Fukushima in Japan is the global atomic industry's worst crisis since Chernobyl, and the first nuclear catastrophe watched by the global public almost in real time. We in India must be alarmed: the Tarapur reactors are also Boiling Water Reactors designed by General Electric, the same as Fukushima's, only smaller and one-generation older, probably with weaker safety systems. We must discard the 'It can't happen here' approach and introspect into our nuclear safety record, with embarrassing failures like a 1993 fire at the Narora reactor, the Kaiga containment dome collapse, frequent cases of radiation over-exposure at numerous sites, unsafe heavy-water transportation and terrible health effects near the Jaduguda uranium mines and the Rajasthan reactors.
Tag - Nuclear Energy
Indian Nuclear Group Demands Moratorium on Nuclear Reactor Construction After the Fukushima Disaster in Japan
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) expresses its deep grief and sorrow at the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which reportedly suffered a loss-of-coolant accident.
People vs Nuclear Power: the Environmental Struggle in Jaitapur, Maharashtra
The first thing that strikes the visitor to Jaitapur-Madban in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, about 400 kilometres from Mumbai, is the sheer beauty of the place. The second thing that strikes you is the profusion of posters, banners and slogans which say “Areva Go Back”, “NO to Nuclear Power” and “Radiation Kills” in Marathi. These are the work of a grassroots movement against a project. This is planned to be the world’s largest nuclear power station.
The truth behind India's nuclear renaissance
Jaitapur's French-built nuclear plant is a disaster in waiting, jeopardising biodiversity and local livelihoods
A bad nuclear choice in India
Imagine a beautiful ecosystem with virgin rainforests, great mountains, and immense biodiversity, in which two great rivers originate. Add to this a flourishing farming, fisheries and horticultural economy which grows the world-famous Alphonso mango. And you have the Jaitapur-Madban region in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district in the Western Ghats, termed by the Biological Survey of India as the country’s richest area for endemic plants.
Courting Nuclear Disaster in Maharashtra - A fact finding report by CNDP
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, of which I am a founding member, recently sent a team to Jaitapur, in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, where the world’s largest nuclear power station is proposed to be built. The people of Jaitapur strongly oppose the project and have sustained a strong and peaceful movement against it for four years.
We went there to assess the strength of the people’s opposition to the project, to inquire into the state’s violations of their civil liberties, and to express solidarity with the people’s movement.
CNDP has produced a booklet on Jaitapur, whose PDF file is linked below. This will be printed with a four-column colour cover this week. If you would like copies, please write to: Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) A-124/6, 1st Floor, Katwaria Sarai, New Delhi-110 016 I Telefax: 011-26968121 Email: cndpindia@gmail.com.
CNDP decided at its Tenth Anniversary Convention in December 2010 to participate in and intensify people’s struggles against nuclear power, which is being forcefully promoted by the Indian government after the completion of the India-US nuclear deal and its endorsement by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.
Praful Bidwai.
Courting Nuclear Disaster in Maharashtra: Why the Jaitapur Project Must Be Scrapped A report published by Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (authors: Praful Bidwai, Bhasha Singh, S P Shukla, Vaishali Patil, Rafeeq Ellias) 42 Pages (PDF) January 2011
Down the nuclear tube in Jaitapur
India is obsessively pursuing nuclear power generation and imposing it upon an unwilling public, which doesn’t treat nuclear reactors as good neighbours. Inevitably, the government is getting into direct and imperious opposition to the people, with terrible consequences for democracy, which at minimum must respect the right to life with dignity, and the right to reject projects that are destructive of the environment and livelihoods. This is nowhere more evident than in Jaitapur in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, on the Konkan coast, where Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd is erecting six giant (1,650 MW) reactors designed by the French firm Areva. Jaitapur is touted as the world’s largest nuclear station, generating 9,900 MW (India’s present nuclear capacity, 4,780 MW).
Courting nuclear disaster?
''Whenever a French president comes to India, so do arms deals. During President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent visit, India and France discussed or signed several weapons agreements. These include a $2 billion deal to upgrade Mirage fighters and a $900 million contract to equip them with missiles. French and Indian agencies are now in advanced talks on jointly developing new fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles in deals worth $7 billion-plus.
