[sacw] South Asians Against Nukes Post | 6 July 00

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South Asians Against Nukes Post
6 July 2000

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#1. Down to Earth story on nuclear waste in India
#2. Nuclear Perils in South Asia
#3. India, Russia sign agreement on nuclear co-operation
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#1.

http://www.oneworld.org/cse/html/dte/dte20000630/dte_srep1.htm
Down To Earth
Vol 9, No 3 June 30, 2000
SPECIAL REPORT, page22

Down with the dump:
Residents of a Rajasthan village are up in arms over secret plans to store
nuclear waste nearby

Village people were ignorant of the real purpose of the drilling in Rajastha=
n

RICHARD MAHAPATRA POKRAN (RAJASTHAN)

In march 1997 when the heavy drilling machines ploughed into the barren
land of the desert village Sanawada, just a few kilometres from India's
nuclear weapons testing site, Pokran, officials of the public sector
Mineral Exploration Corporation Ltd (MECL) told the residents, "There are
precious stones beneath the village." (Granite, experts say, is the
cheapest stone - sometimes even cheaper than bricks).
For the residents of Sanawada, situated on a one-km thick strata of
granite, it was amusing news. "We didn't know that granite could make good
money," says Roop Singh, a resident of the village who permitted drilling
on his land.
For two years the drilling operations continued and thousands of samples
of granite were collected. But, these samples had an unusual destination:
the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay, not the usual MECL
headquarters in Nagpur. Little did the people of the area realise that the
foundations were being laid for India's first nuclear waste dumping site.
However, a campaign by the local people has put a halt to the drilling.
It was in August, 1999 that the government of India declared that the
country's nuclear waste would be deposited in parts of Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh's granite belts. Though, initially it was difficult to link the
government's declaration and the drilling for 'granite', a secret agreement
between MECL and BARC (that some anti-nuclear activists stumbled upon)
spilt the beans. After several failures, BARC selected Sanawada village as
the 'most suitable' place for setting up a laboratory in preparation for
the site which would be used to store nuclear waste from the various
nuclear units.
Anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists, who had access to the secret
agreement between BARC and MECL, alerted the villagers about the real
intention behind the drillings. The residents of the area realised they
were being hoodwinked by BARC even though a nuclear waste dumping site is
considered a civilian nuclear activity and news of its setting up should
have been made public. Ironically, the incident took place in a state that
recently gave its citizens the right to information. Even the state chief
minister was ignorant about the activity and only came to know about it
from a group of activists who called on him.
Now the residents have teamed up with anti-nuclear activists and
environmentalists to form the Gram Vikas Sanstha to fight BARC's
misinformation campaign and to stop its activities in the village till all
details are given to the community and independent scientists for scrutiny.

