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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: PMANE

Gracchi Brothers Redux

04 Sat Jan 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Gracchi Brothers Redux

Tags

aam aadmi, Aam Aadmi Party, AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, Energiewende, energy, Gaius Gracchus, Germany, Gracchi brothers, nuclear, People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy, PMANE, renewable, Rome, Sambhar Lake, solar, Tiberius Gracchus

In a short time, the Aam Aadmi Party has risen from nothing to capture the mindshare of voters who are tired of all of India’s political choices. The demand for None-Of-The-Above (NOTA) option on the ballot is the clearest indicator of this pox-on-both-your-houses belief of many citizens. Unfortunately, politics is never so simple that a reboot – a fresh start – will untangle its onerous web. Whether springing from amateurishness or ignorance, the AAP’s energy policy is a sure recipe to plunge India into darkness.

The AAP’s outright rejection of nuclear energy and its courting of SP Udayakumar, leader of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), to represent the AAP in Tamil Nadu should cause an overdose of orexin (panic inducing hormone) in anyone. The pitfall of voting a single-issue group into power, however desirable their platform, is the failure of said group to understand the complexities of other policy areas.

As of November 2013, India’s total power generation stood at approximately 232 GW. If the country intends to grow its economy at 9% per annum, electricity consumption needs to needs to more than double by 2035 and grow almost seven-fold by 2050. Presently, some 300 million Indians have no access to electricity and for the others, India’s definition of electrification seems a cruel statistical joke – a village is deemed electrified if just 10% of the households have access to electricity. India needs all the energy it can get from every source possible to sustain growth and create jobs for its hundreds of millions of aam aadmis; it is criminal irresponsibility to reject nuclear energy on ideological grounds.

The AAP also ignores the ₹17,270 crores India has spent on constructing the first two nuclear reactors at Kudankulam. Furthermore, shutting down nuclear power will negate not only the benefits of the Indo-US nuclear deal that were won with hard bargaining but it will also dismantle the vast nuclear infrastructure that has been built up since even before independence in physical assets as well as know-how. Abandoning the nuclear path – electricity is not the only thing nuclear reactors are used for – will affect medicine, agriculture, mining, archaeology, hydrology, and several other fields that are made easier by the use of radioisotopes. The AAP’s decision to oppose nuclear energy will also hang a question mark on India’s nuclear arsenal – it can hardly be argued that only power reactors are dangerous and those used for military purposes are not.

It is also disconcerting that while the AAP has been quick to denounce nuclear energy, that quickness has not been on display in suggesting alternatives. Much is made of Germany’s heroic retreat from nuclear energy, its Energiewende, but even the Left-leaning magazine Dissent called Berlin’s Green Energy Revolution a dismal and disquieting failure. Electricity prices have climbed by up to 75%, carbon emissions have increased, subsidies on renewable energy have climbed through the roof, and ironically, Germany’s occasional imports of energy from its neighbours to tide over a lean period have come from nuclear power. Given the real cost of the Energiewende, it seems more of an anti-nuclear obsession than a thoroughly considered policy – much like the AAP’s policy.

The arguments in favour of nuclear energy are many and though not the focus of this article, underline the single-issue nature of the AAP. The result of abandoning nuclear energy for its potential risks comes at the actual price of 115,000 deaths per annum and a negative health impact to millions of people due to coal power. The medical costs of coal sets India back approximately $4.6 billion per annum, to which can be added environmental clean up costs for electricity generation, transportation, and mining. A coal mining death every five days pales in comparison to the magnitude of the other losses. As for renewables, wind is fickle as the Coimbatore region can testify after 2013, and using the size of the Sambhar lake project as an indicator, India would need to cover an area approximately double the size of Goa to meet today’s needs and an area the size of Punjab by 2050 to meet energy demands via solar power alone.