Overshadowing all these is the Indo-French agreement on two European Power Reactors (EPRs) developed by Areva. The EPRs, each of 1,650 MW, carry a price-tag estimated at $13 billion and are to be erected at Jaitapur, in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district. The site was cleared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests only days before Sarkozy’s arrival.''
The “123” nuclear deal saga: What has India gained, and what has it lost?
Ever since the United States offered India the nuclear cooperation deal in July 2005, and India lapped it up, it has been clear that Washington would have to resort to subterfuge, stealth and arm-twisting in pushing through this unique arrangement for India within the global nuclear order. This order prohibits civilian nuclear commerce with a country which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but has exploded atomic bombs.
Wrong call on nuclear liability
The government is set to move the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010 in the current session of Parliament after withdrawing its earlier draft on March 15 without explanation. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology headed by Congress MP T Subbirami Reddy has since heard various proponents and opponents of the Bill.
While the former mainly comprise Department of Atomic Energy officials, who stress the importance of moving the legislation quickly so as to encourage investment in the nuclear power programme, the objectors are a more plural group, including “official” experts such as former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) A Gopalakrishnan, and independent experts and activists from the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), Greenpeace India and the Delhi Science Forum, as well as political parties.
The opponents have raised a number of issues of vital public importance. The Standing Committee must faithfully and earnestly incorporate their suggestions and the government must pay heed to them if there is to be an informed and intelligent debate on the Bill. Any attempt to rush the Bill through would be thoroughly misguided.
Dangerous nuclear delusion
The recent past provides a glimpse of the dangerous nature of the confrontations governments are getting into vis-à-vis the citizenry thanks to their obsessive pursuit of predatory development projects. Take Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, where the disaster called Enron was located. The government is preparing to impose another Enron on Ratnagiri—this time, a nuclear one, with potentially far worse consequences. This is a “nuclear park”, comprising six 1,600 MW reactors to be made by France-based Areva.
No global “nuclear renaissance”, only limited nuclear power expansion in India
No other industry in the world has painted as rosy a future for itself—only to belie the projection—as has nuclear power generation.
Lessons from Kaiga
The tritium poisoning episode highlights grave safety lapses and the urgent need for an independent nuclear regulator.
Spurring nuclear Bhopals?
U.S. and Indian industry pressure to cap liability for civilian nuclear accidents will create a regime that shields offending corporations and punishes the public.
India's nuclear deal headed for fiasco
Asia Times, August 29, 2008 by Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI - As the tortuous negotiations for the United States-India nuclear deal enters its final stage, it becomes clear that India seriously underestimated the discomfort and opposition the agreement would arouse in many countries because of the special privileges granted to India, largely on New Delhi's terms.
The emerging situation has thrown Indian policy-makers off-balance. They are now groping for a strategy to deal effectively with dissenters in the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) which meets next week in Vienna, Austria.
The NSG, a private arrangement, must grant India a waiver from its tough rules governing nuclear trade before the deal can be completed. The rules prohibit nuclear commerce with countries that have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India is a non-signatory.
The NSG is due to discuss a US-drafted waiver motion on September 4-5. It failed at its two-day meeting last week to agree on the proposed exemption. Several member-states raised objections and moved as many as 50 amendments to the text. Since the NSG works by consensus, even one member can hold up a decision.
Many NSG members, led by Austria, New Zealand, Ireland the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland, are expected to move amendments to advance the group's fundamental non-proliferation objectives while granting India a waiver.
These amendments seek to impose three conditions on the exemption: periodic review of India's compliance with non-proliferation commitments; explicit exclusion of uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent-fuel technologies from what can be exported to India; and most important, no more nuclear trade with India if this country conducts another nuclear test.
India however insists that the waiver must be "clean and unconditional".
Meanwhile, the US is likely to redraft the motion to meet some of the probable objections and reservations.
However, India and the US have started a new gambit, based on mutual accusation and posturing. Indian officials privately say the US did not pull its weight in lobbying the dissenting states hard enough, or that it "sabotaged" the NSG proceedings by firing from the dissenters' shoulders.