"For years we supported the nuclear tests and other activities on our land
in the interest of the country. This time we will fight for the right to
know what the government is doing, as it involves our health and our
environment," says Ugum Singh, a local teacher. "Until now we have been
using persuasion and have asked BARC to make public its plans. In future,
the tone might change," says Jag Mal, another villager whose land was used
for drilling. BARC is yet to come out with any statement on the
controversy.
Scouting for a site The drilling was actually meant for BARC's Fuel
Reprocessing and Nuclear Waste Management wing to collect samples of
granite to study its heat resistant and hydrological characters. The rocks
had to withstand the high temperatures of radioactive waste and the area
should have no groundwater source as there is a threat of contamination by
the waste. In the early 1990s, BARC selected an abandoned gold mine in
Karnataka's Kolar Gold Field, one of the deepest mines in the world. It
even set up a laboratory to simulate the high temperature conditions which
will be generated by the wastes. But due to the presence of water, the site
had to be abandoned. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka were removed
from the list of likely sites for various reasons. In 1995, BARC began a
survey of 256 sq km in Pokran.
Two years later, MECL, began exploring the area around Sanawada. This was
in accordance with an agreement signed between K Ballu, director of BARC's
=46uel Processing and Nuclear Waste Management unit at Trombay and K P
Agrawal of MECL. BARC wanted the drilling kept secret.
"The second phase of the drilling, in fact, meant approval of the site.
After drilling for 150 metres the rocks must have been found suitable and
MECL gave the go-ahead for the next phase of drilling," says Sanghamitra
Gadekar, a renowned anti-nuclear activist who is currently conducting a
health survey in villages near the testing sites.
Dangers of dumping India needs a site to store the nuclear wastes
generated by its vast establishment (see box: Untouchable) but the problem
is that no country in the world has found a totally foolproof way to keep
the deadly waste buried safely.
M V Ramana, Research Associate, Centre for Energy and Environmental
Studies, Princeton University, usa, estimates that India's high level waste
from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel produced so far is about 16,000
metric tonnes of waste.
Ramana says that there are three principal difficulties with a nuclear
waste dumping site:
It is likely that radioactivity will leak from canisters containing
the waste. Monitoring and predicting the performance of the site over
very long periods of time is extremely difficult. It is essentially
impossible to guarantee that there will not be inadvertent or deliberate
human intrusion over the hundreds of thousands of years that the waste will
remain radioactive. These sites have to be guarded from human contact for
millions of years.
"Given this background, the decision to dig up a site should not be
unilateral but approved by the entire community," says Bimal of the
National Alliance of People's Movement which is co-ordinating the movement
against the Sanawada drilling operation. "dae needs to clearly state the
criteria they would use for site selection, then justify the site they
select as per those criteria. Next,
No country in the world has found a totally foolproof way to keep the
deadly waste buried safely
they should allow time for independent organisations to scrutinise it. It
is only through a process where many independent minds exercise themselves
that we are likely to get the best site for storing these deadly poisons,"
says Surendra Gadekar of Anumukti, an non-governmental organisation of
Gujarat. "It's not about national interest but about people's interest",
says Manohar Joshi, a Pokran-based anti-nuclear activist.
To make matters worse, India's nuclear establishments are protected by the
Atomic Energy Act, which prohibits sharing of any information on nuclear
programmes. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has the mandate to
supervise the safety aspects of the country's nuclear establishments. "But
all the surveys and the safety criteria in these establishments are not
made public using the Nuclear Energy Act as a shield," says Sanghamitra.
Since the first nuclear test in 1974 there has been a constant demand to
make public all the health surveys conducted by the department of Atomic
Energy in its different establishments. The Government doesn't even make
public the health and radiation data in civilian nuclear facilities like
power plants. Says a scientist in the atomic energy department: "In India
there is no distinction between civilian and military nuclear programmes."
While the Sanawada controversy was raging in March, the AERB was stripped
of its power to monitor BARC. Though the government said it was a
'bifurcation of civilian and military establishments', the reality is very
different. Now BARC controls 80 per cent of India's nuclear establishments
and AERB has little authority over it. As spent fuels from power plants are
reprocessed for weapon grade plutonium, BARC would eventually exclude
plants from AERB purview. This would exclude almost every facility from
civilian view. "We know that there is a systematic attempt to curtail the
flow of information, but we are determined to fight it," says Kavita
Srivastava of pucl, Jaipur, who is also leading the movement against the
Sanawada drilling.
The noise of the drilling may have died down but its echo can still be
heard off the granite stone in the area. Meanwhile, the search for a site
carries on and until one is found, nuclear waste will remain in temporary
sites posing a threat to human life in the areas.
later today.

Copyright =A9 CSE Centre for Science and Environment

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#2.

