable electricity. India already has the world’s fourth largest installed wind capacity, and there is huge room for improvement here.

We have seen that how the attempt to the Nuke Deal is by no means the ‘inevitable’ policy solution for India’s energy needs. The real text of the Nuke Deal is a political, strategic one – and one that has been spelt out in the Hyde Act. Comrade Jyoti Basu has said that the nuclear deal is about nuclear energy – but that is precisely what the Deal is not about. David Mulford, US Ambassador to India, has put it candidly and clearly: he said that he wants to India to hurry with the 123 and move on to ‘456’ – which is his words is a “comprehensive relationship…for which Civil Nuclear is important, but only one part of the larger whole”. The Nuke Deal is just bait for this ‘comprehensive relationship’ where India will be comprehensively controlled by the US in terms of economy, defence and foreign policy – and for India to retain its sovereignty, it must refuse to bite. 

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Commemorating Bhagat Singh Birth Centenary

[On the occasion of Bhagat Singh’s birth centenary on September 28, 2007, this feature attempts to place Bhagat Singh in the context of the historic development of the Indian communist movement. 2007 also marks a hundred years of 1907 – the year that Bhagat Singh’s uncle Sardar Ajit Singh, a pioneer of the 1907 ‘Pagdi Sambhal Jatta’ peasant struggle in Punjab was exiled. In an article based on Ajit Singh’s autobiography, we have a life-sketch of this remarkable figure who, along with the Gadar Party, is another of the threads that link Bhagat Singh with 1857. The picture that Ajit Singh’s autobiography gives us of peasants up in arms against eviction and land grab strikes a chord with us, in these times of SEZs and farmers’ suicides. – Ed/]