The Americans say that India is being unreasonably inflexible because it does not realize that many NSG members will not go along with the old September 21 draft. There are limits to how much Washington can push them. Something has to give. India says it will reject anything but "cosmetic" changes in the old US draft.
"It's hard to believe that the US would sabotage the deal at this stage, after having initiated the deal and gone out of its way to placate India," says physicist M V Ramana of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development at Bangalore who is a noted commentator and author on nuclear proliferation issues.
He adds: "In any case, India was involved in negotiating every phrase in the resolutions brought before the IAEA and the NSG. It's futile for India to blame the US. It was at best naive for it to trust Washington to do everything at the NSG."
Unless the NSG's next meeting grants India a waiver, the deal is likely to miss the tight US Congress deadline for its ratification of a bilateral India-US agreement, which is a necessary precondition for the deal to take effect.
The "123 agreement", so called because it concerns Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954, was signed last month to enable nuclear commerce with India.
Congress is scheduled to meet beginning September 8 and adjourn on September 26 before it is re-elected in November.
However, even if the NSG approves a waiver next week, the deal might not make it in time to the US Congress for its ratification.
"It's not going to happen," Congressman Gary Ackerman told The Times of India at Denver, Colorado, where he is attending the Democratic National Convention. "There simply isn't enough time."
According to Ackerman, the duration of the next Congress session falls short of the 30-day resting period the deal must have under current rules. Although it is technically possible to waive the rules, this will mean that Congress agrees to debate the 123 agreement rather than just pass an "up-and-down" or yes or no vote.
And if the agreement is opened up for debate, said Ackerman, "you can bet that there are some lawmakers who want to bring in amendments".
Such amendments are expected to bring the 123 agreement in conformity with a legislation that Congress passed in December 2006, called the Henry J Hyde Act, which imposes numerous conditions upon India, including an end to nuclear cooperation with the US if India conducts a nuclear test.
Uncertainty over the deal's fate has emboldened NSG dissenters to go public. Phil Goff, New Zealand's disarmament and arms control minister, has said in a statement that "many countries spoke in favor of amendments" to the US draft at the last NSG.
Goff said: "A large number of countries, big and small, expressed views similar to New Zealand's that there needed to be compatibility between the US-India agreement and the goals of the NSG ... the discussions last week were robust and constructive."
Goff clarified that "while New Zealand remains a strong advocate of the NPT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and would welcome India's accession to these ... we have not included these in our package of proposals".
India refuses to sign the treaty and will not accept any "prescriptive" advice to do so. While no NSG member expects India to sign the treaties, they want New Delhi to show some willingness to accommodate non-proliferation concerns.
The first signs of discomfort with the deal appeared at the August 1 meeting of the IAEA's board of governors, when many states expressed their reservations about the agency's safeguards (inspections) agreement with India, but finally approved it. The reservations were centered on guarantees of uninterrupted fuel supplies and on India's right to take "corrective measures" in case these are disrupted.
Even so, Austria, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and Norway made it clear in a joint statement that the board's decision only endorses the safeguards agreement, but "in no way prejudges the decision on a possible India-specific exemption in the NSG".
Austria even questioned the description of nuclear energy as an "efficient, clean and sustainable energy source", which lays the preambular basis for the safeguards agreement.
"Although the statement was a clear warning, Indian negotiators ignored it," says a high Indian official familiar with the talks on the deal, who insisted on anonymity. "They thought a combination of US strong-arm pressures and India's new 'with-us-or-against-us' diplomacy would do the trick."
At the NSG meeting last week, opposition to the deal grew. A bloc of six states emerged (comprising Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland) which acted in concert and issued a joint statement. This said their amendments were "based on concepts already enshrined in UN Security Council resolutions, in domestic legislation of NSG member-states, and in bilateral nuclear supply agreements which they have concluded over the years".
These statements took Indian officials by surprise. They had expected the NSG meeting to be a roaring success and the crowning of world recognition of India's "arrival on the global stage". They now describe its deliberations as a "blow" to India, even a "debacle".
Hectic and tough negotiations are reportedly in progress between the US and India on the draft of a new waiver text.