The AAP came to power in Delhi on a japa of good governance, though many are wary of their stated plans even on that matter. Like a bunch of activists propelled unexpectedly into the political fray, they have hurriedly reached out to other activist outfits such as the PMANE. Unfortunately for Arvind Kejriwal and his merry band, a coherent national policy is more than the sum of individual issues; energy affects labour, health, industry, and foreign policy; labour and health affect industry and agriculture; industry affects environment, security, and health; and so on. No one issue can be allowed to dominate the national scene.

Were the AAP genuinely concerned about their self-declared constituency, it would focus more, as the cliché goes, on increasing the size of the pie rather than dividing it into even more yet smaller pieces. There are genuine concerns in the nuclear industry that are drowned out in cacophony of activists, for example, the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2012. Good governance would be better served, as would energy, labour, industry, environment, and health, were the AAP to create pressure in parliament to institute the nuclear safety suggestions made by the CAG and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Implementation of rules and regulations is a core principle of good governance, but the AAP has chosen so far only to chart territory new and unfamiliar to it. Perhaps this is the result of the party’s inexperience and their desire to leapfrog through India’s national conundrums to resemble a mature entity; this has not worked well so far. It is too early to see how much the AAP lives up to its anti-corruption promise but until now, it has made the news for its disbursement of national wealth through ill-conceived subsidies than any coherent policy.

About 2,100 years ago, there lived two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, in Rome. They were nobiles who forced a populist agenda on Rome and in the end, their actions were a fatal blow from which the Republic would never recover. Though their reforms had some legitimate grounding, the Gracchi brothers are more remembered for the turbulence and violence that marked their time as consuls than any reforms they brought in to alleviate the plight of the masses (none except the grain subsidy outlived them). The AAP would do well to note their example.

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India Glowing

02 Sun Dec 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

AEC, AERB, ASN, Bhavini, CSR, DAE, electricity, energy, ENSREG, EPP, EPZ, IAEA, India, INES, INSAG, KKNPP, Kudankulam, NPCIL, NRC, nuclear, PMANE, power

Two days ago, a proposal by the Government of India to sell a 10% stake in the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd (NPCIL) and list the utilities company on the bourses was revealed. NPCIL’s worth is evaluated at Rs. 25,428 crores, with a turnover of Rs. 7,914 crores and a net profit of Rs. 1,906 crores last year. The largest nuclear power company in India (the GoI also owns Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd, or Bhavini, which is in charge of India’s fast reactors), NPCIL operates 21 reactors including the newly started facility and Kudankulam I and generates 5,780 MW of power, with five more reactors under construction that would provide an additional 3,800 MW. NPCIL generates 10 MW from windmills, also at Kudankulam.

Normally, this would be a moment of great expectations; the argument for a gradual privatisation of the nuclear energy sector is strong, and it may be hoped that a 10% divestment is the first step in such a direction. Yet, as is often the case in India, no good news comes untainted. The cause of concern in this case is the abysmal state of nuclear regulatory mechanisms in the country. Whether one calls it the arrogance of babudom, the conflation of secrecy and security, or pseudo-democracy, the functioning of India’s Atomic Energy Commission leaves even ardent supporters of nuclear power (such as myself) quite underwhelmed.

France obtains almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power; the United States, though deriving a lesser percentage of overall electricity from nuclear power than France, nonetheless operated over 100 commercial reactors. The reliance of both these countries on nuclear power is based on the involvement of the private sector in the industry and good regulatory mechanisms. As in many sectors, private firms have shown greater efficiency in running utility companies, nuclear as well as with other fuels. However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (United States) and Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (France) work in close collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s International Nuclear Safety Group and/or the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group to ensure effective safety precautions at every step of the nuclear energy generation process. These safety standards extend not just to nuclear power plant workers but also the citizenry in the immediate vicinity, comprising of safety gear, medical facilities, and even evacuation plans as a last resort.

