Stressing that Indian atomic power plants were constantly upgraded to match current levels of safety requirements and were safe, scientists on Monday said that the events in Japan cannot slow down the country's nuclear energy programme in any way. Indian organisations had already announced they would revisit all safety aspects of nuclear plants in the country after the situation in Japan.
Addressing a packed media conference, Srikumar Banerjee , Chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission(AEC), said through the television and the press there was alarming news but all of it was not factually correct. He said it was wrong to say there was a nuclear cloud over Japan and what had happened was a chemical explosion and not a nuclear explosion, he clarified. The reactors had a safe shutdown and it was the cooling process that was affected. The plant was built to withstand earthquakes but the tsunamis led to the cooling systems shutting down since it was flooded, he said.
No high radiation
Dr. Banerjee also dispelled reports that there was high radiation as a result in the vicinity of the plant. According to information collated by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), radiation levels around the plant in Japan were normal.
S.K. Jain, NPCIL chairperson, said that they had taken the events in Japan very seriously and safety audits of nuclear plants were of primary concern. Unlike regulatory practices in other countries, in India the regulatory board gave clearance for five years at a time and after that it was mandatory to conduct a safety assessment to seek relicensing, he said. In fact, three plants which had completed five years were undergoing a safety audit, he pointed out. He said that all the nuclear plants in the country operated on a high level of safety.
At the Tarapur atomic power station, where two units are 40 years old, they had undergone detailed safety audits in 2004 and requirements to upgrade the safety systems to current levels were incorporated, Mr. Jain said, adding that the company was meeting all the norms of nuclear safety. Also Indian plants had a passive system for cooling the reactors which was not dependent on power supply. In Tarapur, which came up in 1969, the seismic requirements were different at that time and it has all been re-qualified according to new seismic parameters.
To questions on tsunamis, Dr. Banerjee said that it was the eastern coast of India that was more active and the last tsunami was on the west coast in 1945. He said the main thing in containing a nuclear accident was heat management.
Structural integrity
R.K. Sinha, director, BARC, said data on the impact of the earthquake in Japan on the structural integrity of the nuclear plant would have to be studied. He said in Japan the plant design had taken into account tsunami waves up to a height of 6.5 metres and that is where the diesel generators for the cooling systems were placed. However, the water levels rose to between seven and ten metres, causing power failure.
In India, there was a thorough modelling carried out on tsunami levels and this was validated with actual levels. The bottom line is to avoid a station blackout, he said. “We will get data from the Japanese and look for lacunae in our systems and improve things,” he added.
Mr. Jain said the situation in Japan was being closely monitored and safety will be the overriding parameter. “We have access to transparent information which will enable us to revisit our plants and come back to the media and share information,” he said. He said that there will be no short cuts and the industry was perfectly capable of conducting a safety audit.
No compromise
Dr. Banerjee said: “When there is a question of safety and if the costs increase, there will be no compromise. If the cost is too high then we won't have a nuclear plant.” It has to be viable, he said. “Without sacrificing safety, we will have to give a competitive price and tariff has to be comparable to the price of thermal power generation in the area,” he added.
Survived calamities
An NPCIL statement said Indian nuclear plants remained safe when two natural calamities struck India in the past decade. But it said there was no room for complacencyDespite a major earthquake in Bhuj on January 26, 2001, the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station near Surat, Gujarat, continued to operate safely, the NPCIL said. Similarly, during the December 2004 tsunami in Tamil Nadu, the Madras Atomic Power Station was safely shut down without any radiological consequence. The plant was restarted within days after a regulatory review.
The Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, where two new reactors of 1000 MW each are being built, also remained unaffected by the tsunami because the plant was sited higher than the sea level.
Keywords: Japan earth quake, Indian nuclear plants, nuclear accidents
While the claims mentioned above are indeed moot, India,our engineers and our scientists need to take the public at large into confidence. The Japanese people and their government in-spite of a very grave tragedy have behaved in a very mature manner - reports in 'The Hindu' about a very disciplined response are indeed very touching. There have been very little reports of looting, hoarding, profiteering, robbery etc. This is something that all of us can learn from them even in our day to day lives. Despite huge technological accomplishments and sophistication, they had to bow down before Nature. We cannot claim that we are superior to them in terms of safety measures. That we have sailed so far without much of a reported anxiety is entirely due to our good luck and to the benevolence of Mother Nature. We can use this opportunity to greatly develop our disaster management techniques, specifically in the area of robotics which seems to be the way to go as far as Nuclear Reactors go. Despite initial catastrophic failures with the space shuttles, the American Engineers and Scientists pressed on and perfected the technology. Likewise the Japanese are also capable - they have risen Phoenix like from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they will come out of this one as well and will show to the world what it takes to accomplish that.
First of all the sad state of affairs is that Nuclear Power stations are run by Central government agencies. Bearing that in mind significant portion of monetary funds are utilized in promotion of Hindi language, Hindi communications etc rather than educating local workers and populace about safety and safety measures in general. Let's ask if safety manuals in Koondangulam and Madras (Kalpakkam) Nuclear plants are even available in the Tamil - the language the local populace could read and understand. Sorry Tamil is banned due central setup. Same is the also the case with the Thermal plant in Neyveli. One may recall complaints raised during the Bhopal tragedy, safety manuals were available only in English. Sorry - this whole central government setup and Hindi promotion should have a place in Nuclear plants among other places. One may recall that lack of Hindi manuals and instructions was raised at Bhopal. Such carefree attitude of Central government scientists with regard to safety of operation of these nuclear plants also deserve to be questioned.Indian Nuclear plants including MAPS and Koodangulam should not deserve to operate and should be immediately shut down.
Indian nuclear engineers have acquired a strange inappropriate attitude. Firstly they are not amenable to scrutiny, they try to crouch behind false know-all attitude and divert a debate to a meaningless one. The trump card is secrecy. For all that, reactor science is well published like any other commercial technology and accessible to technical people who are interested. In this context it is news everywhere that the cooling system failed due to flooding of some facilities so nobody is imagining that the failure is caused by a tremor. Simply to put it straight the people are not confident that they can handle serious eventualities. Therefore it is important for our scientist friends to start demonstrating their conduct and competence in some ways than rubbishing healthy questioning.
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