As title implies there is something critical and cryptical about the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.Let me just give you a jist of it. Koodankulam (located in Tirunelveli)is an Indo-Russian nuclear Power Plant Project which was signed way back in 1988 by Indian Ex-PrimeMinister LT. Mr.RAJIV GANDHI and Soviet union President Mr.Mikhail Gorbachev. Initially the groundworks for the project began in 1997 and the expense was estimated to be $3Billions (i.e.13k+ Crores) and was planned to be 60% functional from 2010 and full functional from 2011 mid which could generate upto 9.8GW (Giga Watts) Electricity.
CRITICAL ISSUES
But things seems to be a bit untidy for this project to take off. People residing in 12 villages in and around koodankulam had raised their hands against this. Things became more weird from October 2011, where people went on for an instant Hunger strike and violent activities blocking highway roads.They cited their reasons to be the following
1.) Koodankulam is an unsafe project.
2.) It may lead to disasters like Nuclear waste, Radioactive waste, Nuclear Accidents resulting in Loss of Life and property.
3.) A disaster like the one similar to japan that happened in march 2011 might occur.
To eradicate those lame reasons and fear in the mindset of those people, a separate committee was formed to analyse and monitor the Koodankulam power plant. The commitee report made it clear everything and reported the power plant to be safest one in India. The people violating against aren't even satisfied. During this time our Ex-president Dr.A.P.J.ABDUL KHALAM rose to occasion and declared a clean report that it was indeed a much safer plant and an useful one too. People claimed it to be an EYE-WASH from KHALAM sir. So what they actually want? Are their Reasons genuine rather appealing? is there someone at the back of them digging new problems?have a look at our below paragraph
CRYPTICAL ISSUES:
Let us have a closer look onto the history of this koodankulam project and the obstacles it faced during its initiation. When India and Russia signed this Prestigious project there was one country to question this pact. Its none other than our so called Friend USA. The first country to open up a legal case on this project citing reasons that this project overrides the NSG (nuclear supplier groups)regulations and terms & conditions. So one might surely be thinking what is there for USA to put a case on this? The reason is so transparent that this koodankulam can have a hand on economic growth and might improve the intimacy between India and Russia. India's well-wisher USA doesn't want this to happen. They started to put on hurdles one after another.But Indians are best in hurdle race. On the eve of completion of this project Catholic fisher-mans started the protest.(i am not a casteist or racist refer wikipedia if you want). SP UDAYAKUMAR who leads this protest against this project had studied and worked in USA for 12years. Seems a Connection? or the connector of USA and our local fisherman? i smell that those catholic fishermans are innocents and they are induced by some other forces. one such force may be Udayakumar?? so you readers can understand the seriousness of this problem?? its not a problem of villages or states. Its the prestige of USA vs others.
BENEFITS OF THIS PROJECT
People residing in tamilnadu might know the powercut-mania here. 2hrs inside chennai, 4hrs outside chennai
1.) If kudankulam comes in 2012 power-cut gets rapidly reduced to 1 hr or 30mins inside chennai and 2hrs outside Chennai in 2013.
2.) From 2013 we can generate more power and can sell to other states and can get a 10% rise in State Economy thereby constituting the Nation's economy.
So who else is going to be the negotiator to solve this problems?? CM or PM or PRESIDENT? well GOD KNOWS.
Thanks for spending your time here. Waiting for your comments. Every single comment will influence me for sure.
REGARDS
UNGAL NANBAN ARUN
Hi Arun,
ReplyDeleteThe article is good. But I want to share my thoughts on this.
The agitation which the people carrying out may not be wise. They may do it for money and other benefits. But we should not have a one-sided thinking.
It is true that other type of power plants (like the Neyveli lignite corporation) and chemical factories (like Union Carbide) are more dangerous when compared to any nuclear plant in contributing to global warming as only water vapour will be coming out of any nuclear plant wherein other chemical factories and power plants give out the green house gases (like Co2)which causes environmental pollution.
