[sacw] South Asians Against Nukes Post (7 Dec.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asians Against Nukes Dispatch
7 December 1999
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#1. Nuclear Power - Critical Mess In India
#2. India: nuclear-powered desalination plant [Drink and Glow(ry) !]
#3. We don't have a nuclear button, says Pak Army Chief
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#1.
Business Week
6 December 1999 | Page 98E6
Industries

NUCLEAR POWER CRITICAL MESS IN INDIA
The country has placed a big bet on nuclear power, and that may be a bad
move
By Amy Louise Kazmin in New Delhi

When the Kaiga Atomic Power Station started generating juice in
southwestern India last September, the nation's nuclear establishment
beamed with special pride. Kaiga, a 220-megawatt facility in Karnataka
state, is the seventh reactor built according to India's own design-and is
testimony, officials and scientists say, to the technical prowess
propelling India's go-it-alone program. Nuclear energy, advocates assert,
is crucial to power-short, oil-dependent India. Says Y.S.R. Prasad,
chairman and managing director of state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India
Ltd.: ``We have no other choice.''

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party agrees. Last year, it raised the NPC's
expansion budget to $200 million-more than double its allotment in the
mid-1990s. That's a handy vote of confidence for nuclear power. The NPC
builds and operates India's reactors, but the corporation and its
supporters want it to do much more. Although nuclear power now accounts
for just 2% of India's electricity supply, nuke advocates want to raise
that over time to 10% or more. The NPC will flip the switch on three more
reactors over the next year-and wants to build 12 more after that, at a
cost of at least $8 billion. ``COMPLETE OVERHAUL.'' India does have a
chronic power problem. At peak hours, demand outstrips supply by 12%-a
12,000-Mw shortfall, the power industry estimates. But the nuke industry
has problems, too-and some are a lot scarier than your average brownout.
Construction delays, cost overruns, and inefficient performance are par
for the NPC. Accidents are disturbingly frequent. New Delhi's Y2K Task
=46orce is making sure the NPC is prepared for the millennial changeover.
But broad regulatory oversight is unreliable. And despite the recent
funding increase, the government does not have enough money to match the
NPC's ambitions.

Most of all, India's nuclear program operates in unhealthy isolation.
Secrecy shrouds it, heightening safety and accountability concerns. Its
homegrown reactor design dates to 1974, when India detonated a nuclear
device with plutonium that probably came from a Canadian-built research
reactor. Canada abruptly withdrew its support for India's nuclear energy
program, and New Delhi has since declined to sign the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, a stance that cuts it off from technical
advances that could improve safety and efficiency.

Letting some light in, many Indian and foreign analysts assert, is
essential if the nuclear energy industry is to advance significantly. If
India were in the nuclear fold, they reason, it could acquire proven
technology to build more cost-effective reactors. That means a clean break
with the nuclear weapons program, globally infamous since India and
Pakistan's hair-raising exchange of underground tests last year. ``They
need to completely overhaul the structure and management of this
industry,'' says Rajendra K. Pachauri, director of the Tata Energy Research
Institute, an independent energy consultancy. ``If they are serious about
expanding, openness is a prerequisite.''

Last year, nuclear generation rose to 11.2 billion units, a 40% increase
over the previous three years. This year, the government is spending $330
million on its nuclear energy programs, compared with $83 million for
nonconventional alternatives such as solar, wind, and biogas. More nuclear
power is essential if India is to solve its energy problems, Prasad argues.
It can't afford to burn more polluting coal or increase its heavy reliance
on imported oil and gas. Domestic coal already provides 70% of India's
electricity; imports now account for 60% of total oil and gas consumption,
and that will rise to 70% by 2002. But critics say that advocates such as
Prasad ignore the cost of decommissioning plants.

By any measure, NPC falls short even of its own expectations. Many
reactors operate well below design capacity. Two near the southern city of
Madras, troubled with construction snafus, now turn out 170 Mw of power
each, compared with design capacity of 235 Mw. The Kaiga reactor went
critical three years late because its concrete containment tower collapsed
during construction. Overall, India's nuclear plants are the world's worst
performers when potential capacity is compared with output. TOUGH CHOICES.
Accidents raise concerns at home and abroad. At a reactor near New Delhi,
a fire in 1993 forced workers to halt the nuclear reaction. Several years
later, radioactive waste was released into a public canal. Recently, a
plant was shut down when an air-lock system malfunctioned. Floods and
heavy-water leaks have also been problems.

India does have a regulatory agency for the nuclear power industry, the
Atomic Energy Regulation Board. But its scientists and engineers belong to
the tightly knit atomic energy fraternity. The board reports directly to
the Atomic Energy Commission, whose members include Prasad, the NPC's
managing director, and the head of the nuclear weapons program. The board
stoutly maintains its integrity and independence. But Adinarayana
Gopalakrishnan, a U.S.-trained nuclear engineer who headed the board from
1993 to 1996, says this insular relationship is ``deliberately exploited''
to gloss over potential problems.

Foreign observers have also been kept out. India has refused to let the
International Atomic Energy Agency conduct safety evaluations of its
nuclear facilities. ``We do have doubts on the quality of maintenance and
big questions in our minds about the soundness of the fundamental
design,'' IAEA spokesman David Kyd says of India's reactors. India did
allow a delegation from the World Association of Nuclear Operators to
visit one power station last year, but its findings remain confidential.

India's nuclear establishment has tough choices ahead. It's already
grappling with whether it should continue to operate two 30-year-old
American-built reactors near Bombay. For now, the NPC has extended the
lifetime of the aging General Electric Co. plants. Gopalakrishnan, for
one, believes the installations, which use outdated technology, should be
shut down.