"The US will probably try to persuade India to accept at least one of the three proposed conditions, namely, exclusion of enrichment and reprocessing technology," says Ramana. "It is hard to say if India will agree to this while accepting a periodic review of its non-proliferation commitments and cessation of cooperation in case of an Indian nuclear test."
The Indian government has repeatedly said the deal does not, and cannot, compromise its "sovereign" right to test.
"But it seems even more unlikely," adds Ramana, "that the NSG dissenters will be satisfied with such a modified draft. The chances of the deal going through before the present term of the US Congress ends seem low."
Whatever happens, one thing is clear. Unless the movers of the amendments calling for such conditions can be persuaded, cajoled or coerced into dropping them, India must eat humble pie, agree to a compromise, and make the best of a bad deal. Or, India can walk away and lose the deal altogether - at least in the George W Bush administration's term.
Neither prospect is pleasant for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who took his government to the brink by staking his personal stature on the deal and losing the support of the left parties, substituting it with an alliance with the less reliable and opportunistic Samajwadi Party.
If the deal collapses, Manmohan's position in the ruling coalition could become shaky. If he signs a compromised agreement, he will be accused of being a "sellout".
IPS correspondent Praful Bidwai is a noted peace activist and co-founder of the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament, based in New Delhi.
(Inter Press Service)
Falling back on pseudo-science?
Frontline, April 23, 2008
by Praful Bidwai
Indian policymakers are clutching at straws to duck their responsibility to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
AS Indian policymakers come under growing pressure from global scientific and political communities on climate change, they are increasingly resorting to disingenuous, devious or downright specious arguments to avoid taking purposive action to cap and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are rising three-and-a-half times faster than the world average. Indian policymakers are clutching at straws to duck their responsibility to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
AS Indian policymakers come under growing pressure from global scientific and political communities on climate change, they are increasingly resorting to disingenuous, devious or downright specious arguments to avoid taking purposive action to cap and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are rising three-and-a-half times faster than the world average.
Instead of acknowledging the universal responsibility that devolves on all states to contain and reverse global warming and demonstrating a strong will to seize the initiative, they are preoccupied with averting or deflecting that pressure.
Three of their arguments are by now familiar. One, hide behind the poor and claim that the developing countries cannot afford to give up on poverty reduction by controlling carbon emissions, which are low in per capita terms and need to increase if all their people are to have access to, say, electricity for lighting. This hides huge (and growing) differentials in consumption, and in GHG contributions, between their own rich and poor and makes blanket per capita comparisons meaningless.
A second argument makes any Indian effort to control GHG emissions conditional upon something else: for instance, emissions trading under the clean development mechanism (CDM) agreed to in the Kyoto Protocol; grants from the rich to develop less carbon-intensive technologies; and incredible as it might seem, international support for the United States-India nuclear deal.
The recent appointment of former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate issues has been described in official briefings as signifying India’s intention to “use the climate change argument to push forward its nuclear deal”. As a newspaper reported: “The government is working on the argument that the deal is important for India and good for the world because it addresses the issue of climate change. If India is not to burn the world out of the galaxy sic with fossil fuels, it is in the global interest to let India go through with the nuclear deal.” This argument will come in especially handy if a Democrat becomes the next President of America.
However, as this Column has argued (Frontline September 7, 2007; August 12, 2005), nuclear power can at best make only a marginal contribution to reducing GHGs. Besides, the “give-us-the-deal-or-we’ll-spread-the-plague” line sounds more like a threat from an irresponsible nation than a logically persuasive argument. It is unlikely to find many buyers.
The third argument is that India is already doing enough. As another daily put it: “Saran’s first job” is to “get the record right”, and declare that India is “already clean”. Saran is quoted as saying: “Nationally, we are already doing a lot. While our economy has grown by 8-9 per cent, our energy intensity has only grown by 4 per cent.” Similarly, he contends, India recycles 70 per cent of its waste and is among the leaders in wind energy. It cannot be asked to do more.