For example, INSAG’s Basic Safety Principles for Nuclear Power Plants recommends that “emergency plans are prepared before the startup of the plant, and are exercised periodically to ensure that protection measures can be implemented in the event of an accident.” These measures are to be “taken on and off the site to protect the public from any serious releases of radioactive materials from the plant.” What the ASN and INSAG call ‘Defence in Depth’ is a policy that seeks to primarily prevent any accident, and failing that, to limit its consequences. Procedures have the three-stage goal of trying to compensate for human error and machine failure, containing damage to the plant itself, and protecting the nearby public and environment in a worst-case scenario.

Safety is not viewed in merely tactical terms but is also built into policy. INSAG’s Management of Operational Safety in Nuclear Power Plants states that a regulatory body must provide “critical self-assessment and correction.” The regulatory body must monitor facilities; it must take action if the safety management system is found to be inadequate or ineffective; it should strive to remain non-bureaucratic and technically competent, as well as ensure competence of workers at nuclear facilities; any safety policy must be clear, as must be the procedures it tries to institute. At a governmental level, another document, Safety Culture, asks, is the regulatory body satisfactory? Are there unnecessary impediments to its functioning? Does the body have an adequate budget that keeps up with inflation and allows it to hire the appropriate talent? Is there sufficient safety research? Are there effective collaborations with other bodies on safety? Is there undue influence on the regulatory body?

This brief overview of French and US safety standards indicates why they have not hesitated to open their industry to private players such as American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Southern Company, and others. France’s Areva, despite a large government share, has a number of minority partners, even international ones.

In India, the scene is dismal – a recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India found the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, India’s version of the ASN or NRC, to be an abject failure in its responsibilities. No authority was given to AERB to create, modify, or discard rules on nuclear safety and security; there was no comprehensive nuclear safety policy; licensing of radiological equipment was found to be deficient; regulatory inspections were not performed.

The recent demonstrations against the nuclear power plant coming up at Kudankulam have attracted much attention. The facility presently accommodates two Russian VVER-1000 reactors. This reactor has four layers of radioactive containment as well as a passive safety system, making it a fairly safe design. While the broad opposition of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy is nonsensical, one cannot but consider their case on grounds of an incompetent nuclear conclave in India – technology is, after all, only as good as the people operating it.

A recent RTI filed against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant reveals that no plans have been made in case of a Level 7 (on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale) accident. Furthermore, the NPP’s Emergency Preparedness Plan did not envisage any duties outside the plant and is hence an internal document of the NPCIL. Accordingly, no offsite emergency drills had been conducted – in fact, no evacuation has even been envisaged. In fact, beyond the 1.5-kms radius exclusion zone, the responsibility of relief in case of accident has been put on the district administration. This lackadaisical approach to safety violates not only INSAG guidelines but even common sense.

 NPCIL RTI 1  NPCIL RTI 2  NPCIL RTI 3  NPCIL RTI  4
 NPCIL RTI 5  NPCIL RTI 6  NPCIL RTI 7

In terms of Corporate Social Responsibility, government sources say that the amount allocated for the surrounding areas has been paltry. V. Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the PMO, told Parliament earlier this year that a mere Rs. 11 crores had been released over four years, adequate only for a handful of classrooms and a computer laboratory to serve as a photo opportunity for the government and NPCIL. However, Narayanasamy also mentions an additional Rs. 500 crores that had been sanctioned for the improvement of the environs of the KKNPP but not a penny of this has yet been seen.

It is such carelessness that gives even the most vociferous advocate of nuclear power pause. Development is indeed important, but not at the risk of nuclear contamination. Such practices cannot be allowed as private operators, who can be expected to implement only the minimum legal requirements, enter the nuclear market. Most shocking is that this neglect of nuclear safety is not done to cut corners and save on costs as one might expect in a shady private operation; it is done out of sheer incompetence and lack of accountability. What is more, the cloak of secrecy that protects everything nuclear in India, be it a stationary requisition order or a bomb design, will dutifully conceal that which the public have a right to know. This is the danger of nuclear power in India – the management, not the technology. At this rate, India’s babus will certainly have India glowing, but it may be a radioactive glow.


This post appeared on Tehelka Blogs on December 5, 2012.

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