Many observers believe it makes little economic sense for India to neglect
alternatives such as hydropower that are less capital-intensive and
present fewer potential problems. ``If there is any rationality in
decision-making,'' says Praful Bidwai, a longtime opponent of India's
nuclear projects, ``the nuclear program will be abandoned.''

That's unlikely. So are many other needed changes, skeptics say. Even
though it's strapped for cash, the BJP won't let the nuclear program die.
Instead, India's nuclear power sector is likely to hobble along, a badge
of honor, like New Delhi's nuclear weapons project. But for their critics,
India's reactors will stand as symbols not of honor but of hubris.

A Nuclear Report
THE GOAL India eventually wants to increase nuclear power's share of its
electricity supply from 2% now to 10%

THE PROBLEM The industry is short of funds, weakly regulated, and plagued
by construction delays, old technology, and safety snafus

THE SOLUTION Critics say old reactors should be shut down, international
inspections allowed, and nuclear power separated from India's nuclear
weapons program

Photograph: THE KAIGA TOWER FELL DURING CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHS BY NAMAS
BHOJANI

Photograph: LAGGING: Many of India's nuclear plants operate well below
design capacity PHOTOGRAPHS BY NAMAS BHOJANI
(Copyright 1999 McGraw-Hill, Inc.)
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#2.
BBC Worldwide Monitoring
5 December 1999 | 1218 gmt

Text of report in English by Indian news agency PTI

INDIA: FIRST INDIGENOUS NUCLEAR - POWERED DESALINATION PLANT READY NEXT
MARCH

Mumbai [Bombay], 5th December: India's first indigenous nuclear- powered
desalination plant at Kalpakkam in southern state of Tamil Nadu would
become operational in March 2000. The 6.3m litre capacity plant, using
both thermal and membrane processes, would be linked to both the units of
Kalpakkam atomic power stations, according to Dr B. Bhattacharjee, head,
desalination division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The plant,
having innovative features, would process water for the power station and
provide quality drinking water to people in and around Kalpakkam, he said.
Speaking at the Trombay symposium on "desalination and water reuse" which
concluded here on Friday [3rd December], Bhattacharjee said the plant,
costing 310m rupees, using multistage flash (MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO)
processes, can supply drinking water at the rate of 40 to 45 rupees per
1,000 litres. "Using the experience of this demonstration plant at
Kalpakkam, the BARC scientists will standardise 10m litres and more
capacity plants for the future, using both MSF and RO, which will be
completed by 2005", Bhattacharjee said.
Although BARC has been engaged in research and development activities on
desalination since 1970s, as envisioned by Vikram Sarabhai, to improve the
quality of life of people of India, the nuclear powered demonstration
plant has been made possible only now, he said. In India, desalination
technology is rather young and it needs to be properly nurtured before
expecting it to bear fruits in terms of providing the "essence of life", he
said. On the technology of the process, he said, even though the present
share of MSF technology is about 48 per cent of the total desalination
market, MSF technology (being pursued by BARC in India along with
countries like Italy, France, UK and Japan) has been responding to the
challenges of RO and multi-effect desalination (MED) technology (which are
characterised by its more energy efficient and lower capital cost) by
enhancing the plant capacity. "The cost of water produced by MSF has been
halved during the last decade but there has been no improvement in
thermodynamic efficiency of the flashing stages," he pointed out. With an
experience of last 25 years, BARC has installed 12 pilot scale plants in
the country out of which four are based on MSF and eight are based on RO
for desalination of brackish, sea water as well as effluent treatment
facilities for water recycling. Besides two council for scientific and
industrial research laboratories-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research
Institute, Bhavnagar, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune and the Defence
Laboratory in Jodhpur are also engaged in setting up desalination plants
based on membrane processes and thermal process and are of smaller size.
M. L. Sinhal, vice-president of Reliance Industries Ltd, said that at
Jamnagar, they have installed four desalination plants each with 3m gallon
per day (MGD) based on MED and SI supplied by Israel. There are about
12,000 desalination plants spread in 120 countries in the world with a
total capacity of about 20,000 million litre capacity per day.
Prof Klause Genthner from the Middle East Desalination Research Centre said
although there are large capacity desalination plants are installed in the
Middle East since the Middle East and the North Africa (MENA) are globally
the largest area with a severe water scarcity, it is imperative to improve
the situation to put an end to the scarcity as "water is a potential source
of conflict". MEDRC provides technical information and development of
research and development cooperations, Genther said. There are about six
plants each of 10m gallon per day capacity and the largest one is 30 MGD,
he said. Dr Vitay Polunitchev from the nuclear power plant designing
department in Russia talked about prospects of small nuclear plants
utilisation for civil ships, floating heat and power stations and power
sea water desalination complexes. He recommends such concepts as they can
be used in various coastal town in India and other countries.

Monitoring/(c) BBC
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#3.

The Hindu
24 November 1999

WE DON'T HAVE A NUCLEAR BUTTON, SAYS MUSHARRAF
by Amit Baruah

ISLAMABAD, NOV. 23. The Pakistani Army Chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
has said that as of now the country does not have a ` nuclear button',
but when the time for the `button' comes, it would be under his
control.

In an interview to a magazine, the Chief Executive said: "One should
understand that there is no nuclear button here. A policy of restraint
is being followed, which is being dictated by the world...one of the
main issues is geographical separation of the warheads and the delivery
system. When that is so, there is no button.

"It is only when you couple them that you are ready, the button is on.
But that is not the case. When the time comes, Yes, there will be a
button. And that button will be with me, of course. But we have not got
to that as yet," the General told the monthly journal.

"As far as the control of the nuclear system goes, let me tell you that
that I had prepared a nuclear strategy that I had handed to the
previous Government in December last year. We had a command and control
system for all our nuclear and missile assets."
[...] .