Nuclear power's Achilles' Heel

Nuclear power will create more problems, including water stress, displacement and
environmental hazards, than any other energy source

Praful Bidwai Delhi

In all the debate that has taken place in India over the past 44 months on the nuclear deal with the US, there has been little questioning of the claimed appropriateness, relevance, safety and environmental soundness of atomic energy, especially in the Indian context.
This is strange considering nuclear power has proved extremely controversial in those very countries, the OECD states, which have invested the most in it. For instance, the US has not ordered a new reactor since 1973, and Western Europe is only now constructing its first reactor since 1991, in Finland.
Nuclear power bristles with safety problems, because of its deadly radiation hazard, routine releases of toxic substances, potential for accidents like Chernobyl, and its legacy of radioactive wastes, which remain dangerous for thousands of years. Science has found no solution to the problem of storing high-level wastes, leave alone disposing them of. Several European parliaments have resolved to phase out nuclear power unless a solution is found.
No less significant is the issue of the burden that nuclear power places on resources, and its relatively limited utility in societies like India where the central electricity grid is relatively underdeveloped and where decentralised energy generation is sorely needed.
Nuclear reactors can only provide base-load electricity because they can't change their output to meet variable demand. But in India, the more critical issue is peak load, determined by the day-night differences in demand, non-industrial needs like agricultural operations and seasonal variations. Here, nuclear power is irrelevant.
And yet, US lobbyists like assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs Richard Boucher have been hard selling the deal claiming it's "a good agreement for the Americans and the Indian people. In terms of turning on the lights for kids to do homework, I think we ought to just go ahead with it." In his interview to Outlook, an Indian weekly, Boucher repeated: "This is an enormous opportunity to provide clean power for Indians, an enormous opportunity to turn on the lights in places of India where they need power"- guess for what?-"for kids to do their homework."
This statement is doubly obnoxious. First, it arrogantly asserts that Indians won't have electricity without America's munificence: no deal, no power, no progress! And second, it wrongly assumes that nuclear power is indispensable to providing domestic lighting in India's villages, when it's manifestly incapable of doing so.
Nuclear power poses acute safety problems in India. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has an appalling record of exposing hundreds of workers to radiation doses well above its own permissible limits. Almost all DAE installations have had accidents, including a fire at the Narora power station in 1993, the collapse of a containment dome at Kaiga in 1994, and a valve failure exposing workers to massive radiation doses at Kalpakkam in 2003.
At Koodankulam in southern Tamil Nadu, the DAE is building two 1000 MW Russian reactors in violation of its own regulations. These stipulate that a 1.6-km radius zone around a nuclear station must have no habitation. The next five-km radius area must be a "sterilised zone", where "the density of population should be small so that rehabilitation will be easier." Finally, in the outlying 16-km radius, "the population should not exceed 10,000".
However, three large settlements lie within the five-km zone: Koodankulam (population 20,000), Idinthakarai (population 12,000) and a new tsunami (rehabilitation) colony (population 2,000-plus). Koodankulam and Idinthakarai are just two to four km from the plant as the crow flies. And parts of the tsunami colony are less than one km away. The population in the 16-km radius is at least 70,000! So either the DAE will flagrantly violate its own norms, or thousands of families will be uprooted-and separated from their livelihood as fisherfolk.
A serious problem with the DAE is that there's no independent regulatory agency to oversee its safety and enforce norms. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) is part of the DAE and reports to the Atomic Energy Commission, which is headed by the DAE secretary. The AERB does not have its own staff or equipment.
All this contravenes the International Convention on Nuclear Safety, which India signed in 1994. The DAE notoriously interferes in the AERB's functioning. Former AERB chairman A Gopalakrishnan is on record saying so in respect of the important Kaiga accident investigation.
A serious problem with nuclear power which is entirely missing from the Indian debate concerns water, in particular the high dependence of atomic power generation on freshwater. This is proving to be its Achilles' Heel in many countries, including the US. Nuclear power stations everywhere need huge amounts of water for cooling the reactor core and condensing low-temperature steam.
Nuclear plants' freshwater needs exceed the water requirements for power generation based on coal, gas or oil. Nuclear plants have thermodynamically lower steam conditions than these, and thus produce less electricity for the same quantity of circulating steam.
In general, thermoelectric generation of all kinds withdraws enormous quantities of freshwater. In the US, the thermoelectric plants' withdrawal of water accounts for 39 per cent of the total, only slightly less than water for irrigation (40 per cent). A small amount of the water is converted to the steam which drives the generator producing the power. Most of the water, however, is used for condenser cooling.
This is posing a serious problem in water-stressed areas. Nuclear power can only aggravate the problem. High withdrawal rates mean that nuclear plants cannot operate unless they have access to huge pools of water. Droughts entail their closure.
Why is so much cooling necessary? Because generation processes can only convert 40 per cent of the fuel's energy into usable electricity. The rest is waste heat. Water is used in large quantities to remove waste heat by cooling down the condensers. This requires a continuous flow of cooling water. Most of the water is returned to the environment, but much warmer.
There is, besides, the problem of net consumption of water through evaporation and other losses. Nuclear plants also consume much more freshwater than fossil-fuel plants. Generation of one unit (kilowatt-hour) of electricity requires about 140 litres of water for fossil fuel plants and 205 litres, or 46 per cent more, for nuclear plants.
Nuclear plants will become extremely predatory on freshwater sources in India's water-scarce or drought-prone regions. For instance, the Environmental Impact Assessment report for Koodamkulam says freshwater would be drawn from the Pechipparai dam, 70 km away. Each of the reactors-and six are planned-will draw 5 million litres a day (mld).
This has triggered vigorous opposition from the public because the dam is the area's only source of irrigation and drinking water. The DAE is now considering expensive desalination technology. It has awarded a Rs 116-crore contract to Tata Projects for a desalination plant to supply about 7.6 mld. Six reactors would, however, require four times as much water. Nobody knows where this will come from.
In addition, seawater is also needed to cool down the reactors. According to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the temperature of the discharged water should not be higher than 7°C above that of the sea. But temperature increases at India's coastal nuclear reactors exceed this norm: 7.7°C (Tarapur 1&2), 8.4°C (MAPS 1&2) and 9.5°C (Tarapur 3&4).
If six 1,000 MW reactors are built at Koodankulam, they will release over 13 times the heat discharged by the two MAPS reactors (220 mw each). Either the increase in the temperature of the water will be higher than at Kalpakkam. Or the amount circulated will be minimally 13 times greater. In either case, the impact on marine life will be significantly higher.
Koodankulam lies at the edge of the Gulf of Mannar, one of the world's richest marine biodiversity areas, with 3,600 species of flora and fauna, 377 of them endemic. Thermal discharges from the plant will affect this precious biological reserve. No less important is the plant's likely impact on the region's marine fisheries.
Koodankulam isn't as exceptional as might appear. The DAE is planning to build big clusters of reactors, each generating 6000 to 10,000 MW, in three other coastal locations too: Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal. The first two are notoriously drought-prone. And there's no large freshwater source in the third!
Nuclear power will create more problems, including water stress, displacement and environmental hazards, than any other energy source. We stand warned!