Poison Plant

A remote village in Tamil Nadu lives in dread. The massive domes of two nuclear plants and the dubious promise of six more promise disruption, dislocation and worse.

Nagarkoil is a small town in the Kanyakumari district of southern Tamil Nadu. You need to cross it on your way to Kudankulam, where the Nuclear Power Corporation of India is building two nuclear power reactors. Their partner in the endeavour is Russia. Six more in the 1,500-hectare complex are being planned, making Kudankulam the largest nuclear complex in India.

Though there is no clear date set for the completion of all the plants, each generating 1,000 MW, the first one is scheduled to come onstream in December this year.

In anticipation of the harvest, Nagarkoil is already changing. For example, the beef business in the town is picking up well. The Russians based here like it. There are over a hundred Russian families in Kudankulam. Almost all of them stay nearby in the nuclear township in box-type apartment blocks. The burly Russians love beef, and a number of unsuspecting Nagarkoil cattle end up on their dining table.

Land price too has rocketed in the town as well as in the semi-arid Kudankulam village. A cent (local unit of land) now could cost you anywhere between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. Some of those strapped for cash, but have land, have sold property and moved house and home elsewhere.

All this is in expectation of nuclear power transforming the place. “It’s all riding on the notion that nuclear energy is the best thing that could happen to us,” says Dr SP Udayakumar, a peace activist and resident of Nagarkoil.

For close to a decade now, Udayakumar has been fighting for transparency in transactions at the nuclear project. The Atomic Energy Act, 1962, protects nuclear plants from democratic dissemination of news as officials can hide behind the screen of ‘restricted information’ even though nuclear projects could affect millions of ordinary lives.

In general, Indians swear by the notion of nuclear power. Which is one reason why they voted the Congress-led UPA, whose baby was the 123 Indo-US Nuclear Deal, back into power. And one of the mandates of the present Government is a quick follow-up on the deal with the US. The deal legitimises India’s nuclear status and empowers it to trade with other nations for fuel material and related business for civil use. In short, it redeems India from its renegade role, resulting from its non-signatory status with regard to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But the fact of the matter is that the world over, with the exception of China and France, nuclear-based power generation is taking a backseat for two reasons. Building a 1,000 MW nuclear reactor like the one in Kudankulam will cost anywhere between Rs 15,000 crore and Rs 20,000 crore. This results in a per unit power production cost of a little over Rs 3.

Studies by physicist Dr MV Ramana at the Bangalore-based Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Environment and Development confirm this. In an article on the topic, Dr Ramana and Praful Bidwai state: ‘The estimate for costs for Kudankulam 1 and 2 is about Rs 3.08 per unit. This will definitely escalate thanks to delays in construction. In contrast, the cost of a unit of power from the nearby Neyveli Thermal Power Station is Rs 1.74 to 1.66.’ Or compare the Kudankulam rates with the recently commissioned Teesta Hydro Power project which cost only Rs 2,700 crore. The per unit power production cost here is around Rs 1.50.

The other big reason holding back the West from going ahead with accident-prone nuclear power projects is that they don’t know what to do with the radioactive waste.

Radioactive elements like thorium or uranium, whose involvement is indispensable in nuclear projects, are highly unstable. They emit energy—or decay—in the form of alpha, beta particles or gamma rays. In the process, these elements lose their mass and become lighter and more stable elements like lead. The process takes thousands and thousands of years. An accident at a nuclear plant could bring you in direct touch with these carcinogenic substances, which is why environmentalists find the very idea of a nuclear reactor an irresponsible act. It is not only contemporary humanity, but future generations too who are placed at risk.

India too does not know what to do with its radioactive waste. The country has 17 nuclear power plants, none of which is working to its optimum, and six under construction, including the two underway at Kudankulam. India aims to jack up the contribution of nuclear power to overall electricity generation capacity from 4.2 to 9 per cent within 25 years.

But despite the brave words, this is not likely to make much difference as roughly, in the same period, our total demand for electricity is expected to cross 950,000 MW.

Juxtapose this with the fact that the transmission loss of power in India averages 30 to 40 per cent. Indeed, if the Government can plug the transmission loss, it will more than make up for the paltry output from nuclear plants.

Kudankulam itself is a ghostly beautiful and eerily quiet village by an electric-blue sea. To reach the village you drive past fields once lush with coconut and banana plantations now laid barren and growing huge windmills that look like fans meant for extraterrestrial giants.

The folk in Kudankulam mainly make a living by fishing. Though spokesmen for the Nuclear Plant emphatically smile away questions about their displacement (“Not one person will be affected by our project, though they are free to move”), the fishing community knows their days are numbered. Already, they have been instructed not to fish in waters 500 metres from the shore as pipes from the plant are laid into the sea within that distance.

Besides, once the plant is ready for action, there will be a 12-km deep security zone. This would mean only mechanised boats could be pressed into fishing, which would be beyond the means of Kudankulam’s fishing community. So what are they going to do?