This reasoning is dubious. The 70 per cent recycling (of what?) figure has been bandied about without a remotely systematic, let alone rigorous, study. This factoid is probably of the same quality as former Environment Secretary Prodipto Ghosh’s claim that even the affluent in India, with their hugely energy-intensive lifestyles, fuel-guzzling cars and armies of servants, live frugally because they sell off old newspapers.
True, India is the world’s Number 4 in wind energy, but this contributes less than 2 per cent to its power generation. More important is India’s other Number 4 rank: among the world’s biggest GHG emitters, a position from which it has just displaced Japan. Equally, India is already the world’s Number 2 as far as the expansion of coal-based electricity goes.
Much of India’s recent GHG increases have come from the “luxury consumption” of the rich, related to privatised transport, posh housing, air-conditioning, water overuse, and so on. There is huge scope for reducing the energy and carbon intensity of output, which only an irresponsible and profligate country would ignore.
And now, Indian policymakers seem to be seeking solace in outright denial of the need to do anything about global warming at all, in particular, undertake major GHG reductions. On April 2, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia called for a “comprehensive debate on the issue of climate change” because, reported The Hindu, there is “an element of uncertainty” on whether climate change is as serious a threat as projected.
While releasing a report by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (CSCCC) and its Delhi-based affiliate, the Liberty Institute, Ahluwalia said: “It the report needs to be thoroughly discussed, and if it is true, then it is for the developed countries to mitigate the damage caused to the environment while the developing countries can resort to adaptation to prevent global warming.” Significantly, other members of the establishment, including former Environment Minister Suresh Prabhu and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry secretary-general Amit Mitra, besides Liberty Institute office-bearers, were also present at the release.
The report (available at http://www.csccc.info) attacks the principal conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and rejects any capping of GHG emissions as this would be “counterproductive”: undermine economic development, “harm the poor”, and probably fail to address climate change problem “in a meaningful way”.
Instead, it advocates “economic development” (read, limitless market-driven growth) and yet more consumption, denies a link between climate change and the growing incidence of diseases, and zealously demands privatisation of water and other resources and the lifting of all taxes, tariffs, subsidies and entry barriers – to promote “free enterprise”.
Some Indian newspapers gave the report prominent coverage, virtually equating the CSCCC, despite its lack of expertise or scholarship on climate issues, with the IPCC, which has 2,500 scientists from the world over and whose deliberations lasting 20 years led to four detailed peer-reviewed assessment reports.
The CSCCC was only established in February 2007 and has 40-odd member-organisations, which function as industry-friendly think tanks or corporate lobbyists, and have names like the Institute for Free Enterprise, Institute for Market Economics, Hayek Institute, Free Market Foundation, Minimal Government Thinkers, and Liberty Institute. Earlier, the CSCCC was based mainly in western Europe and North America and was coordinated through the so-called International Policy Network; now these groups are trying to spread their influence to India and China. Articles by their members are carried in Indian newspapers.
The CSCCC comprises hard-core libertarians of the Ayn Rand variety, who dogmatically advocate the free market, including “tax freedom”, minimal or no government, unrestricted individual liberties and strong intellectual property regimes. Libertarians are even further to the right than neoliberals. Many CSCCC constituents are funded by big corporations such as ExxonMobil. (See http://www.exxonsecrets.org, and some interesting facts in Manu Sharma’s blog, http://orangehues.com/blog/2008/04/climate-change-in-media-ht-reaches-ne...)
Such libertarians have a “one-size-fits-all” approach to all social, economic and political problems, regardless of context or content. They subordinate democracy, or the rule of the people, to the rule of property. They do not deal with specific issues. For instance, it is irrelevant to them whether and what kind of human activity may have led to global warming and what the multifarious consequences of a rise in the earth’s temperature would be. (In fact, they are anti-environmentalists or are climate change deniers, like Bjorn Lomborg.)
In the past, CSCCC members have questioned the existence of global warming on spurious or frivolous methodological grounds, argued that people should adapt themselves to climate change rather than prevent or stop it, and lobbied governments against signing the Kyoto Protocol and participating in its follow-up conference in Bali.
