It is now over a year since the nuclear disaster occurred at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. Taking a cue from the mishap, many countries were prompted into a rethink of their nuclear energy policy. Germany announced it would be closing down all its nuclear reactors by 2022; Italy too has decided to ban nuclear power completely in its country. In India, the situation is a classic case of Catch 22 Amidst the mass agitation at the proposed Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and Jaitapur in Maharastra, the Union Government has dismissed calls for a renunciation of nuclear power on the lines of Germany, Japan, and others, saying that to do so will be harmful to India's interests. The government has also defended its stance by pointing to India's safety record and its determination to not compromise on this front.

FUKUSHIMA CHAPTER
What happened at Fukushima in 2011 was definitely unfortunate. But can we shift the entire blame of loss of man and property to the Fukushima nuclear disaster? Perhaps not. While there was loss to property and disruption of normal life, there was hardly any direct loss of life due to the accident. As a silver lining, the way the accident was handled — compared to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 — showed how much progress has been achieved in nuclear emergency management. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant was almost five times bigger than a normal NPP in terms of power generation and contained a large quantum of nuclear fuel. Yet, with better emergency management, the maximum radiation was less than 0.4% of that released during the Chernobyl disaster. Apart from this, the extraordinary natural forces in action — the rare occurrence of the tremendous stress load of an earthquake coupled with the unprecedented shear load of a tsunami — cannot be ignored.

Under these facts, can we allow an accident (in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima in Japan), arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail India’s dreams to be an energy-independent nation? When a few European countries, particularly Germany, decide to phase out nuclear power, it should not become a blanket argument for dismantling nuclear programmes. Moreover, the decision of Germany suits its current scenario. It is a relatively power-sufficient nation and hence can afford to lose a few such plants for political
expediency. More importantly, experts also argue that Germany has completely exhausted its nuclear resources.

In addition to this, much of the destructive power of nuclear accidents is compared against the benchmarks of the atomic bombing of Japan by US forces during the Second World War. It would be inappropriate to compare a nuclear bomb with a nuclear power plant: Civilian nuclear applications in the form of a power plants are designed to deliver small amounts of energy in a sustainable manner over a far larger time frame.

THE GLOBAL NUCLEAR ARENA
Facts suggest that the agitators protesting against India’s nuclear power programme are mistaken when they say that some Western nations have ended their nuclear programme, or that Japan is reconsidering its plans for nuclear power plant expansion. Study indicates that most of the developed nations continue to extract about 30-40% of their power needs from their nuclear programmes: China currently operates 13 nuclear power plants; it has 27 more under construction, with plans to add another 50; France derives most of its energy primarily from its 58 NPPs; the United States leaves everyone behind with 104. Moreover, in a worldwide scenario - according to IAEA reports - there are currently 29 countries operating 441 nuclear power plants, with a total capacity of about 375 GW. The industry now has more than 14,000 reactor-years of experience. Sixty more units, with a total target capacity of 58.6 GW, are also under construction.

However, despite our ambitious plans, India still manages to show dismal figures when it comes to nuclear power generation . We are not generating even 5000 MW of nuclear power from the total of about 150 GW of electricity generation, most of it coming from coal. India is also blessed with the rare, and very important, nuclear fuel of the future – Thorium. It cannot afford to lose the opportunity to emerge as the energy capital of the world. Thanks to our Thorium reserves, we have the potential to be the first nation to become a largely fossil fuel-free state, which will also save us the $100 billion annually which we spend on importing petroleum and coal. Also, despite scientists’ best efforts, the truly green sources of power - solar and wind power - are not yet efficient and are still excessively dependent on weather and sunshine. Nuclear power, on the other hand, provides a relatively clean, high-density source of reliable energy.

ENERGY-NOMICS
Every single atom carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its nucleus. Often called Type-1 fuel, it is hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than conventional Type-0 fuels like coal, petroleum, natural gas and other forms of fossil fuels. It is estimated that 500 kg of Type-1 fuel, like naturally occurring Uranium, can generate the same amount of energy as is produced by 10,000 tonnes of coal. Today, India finds itself going through a phase of rapid economic empowerment and industrialisation. The primary focus is the development of key infrastructure and the improvement in conditions in the 600,000-plus villages where more than 750 million people live. Owing to this, there will be a massive growth in energy consumption and demand. Statistics predict that total electricity demand will shoot up from the current figures of 150,000 MW to at least over 950,000 MW by the year 2030.

ALTERNATE MEANS Abstinence from nuclear power is an incomplete response without the logical alternative. Some part of the future need, although only a small fraction, will come from solar and wind sources, with great unpredictability. A part would be offset by hydro-power too. But in all probability we will continue to increase our reliance on fossil-based fuel power generation methods – which are far more polluting and harmful to public health than nuclear plants Every year, human activities add about 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The IPCC estimates that 26% of these emissions (about 7.6 billion tonnes) is a direct consequence of electricity generation requirements. The WHO also estimates that about 1.3 million people lose their lives as a result of urban outdoor air pollution alone, and about 140,000 are causalities to the adaptation challenges posed by climate change. Thus, the pollution caused by power generation activities, and the associated climate change are directly or indirectly responsible for about 481,000 deaths every year. Comparatively, in the case of the worst civilian nuclear disaster ever at Chernobyl, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic radiation (UNSCEAR) predicted up to 4,000 cancer cases (often curable) due to the accident, apart from 57 direct causalities.

THE ACCIDENTS On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid - producing around 5 megawatts of electric power. Since then, there have been four major incidents of NPP failure — the Kyshtym accident at a fuel reprocessing plant in 1957, the relatively smaller Three Mile Island meltdown (United States), the much bigger Chernobyl accident (USSR, 1986) and the recent Japanese accident at Fukushima. The first accident was purely due to underdeveloped technology, and much of the blame for the next two disasters is attributed to human error. Even in the case of the Fukushima disaster of 2011, there were extraordinary natural forces in action — the rare occurrence of the tremendous stress load of an earthquake coupled with the unprecedented shear load of a tsunami. The occurrence of four failures in six decades cannot be made out as a case for completely disbanding the technology. Former Indian President and scientist Dr APJ Abdul Kalam appears right when he puts this example in support of nuclear programme in India. In 1903, the Wright brothers translated into reality the remarkable dream of controlled human flight. In 1908, the first flight disaster occurred, which severely injured Orville Wright and killed his co-passenger. Today air accidents kill more than 1,500 people every year. Consider whether we'd be flying between distant cities, across oceans, and over continents if the incident of 1908, or the ones later, were used as a reason to discard human flight? Hence, as Dr Kalam asserts rightly - improvement, and not escapism, should be the step forward.