“Oh, we don’t exist,” says Vennila, 36, a hardy mother of three staying in Casa Nagar, right behind the nuclear plants. “When [then] President Abdul Kalam visited Kudankulam in 2006, the neither our colony nor our village was on it. Since we don’t exist, we don’t have a problem.”

Vennila is seething with anger, of course. Her husband, a fisherman, died of cancer last year, just one among an alarming number of cancer-related deaths in the area whose sands—especially in the Kolatchil stretch—have become famous for thorium mining.

Vennila’s is just one of the 450 families rehabilitated in NGO-built houses in Casa Nagar following the ravages of the 2004 tsunami. Now she runs a small shop from the verandah of her house, and has to take care of one school-going boy and two daughters all by herself. Vennila dreads the December deadline. She knows only too well that she has to go.

Although the all-powerful Atomic Energy Department does not endorse settlements within a 5km zone, Kudankulam (population 20,000), Idinthakarai (population 12,000) and Casa Nagar (population 2,000) are all well within the no-man zone.

“It is just a matter of time,” Darshini, a young, intensely outraged villager, says, gazing at the two massive domes of the reactors rising in the night air like monuments to India’s power delusions. “Forget the reactors, the desalination plants alone will destroy us.”

The Kudankulam reactor is dependent on two desalination units for coolant water. The units can produce 50,000 litres of potable water every hour. They use the reverse osmosis method to convert seawater into potable water. The huge pipes going out into the sea from the complex and back are a constant talking point for the villagers. The pipes are for the desalination plant. The recycled water gushing back into the blue will be over the permissible temperature of 7º C above seawater. The project authorities actually believe this is good for fish breeding. No one else, though, seems to share the optimism.

Dr Lal Mohan, a marine biologist in Nagarkoil, thinks that is bollocks. “Already, due to global warming and coastal pollution, the catchment is significantly coming down. If you heat up the shallows for reasons that have nothing to do with the wellbeing of the ecology, fish will die.”

Peter T, secretary of National Fisher Workers’ Forum has no doubt as to what the thousands of litres of hot water will do to his people. “The desalination plants will make the life of small fisher men miserable. At this rate, only mechanised trawlers can safely go out into the deep, and very few fishermen can afford that. But who cares for a few thousand people in a village no one knew existed till these plants came up? This nuclear plant is for the India we have no part in.”

Peter may be making more than a bitter point. On the eve of the 123 Deal, 13 stocks on the Bombay Stock Exchange surged between 2 and 9 per cent. These included L&T, Bhel, NTPC, Alstom Projects India, Gammon India, Rolta India, HCC, Crompton Greaves, Reliance Energy, ABB, Walchandnagar Industries, Tata Power Company and Areva T&D India. All of them have a direct supply connection to the building and running of the Kudankulam plants.

According to Peter, prosperity is all very well. “But where do our people go? The only skills they know are fishing related. And this is their village, their home. So far there has been no communication from the project authorities about the future of the villagers.”

A majority of the community belongs to the Roman Catholic fold. The parish is shepherded by Father Dominic, a trapped-looking, tired little man. At all times, Father Dominic seems beleaguered by appeals for alms as he walks from across the church to his office. He dutifully raises his voice to warn off the seekers, but every time someone asks for something, he unfailingly compensates them. We sit in his dim, high-roofed room, sweating. “No electricity,” Father Dominic points a tentative finger heavenward. We look up, half expecting a profusely sweating angel to flit by. But the space, teeming no doubt with atoms of all kinds, appears empty.

Are the plants doing any good? We ask Father Dominic.

“This is the way the world develops. Small people have to pay for big people. Small communities have to pay for big communities. I think deep down, the villagers here are all ready to move. Their spirit is broken.”

A beggar darkens the door. “Go,” says Father Dominic. But the beggar is defiant. “Here, take this and go,” says Father Dominic, giving him a ten rupee note.

“I have been to the plant several times, have had talks with the officials. They know they are winning. No one is resisting much anymore. They have bought off the leaders.” He closes his eyes.

A ten-year-old boy comes in and asks, “Father, are you meditating?”

Father Dominic opens his small eyes with some effort and looks at him without expression. The boy goes away. “I am just worried about the waste,” he says.

“What do you think they are going to do with the waste?”

Father Dominic leans back in his chair, joins his left index finger and thumb and says, “The atom is small.” He looks around for something to fan himself with. “They must be storing it underground, where else?”

Though there is no clarity on this yet, sources say the radioactive spent fuel would be kept in steel containers in concrete silos underground for 30 years before sending it back to Russia. The Russians in any case are the main uranium suppliers for the Kudankulam plants.

“I can only pray to God for these people,” says Father Dominic as we get up to go.

The real story of India’s nuclear reactors, as anywhere else in the world, is not about power. It is the State’s covert struggle for the possession of spent fuel that can be processed into weapons-grade material for bombs and missiles.

In a very real sense, then, the dread that thousands of people of a remote south Indian village experience at the sight of the State’s atom-harvesting efforts is justified. This was their land. These were their waters. They had a life. Soon there will be nothing. Except, in the pause between two waves crashing, the silence of atoms splitting.