Flimsy report
The CSCCC report is utterly flimsy and fails to grapple with the issues at the heart of the climate debate, including the extent of global warming and its relationship to GHG emissions; the likely physical, ocean-related and climatological effects of a rise in global temperatures under varying scenarios and their consequences for different biological systems, human habitats, health and economic activities; and different ways of stabilising or reducing emissions, their differential costs and the distribution of these costs across different countries.
It only looks at one minuscule aspect, disease, and summarily rejects the World Health Organisation’s detailed findings on the climate–health link. It concludes on the basis of vague, uncorrelated numbers that deaths from climate-related disasters have fallen dramatically since the 1920s as a result of economic growth and technological development. But that is like saying that one should not invest in new medical discoveries because some of the biggest gains in health indices have occurred because of better sanitation and nutrition.
The report is an exercise in charlatanry and sophistry, which adopts a sanctimonious tone in speaking of the poor and their stake in not combating global warming.
What is astonishing is that Ahluwalia should have bestowed respectability upon such a junk-science- based, dogma-driven, fact-free report. True, he “wondered aloud whether …the IPCC could go so horribly wrong as the current report” makes out. But this criticism was oblique and mild, within a general commendation of the document. This stands in sharp contrast to his scathing attack on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report, which too he released last year, for asking India to make GHG cuts. In any case, it is doubtful whether he would have lent his weight to a radical (as against corporate or free market) environmental agenda.
It is sad, embarrassing, even shameful, that our policymakers should countenance giving any quarter to libertarianism and fall back on its pseudo-science to resist the eminently reasonable demand that fast-growing, big economies such as China and India must stop using resources profligately, limit elite consumption, adopt energy-efficient technologies and move towards capping their emissions.
Deeper cuts needed
What makes this even more deplorable is the evidence emerging from solid scientific studies that suggests that the world needs to make much deeper cuts in GHG emissions than suggested by the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, or rather, its politically negotiated, widely circulated “Summary for Policymakers”, which has influenced policymakers and the media.
The prestigious science journal Nature (April 3) published a remarkable article entitled “Dangerous assumptions” by Roger Pielke, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green, which argues that the IPCC’s Summary holds that the world economy is moving towards decarbonisation (reduced use of fossil fuels per unit of production) and that energy efficiency (the amount of energy needed to produce, say, Rs.10 crore worth of goods) is falling.
Under this trend, the world will spontaneously achieve about three-fourths of the reduction in GHG emissions needed to stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at around 500 parts per million without policy intervention such as tightened regulation and incentives and disincentives. Such reductions are built into the IPCC’s reference scenarios. Thanks to this “free ride” provided by decarbonisation, the world will only have to bring about a much smaller GHG reduction under different scenarios.
“In all scenarios, the IPCC assumes that most of the challenge (between 57 per cent and 96 per cent) of achieving stabilisation …will occur automatically, leaving a much smaller emissions-reduction target for explicit climate policies,” say the authors.
Alas, this is not to be! In reality, the world is recarbonising, “thanks to the economic transformation taking place in the developing world, especially in China and India. As development proceeds, rural populations move to high-rise buildings that consume energy and energy-intensive materials. This process is likely to continue… all over populous South Asia, and eventually Africa, until well beyond 2050.”
The IPCC assumes that Asian carbon dioxide emissions will rise by 2.6 to 8.4 per cent a year between 2000 and 2010. But more realistic estimates, based on actual observation of energy intensity and efficiency, are much higher, as high as 13 per cent for China. Therefore, much deeper GHG cuts will be needed in developing Asia as well as the developed West. These will demand improved efficiencies not just across countries but “in individual energy-using sectors”, especially, heavy energy consumers such as electricity generation, construction and cement, chemicals and metals production.
The IPCC will no doubt revisit these scenarios but is not due to do so until 2013. The world cannot wait that long to start the process of decarbonisation. It has become imperative to break the link between poverty reduction and carbon emissions and recognise that GHG emissions cannot be adequately controlled by setting binding output targets and relying on CDM markets, as Kyoto does. What the world needs is a combination of GHG reduction targets and massive plans for new technology development and technology transfer to developing Asia.
The sooner our policymakers accept this, the better for us.