But this doesn't mean that a nuclear power plant does not have any disadvantage.
I really don't know in detail about the complexity of the nuclear plants or human errors or radiation to people living around it. But one thing is certain that there is no one in the world knows how to store the nuclear waste.
The half life of some of the most radio-active materials is more than 10,000 years. No country in the world could plan for such a longtime. We can perhaps plan for say, 500 years... After that? No one has an answer.
In my opinion, we have got a nuclear reactor at Kalpakkam and if there is one more going to come at koodankulam, its ok.
But is it sensible to do something without calculating the possible outcomes? We know that it is going to solve power problems to some extent; we know that it is going to contribute to our economic growth to some extent. Is it ok to do something which would have a negative impact at least after 500 years? And how we are going to protect the nuclear plant, nuclear wastes from terrorists?
And also look at the complexity of its operations:
Nuclear power plants are some of the most sophisticated and complex energy systems ever designed. Any complex system, no matter how well it is designed and engineered, cannot be deemed failure-proof. Stephanie Cooke has said that:
"The reactors themselves were enormously complex machines with an incalculable number of things that could go wrong. When that happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, another fault line in the nuclear world was exposed. One malfunction led to another, and then to a series of others, until the core of the reactor itself began to melt, and even the world's most highly trained nuclear engineers did not know how to respond. The accident revealed serious deficiencies in a system that was meant to protect public health and safety"
The 1979 Three Mile Island accident inspired Perrow's book Normal Accidents, where a nuclear accident occurs, resulting from an unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system. TMI was an example of a normal accident because it was "unexpected, incomprehensible, uncontrollable and unavoidable".
Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a consequence of the system's immense complexity. Such modern high-risk systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he termed a 'normal accident'. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to abandon such technology entirely.
A fundamental issue related to complexity is that nuclear power systems have exceedingly long lifetimes. The timeframe involved from the start of construction of a commercial nuclear power station, through to the safe disposal of its last radioactive waste, may be 100 to 150 years.
And the waste disposal :
ReplyDeleteOf particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 17 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life two million years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,000 years).[26] Nuclear waste requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it from interacting with the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management strategy involving storage, disposal or transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.Governments around the world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, though there has been limited progress toward long-term waste management solutions.
In second half of 20th century, several methods of disposal of radioactive waste were investigated by nuclear nations. Which are;
* "Long term above ground storage", not implemented.
* "Disposal in outer space", not implemented.
* "Deep borehole disposal", not implemented.
* "Rock-melting", not implemented.
* "Disposal at subduction zones", not implemented.
* "Ocean disposal", done by USSR, UK, Switzerland, USA, Belgium, France, Netherland, Japan, Sweden, Russia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy and South Korea. (1954-93) It's not permitted by international agreements.
* "Sub seabed disposal", not implemented, not permitted by international agreements.
* "Disposal in ice sheets", rejected in Antarctic Treaty
* "Direct injection", done by USSR and USA.
So finally, I would say, "We may go ahead with the koodankulam reactor. But it would be foolish even to think about having another reactor in any part of the world until we have a clear answer for how we are gonna store the nuclear waste; how we are gonna protect it from anti-social elements; how we are gonna deal with the extremely complex and danger prone system"
excellent info arun!!
ReplyDelete@karpaga seetha:: thanks for ur comments n i am honoured and yeah nobody knows to have a 100% perfectly working system without side effects..... But one thing remains as a fact that this Kudankulam is more more safer than any other power plants in India and even in South ASIA :)
ReplyDelete@DEVA:: THANKS buddy :)
Your right about the koodhankulam issue....... even anna hazaare's movement for corruption is also a game played by those americans for disintegrating the sovereignty and also the democracy of our country.... try to gain more knowledge about it and publish a blog about it separately next time... :) :) :)
ReplyDelete