Vilifying anti-nuclear protesters

Is the Manmohan Singh government doing to the Koodankulam anti-nuclear protesters what the Bush administration did to Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- invent an excuse for using military force? Going by the government's slanderous claim that the agitators are acting at the behest of foreign NGOs, the answer is yes.
Official dirty-tricks departments are hell-bent on "finding" the equivalent of "proof" of existence of "weapons of mass destruction" -- diversion of funds to support the agitators. Not a day passes without their planted stories.
Dr. Singh has himself stooped to the abysmal level of invoking the "foreign hand" and charging that the Koodankulam plant is being blocked at this pre-commissioning stage by a handful of people connected to US and Scandinavian NGOs hostile to India. Otherwise, he told Science magazine: "The thinking component" of the people favours nuclear power.
The anti-plant movement at Koodankulam isn't new, but has been around for over a decade. This is richly documented in Koodankulam Chronology (dianuke.org and lokayat.org.in).
The agitation has mobilised one lakh farmers and fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Its latest phase is an uninterrupted relay hunger-strike since October 18, with hundreds, at times thousands, participating.
Such mobilisations cannot succeed with money alone. No juicy plots written by policemen and spies will convince anyone that the movement lacks deep roots, strong moral convictions and broad-based support.
Those who level the "foreign hand" charge are obsessed with making India's energy economy dependent on foreign reactors. They have also tried to dilute the nuclear liability act under foreign pressure.
Yet, every citizen of the world has a legitimate concern about nuclear hazards, no matter where they originate. "A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere." The fallout of Chernobyl (1986) can still be detected, even on the South Pole. So can radiation from Fukushima.
Fukushima caused a tectonic shift in people's perception of nuclear hazards the world over. Even in France, which gets three-fourths of its electricity from nuclear power, an opinion poll says the people's confidence that "government action will protect them from nuclear risks is severely damaged." Nuclear risks have climbed to the fourth-highest public concern, behind unemployment, the financial crisis, and social exclusion.
Nothing could be more absurd than the allegation that "the thinking component" of the Indian population supports nuclear power. Numerous eminent thinkers have called for a moratorium on nuclear power expansion pending a broad-based audit and safety review of India's nuclear programme by a high-powered committee composed of independent experts, social scientists, civil society organisations and representatives of actual or potential victims.
They include historians Romila Thapar and Mushirul Hasan, economists Amit Bhaduri and Deepak Nayyar, political scientists Rajeev Bhargav and Achin Vanaik, former ambassadors Nirupam Sen and Madhu Bhaduri, artists Krishan Khanna and Vivan Sundaram, writer Arundhati Roy, and scientists P.M. Bhargava and P. Balaram, the director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
They were joined by former Navy chief Admiral L. Ramdas, former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairman A. Gopalakrishnan, and Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, both members of the government's own National Advisory Council. This shows an unprecedented fit between the intelligentsia's and the public's concerns about nuclear safety.
Dr. Singh's cavalier dismissal of these concerns follows the logic of his dogmatic assertion that nuclear power's grave safety problems highlighted by Fukushima have been resolved, and India can now massively expand nuclear power generation.
However, the global nuclear industry hasn't a clue about the causes and consequences of Fukushima, the world's first multi-reactor meltdown. The plant operator has failed to bring the reactors under control, and doesn't even know the location of the molten fuel.
It has just been disclosed that at the height of the Fukushima crisis, Japanese leaders didn't know the extent of damage at the plant and secretly considered evacuating Tokyo. A new investigation by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation vividly shows how "Japan teetered on the edge of an even larger nuclear crisis" than the one at the Fukushima plant.
In India, only the delusion-prone nuclear establishment believes the nuclear programme can be run safely with Russian reactors riddled with 31 design flaws (according to an official report), or the French company Areva's European Pressurised Reactors (EPR).
The EPR has not passed safety tests anywhere, including Finland and France. Their EPRs are over four years behind schedule, 95% over budget, and mired in nasty legal disputes. The French EPR may well be scrapped if the Socialists win the coming elections.
Yet, India wants to install six of these huge, unwieldy, untested 1,650 MW reactors at Jaitapur on Maharashtra's ecologically fragile Konkan Coast. Nuclear plants are also planned in Gujarat, Andhra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa., where they face stiff, determined and informed opposition.
These nuclear projects can only be pushed through with brute force and mass-scale suppression of liberties, paving the way for a police state. That's the horrendous price the imposition of nuclear power will inflict on Indian democracy.
Yet, if our policy-makers want to resolve the power crisis, and promote safe climate-friendly energy, they should embrace the renewable energy revolution sweeping the globe.
Renewable Energy (RE) accounts for one-fifth of the world's power capacity and delivers 18% of global electricity as well as final energy consumption -- in contrast to only 2% for nuclear power. Unlike nuclear reactors, which take 10-15 years to erect, RE facilities are installed in just months and can quickly relieve our power crisis.
Globally, solar electricity is growing by 53% annually and wind power by 32%. Solar-thermal, biomass and tidal and geothermal sources are also growing rapidly. Developing countries are playing an important role in driving the renewables revolution. India can take the lead here.
The number of nuclear reactors worldwide peaked at 444 in 2004. It's now down to under 400, and will soon decrease to less than 300. It would be foolhardy to chase this exhausted, outdated and unpopular energy source and miss the renewables revolution.

The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.E-mail: [email protected]