Japan nuclear crisis put India nuclear regulation in shambles

The Japanese are the world’s best experts in earthquake resistant designs. They are also most knowledgeable in protective designs against tsunami impact. In addition, Japan is a country which has a superb disaster management organisation and an often-rehearsed working team to handle such emergencies.

In contrast, in India we are most disorganised and unprepared for the handling of emergencies of any kind of even much less severity. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s (AERB) 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 case of earthquake engineering, the Nuclear Power Corporation strategy is to have their favourite consultants, cook up the kind of seismicity data which suits them, and there is practically no independent verification of their data or design methodologies.

A captive AERB which reports to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) makes the overall nuclear safety management in India worthless.

AERB needs to be totally re-organised to make it independent of DAE and technically stronger with recruitment of reputed specialists. Today, AERB merely serves as a lapdog of the DAE and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). It may be unlikely that the kind of a devastating earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan may strike any of Indian plants. But, the earthquake-resistant designs and tsunamiabatement measures we have taken in our plants need a high-level, in-depth review by an independent expert group, predominantly consisting of non- DAE, non-NPCIL experts.

Ever since the UPA government took over in 2004, the collusion between the PMO, the DAE, NPCIL and various corporate houses in India and abroad has substantially increased. This closeness was deliberately engineered by the PMO initially to bring home the Indo-US nuclear deal, but afterwards the continuity of this closeness between corporate houses interested in nuclear power and the concerned supervisory government agencies is distorting and damaging the independent government decisions to be taken in the public interest, whether it be in the choice of import of reactors and their cost, the environmental impact of such imported reactors or their potential deficiencies and dangers.

India has built 18 PHWRs on its own. We have mastered the design through carefully learning from the mistakes of the past, and are currently moving on to build 700 MWe units of this type. We have three generations of Indian engineers who are familiar with the PHWR. If we need more nuclear power, the safest route is to consolidate and expand on our PHWR experience, import natural uranium and build more PHWRs.

Instead, the government is scattering our energies and talent in getting imported reactors like the French EPRs in Jaitapur, of which neither Indians nor the French know much about.

If in a PHWR, a major accident occurs, we have Indian engineers and scientists of all kinds who are totally familiar with the details, who can jump in and rapidly bring the situation to normal. For Indian engineering teams to react in a similar timely and effective manner against an accident in one of the planned imported reactors will be next to impossible for at least few decades to come.

EPRS to be built in Jaitapur have not been commissioned anywhere in the world. It is a nonexistent reactor whose potential problems are totally unknown even to Areva, its developer, let alone NPCIL. It is a totally untested reactor even if Areva claims they have combined various best design features on paper in conceiving it. Its reliability and safety will be extremely low and unknown until, through different stages of operation and testing over the years, all indicated problems are rectified.

Secondly, NPCIL and Areva are silent about serious problems relating to spent fuel. Thirdly, we are buying into all these high risks at an enormous cost to the taxpayers. An EPR will cost no less than Rs.20 crore per MWe, if the government does not hide much of the costs through invisible subsidies.

As against this, an Indian PHWR will cost at the most Rs.8 crore per MWe. Therefore, the government must put on hold the import of reactors and proceed gradually forward with building just PHWRs.