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Indian anti-nuclear protesters will not be deterred
Sydney Morning Herald - April 23, 2011
Ben Doherty, New Delhi – Milind Desai has been harassed by police, threatened and arrested "on false charges". Fellow demonstrators have been shot and killed. "But police oppression can't stop me and our agitation. I'm ready to go to jail in [the] future," he says.
The 40-year-old ayurvedic doctor has been at the forefront of protests against India's burgeoning nuclear power industry since plans to erase his village of Mithgavane, and five others like it, in favour of a massive six-reactor nuclear plant were announced in 2005.
But the protests, originally born of a not-in-my-backyard mentality, have gained new currency after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
India is questioning its nuclear future. The country has a serious, and worsening energy shortfall. Already demand outstrips supply by more than 10 per cent, and more than 400 million people live without any electricity.
India has 20 small nuclear reactors, which provide about 3 per cent of its power. But five reactors are being built and the government has proposed 39 more, including the Jaitapur nuclear park a few kilometres from Dr Desai's home which, when finished, would be the biggest in the world.
Its six reactors would provide 9900 megawatts of electricity, more than three times the power used by India's largest city, Mumbai. By 2050 the Indian government wants a quarter of its energy to come from nuclear reactors. Only China is planning a more rapid expansion.
But after the Fukushima disaster, there are many – including the World Bank, the Indian Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, and the former head of the country's nuclear regulatory body, A. Gopalakrishnan – questioning the mass roll-out of new plants.
The massive Jaitapur plant is the focus of concern – 931 hectares of farmland will be needed to build the reactors, land that is now home to 10,000 people, their mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields. Fishermen in the region, too, say their livelihoods will be wiped out.
Opponents point out that the plant site is coastal and in a seismically unstable region. The area has been hit by 22 serious earthquakes in the past two decades, the last a 6.3 magnitude quake two years ago.
The region is rated a seismic zone 4 – high damage risk – but, proponents say, the plant will be built to withstand seismic events, and the reactor's cliff-top position will be a bulwark against tsunamis.
Critics says the plant is too big and the model unproven. Each of the six reactors is more than double the size of the 700-megawatt heavy water reactors with which India's regulator has had the most experience. And, as yet, not a single European Pressurised Water Reactor, designed by a French company, Areva, is working anywhere in the world.
The first one, being built in Finland, has fallen four years behind schedule, and is more than 2 billion ($2.7 billion) over budget.
In Jaitapur, protests flared again this week after rioting demonstrators ransacked a police station. One protester was shot and killed, and 30 people, about half of them police, went to hospital.
But beyond those who will lose their land or livelihoods to the reactors, opposition to India's nuclear program is emerging from unexpected quarters after the Japanese disaster.
The country's Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has been one of the key backers of nuclear power, and says that although he remains committed to India's nuclear expansion, he has concerns over large-scale plants such as Jaitapur.
"Should we not re-look at this concept of nuclear parks where we set up giant capacities in one location [like at Fukushima]? Jaitapur will have 10,000 megawatts of capacity, is this wise?" he wrote in a recent letter to the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
The former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, A. Gopalakrishnan, has argued that India is expanding its nuclear program beyond its capabilities. "What a mad program. Even without Fukushima happening, should we be subjecting our future generations to such a crazy, high-density nuclear program?"
Dr Gopalakrishnan wrote last month that Indian safety standards did not meet international benchmarks.
"In India, we are most disorganised and unprepared for the handling of emergencies of any kind of even much less severity. The AERB's disaster preparedness oversight is mostly [on] paper, and the drills they once in a while conduct are half-hearted efforts which amount more to a sham."
In a recent report the World Bank urged India to look to renewable energy sources, in particular its barely tapped hydropower resources, to begin making up the country's energy shortfall.
And 60 eminent Indians, including the author Arundhati Roy and the historian Ramachandra Guha, have signed an open letter calling on the government to "radically review its nuclear power policy".
Meanwhile, in Jaitapur, the planned plant inexorably becomes a reality.
A few kilometres from Dr Desai's village, workers – protected by a police guard – have begun digging trenches and marking out the site for the reactors. He says he is unworried. He will continue to organise protests from his home, while he has one, and beyond. "But I'm 100 per cent sure about our victory because people here are in no mood to relent. Discontentment and anger... grows day by day."
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