Kudankulam Power project: issues

Kudankulam Power project-Indo Russian Project:

The proposed Kudankulam project is presently India's pride and joy, a signal to the world that India still has its supporters in the international community. But what is this Indo-Russian project, initiated by Rajiv Gandhi and then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev 10 years ago. The site of the proposed nuclear power station is at Kudankulam, which is about 25 km from Kanyakumari, in Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli district.

The VVER(Water cooled Water moderated Energy Reactor) 1000 MWe reactor is meant to serve the Southern Regional Grid. According to a 1997 survey, India at present produces 84,000 MWe power, largely from coal and hydro-energy. By the turn of the century, power requirements are estimated to touch three lakh MWe.

Kudankulam was selected for the project by the Department of Atomic Energyafter evaluating 13 coastal sites and five inland sites in Tamil Nadu. Since the region had a hard rock terrain and low seismic activity, it was considered the ideal site. Besides, there are no major dams and lakes nearby to cause induced seismicity. The most important consideration that weighed in its favor, however, was the fact that the area is not densely populated or industrialized.

Land, about two km in radius, has been acquired for the project. This will be the exclusive zone of the project. A further area with a radius ranging from two km to five km will form the sterilization zone, although land acquisition for this has yet to take place.

How safe is it?

Safety, of course, is of paramount concern. The project, based on a pressurised water reactor (PWR), is expected to abide by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In a deviation from existing systems which use the boiling water reactor, the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) went in for the WWER/VVER (the acronym for watercooled, water moderated energy reactor the Russian word for water is voda) technology, expecting it to subsidise the country's indigenous thorium based three-stage nuclear programme.

There are at present 19 VVER 1000 plants in operation in different parts of the erstwhile Soviet Union and Bulgaria. India will be getting VVER-392, the most advanced version, which is quite different from the Chernobyl reactor which became internationally expelled after the nuclear disaster of April 1986.

Scientists at the Nuclear Power Corporation, Chennai, stress that the Koodankulam project is a `vast improvement' on the Chernobyl reactor with double containment ensured with two double walls measuring two feet each. Also, while the Chernobyl reactor used graphite as moderator and boiling light water as coolant, the Koodankulam reactor will use enriched uranium as fuel and light water as moderator.

In fact, according to the scientists, the VVER-1000 type reactor chosen for Koodankulam is an `extremely safe' reactorunder normal as well as abnormal conditions. The most important inherent safety feature is the so-called `negative power coefficient', wherein any increase in reactor power is self-terminating.

There are also provisions to reprocess spent fuel for the recovery of residual uranium and plutonium for use in the second phase. Liquid waste will be evaporated and the condensed vapours and water thus formed, recycled. An environmental survey laboratory, managed by Health Physics Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, will monitor radioactivity within a 30-km radius of the plant throughout its life.

Local misgivings

The other fear is that the release of water from the plant into the sea could cause its temperature to rise, destroying phyto-planktons and sea life in the process. As Dhas puts it, ``Any accident at the plant will destroy life within a 200-km radius. Remember Chernobyl. India cannot afford to face such a situation.''

Scientists dismiss the fears of fishermen on Marine life. According to them, the project would in no way affect marine life or fishing activity as the temperature gradient of the cooling water at the discharge point near the confluence with the sea will not exceed the five degrees centigrade prescribed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Hence there will not be any thermal pollution which could adversely affect the fish in the region. In fact, a slight increase in temperature is favorably for fish, they say.

Another fear is that the plant could aggravate the incidence of cancers.

But as per a study conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, radiation in the nuclear plant vicinity is much less than many other factors like radiation from cosmic rays (45mrem per year); soil ( 15mrem per year); water, food and air (25 mrem per year); air travel (4 mrerm per year) and X-rays (20 mrem per year). According to it, nuclear plant vicinity radiation is only 1 mrem per year.

People also express their worry about spent fuel disposal and safety of dismantled reactor .as a reactor can function only for30 years and maintaining it after that to avoid radiation spills will cost much more than the cost of the reactor.

Nuclear 123 agreement:

George W Bush signed the 123 agreement into law on October 9^th 2008 and made it clear that US will fulfill all its fuel assurance commitments in the agreement. He also specified that the agreement recognises India’s right to reprocess spent fuel.

India had raised certain concerns in the Bill passed by the US Congress. These related to certain aspects in the introductory section of the Bill, where it was specified that India's safeguarded fuel reserve should be “commensurate with reasonable reactor requirements”.

This was contrary to the 123 agreement where US had agreed to let India store lifetime supplies of fuel for its reactors.