Copyright © 2008 Frontline
No Nukes For Peace
The Times of India, 13 August, 2007
by Praful Bidwai
August 9 was the 62nd anniversary of the atomic devastation of Nagasaki. It is an appropriate, if sad, occasion to look at the military as well as energy implications of the India-US nuclear agreement.
The nuclear deal is as much about weapons as civilian power. Not only does it recognise India as a "responsible" state "with advanced nuclear technology"; it specifically distinguishes between India's civilian and military nuclear facilities while placing the former under international inspections (safeguards). Its Article 2.4 affirms that its purpose is "not to affect the unsafeguarded nuclear activities of either party" or to "hinder or otherwise interfere" with any other activities involving "material and technology" acquired or developed "independent of this agreement for their own purposes".
Put simply, India can produce and stockpile as much weapons-grade material as it likes in its unsafeguarded and military-nuclear facilities, including dedicated weapons-grade plutonium producers like Dhruva, the uranium enrichment plant near Mysore, the Prototype Fast-Breeder Reactor (PFBR) under construction, and the eight power reactors (of a total of 22 operating or planned ones) exempted from the agreed separation plan.
According to an International Panel on Fissile Materials report, the eight reactors alone will yield 1,250 kg of weapons-grade plutonium a year, enough to build 250 Nagasaki-type bombs. In addition, the PFBR and Dhruva will respectively produce 130 and 20-25 kg of plutonium annually. India can use imported uranium for its safeguarded reactors and dedicate scarce domestic uranium exclusively to military uses, generating up to 200 kg of plutonium after reprocessing.
This will each year allow India to more than triple its existing estimated plutonium inventory of 500 kg, itself enough for 100 warheads. The deal leaves India free to build even more weapons-dedicated facilities. Surely, this puts India's potential nuclear arsenal way beyond the realm of a "minimum deterrent". This should put paid to the argument that the deal will cap India's nuclear-military capability. If anything, the deal panders to India's vaulting nuclear ambitions.
Washington made unique exceptions in the global non-proliferation order for India primarily to recruit it as a close, if subordinate, strategic ally for reasons elaborated since 2000 by Condoleezza Rice, Ashley Tellis and Philip Zelikow, among others. A strong rationale was to create a counterfoil to China, and an anchor within a US-dominated Asian security architecture, on a par with Japan and Israel.
There's a price to pay for this. This isn't merely acquiescence in US strategic-political plans, or accommodation to Washington's pressures in respect of Iran. It also, critically, lies in potentially triggering a regional nuclear-arms race and abandoning the fight for global nuclear disarmament. It is sordid that India, long an apostle of nuclear disarmament, should end up apologising for mass-annihilation weapons.
Will the deal help India achieve energy security? Nuclear power is a hazardous and accident-prone energy source. Its radiation is an invisible but deadly poison; it leaves extremely toxic wastes which remain active for thousands of years. No solution to the waste-storage, leave alone disposal, problem is on the horizon.
Nuclear power is costly. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study estimates US unit costs of 6.7 cents for nuclear, 4.2 cents for coal, and 3.8-5.6 cents for gas. In India, power from nuclear plants under construction will cost Rs 3-plus. But the winning bid for the coal-based Sasan project is only Rs 1.20.
Nuclear power has a bleak future worldwide - despite global warming, which the nuclear industry claims it can mitigate. Nuclear power can only make an insignificant contribution to greenhouse gas reduction. A just-published Oxford Research Group study says that for nuclear industry's contribution to be significant, the global industry would have to construct about one reactor a week for 60 years - an absurdity.
Nuclear power in India is less than 3 per cent of its total electricity capacity. Even if its utopian mid-century targets materialise, nuclear power will only contribute 6-7 per cent to power generation. What price are we paying for it?
The writer is a commentator on public affairs.
Nuclear Nightmare In Japan: Saying no to poisoned power
A mere 16 kg of uranium dioxide was enough to cause what has been acknowledged even by the global nuclear industry and its UN lobby, the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the world’s fifth worst nuclear disaster. There are many lessons for us in India in Tokaimura—and in the Wolsong reactor leak in S. Korea, which followed.
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