NUCLEAR PERILS IN SOUTH ASIA

By Tariq Ali

The nuclear games being played by India and Pakistan are both dangerous and
obscene. They are dangerous because there are Taliban-type elements within
the Pakistan Army (and I'm sure their equivalents in India), who could, in
extremis, press the dreaded button. They are obscene because both countries
are racked by poverty of the most abject sort, illiteracy, mass unemployment
and the lack of basic amenities for countless millions. The lack of these
basic necessities of life are not considered to be a denial of 'human
rights' as far as Western policymakers are concerned, a view increasingly
contested by the young on the streets of Seattle and Washington. The figures
speak for themselves. Following the nuclear tests of 1998 the Indian
government announced an allocation of 9.9 billion dollars for defence
spending in 1999, an increase of 14 percent on the previous year.
Pakistan mimicked the increase by 8..5 percent, increasing its spending to
3.3 billion dollars. South Asia today is one of the world's most heavily
militarised regions. The Indian ands Pakistani armies form part of the
world's ten largest war machines. There is a 6:1 ratio of soldiers to
doctors. The social costs of arms-spending are horrendous. If nothing else,
the extension of the nuclear race to South Asia should compel policy-makers
in Washington to pause and reflect on their own policies since the official
end of the Cold War. The fact is that the US military budget remains
inflated and accounts for over a third of the world's expenditure on
armaments. The old enemy no longer exists, but the cold war scenarios remain
in place. US military planners continue to target Russia and China. The
latest wave of NATO expansion, followed by a Balkan war only hardens Russian
opposition to nuclear disarmament. When NATO patrols the Black Sea what
price the 'Partnership for Peace'? Herein lies the crux of the problem.
Unless the West begins the process of unilateral nuclear disarmament it has
no moral or material basis to demand that others do the same. It is a
twisted logic that accepts that while London and Paris can have the bomb,
New Delhi and Islamabad, not to mention Seoul and Pyongyang, can not.
Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik are two of India's most courageous radical
journalists. Like others who tell the truth they are sometimes heaped with
ridicule, but they remain steadfast. They interrogate power and often
venture into dangerous territory. They are immune to the usual pressures and
inducements with which governments East and West seek to intimidate or bribe
journalists.Their new book, "New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear
Disarmament" should be mandatory reading for policy-makers in New Delhi,
Islamabad and Washington.Amongst the most valuable sections of "New Nukes"
is the account of India's previous stance on the question of atomic weapons.
Jawaharlal Nehru was a firm believer in nuclear abstinence. 'Coming from a
warm country', he informed the United Nations in 1960, 'I have shivered
occasionally from these cold blasts'. Now the blasts have overpowered the
political elites in India and Pakistan. Bidwai and Vanaik are for unilateral
nuclear disarmament by both India and Pakistan. For them this is a moral and
a political imperative. The case they make is unanswerable, but politicians
and Generals usually concede only to mass pressure. Rational arguments leave
them unmoved. The authors complain that the Indian left (India's two
Communist Parties) is part of the problem: "Thus the socialist bomb has been
seen as the progressive weapon against the imperialist bomb. The adjective
has been made more important than the noun in perverse understanding of the
history and politics of nuclearism.

The left's claim that deterrence has sometimes worked is a self-serving
delusion ." In any event the conflict in the region is seen by fanatics on
both sides as the 'Muslim' bomb versus the 'Hindu' bomb. The former believe
they will end up in paradise anyway and as for the latter there is always
the hope of reincarnation, but this time in the shape of ants. Bidwai and
Vanaik that unilateral nuclear disarmament in South Asia should not be seen
in a national context, but as a stepping stone towards global disarmament.
This is an extremely useful book and not just for India. The projected
scenarios in case of nuclear conflict would not remained confined to South
Asia. Nuclear rain is no respecter of frontiers. It will cripple humans and
plants alike. Western leaders in the grip of a triumphalist fever appear to
have given up on disarmament, blighting the harvest of hopes that arose
briefly during the time of Gorbachev. It could turn out to be a fatal error.

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#3.

Rediff on the Net
5 July 2000

India, Russia sign agreement on nuclear co-operation

India and Russia have signed an agreement to expand their cooperation in
nuclear sciences.
The three-year protocol signed in Moscow by the secretary, department of
science and technology, Prof V S Ramamurthy, and Yevgeny Velikhov, director
of Russia's nodal nuclear research centre, Kurchatov Institute, yesterday
provides for extensive Indo-Russian cooperation in the nuclear field,
Science and Technology and Human Resources Development Minister Murli
Manohar Joshi told reporters.
Under the agreement India and Russia would exchange visits of nuclear
scientists and experts, he said.
Joshi, however, declined to divulge the details of the accord saying
nuclear science does not mean only "bomb". It has medical applications as
well.
Briefing reporters on his talks with Russian Science and Technology
Minister Dr Alexander Dondukov, Joshi said that India and Russia had agreed
to extend their integrated long-term programme on scientific and
technological cooperation for another 10 years.
An agreement to his effect would be signed during Russian President
Vladimir Putin's India visit in October, Joshi said.
Russian Education Minister Prof Fillipov said his country was willing to
offer educational and training facilities to Indian students and scholars.
Joshi arrived here on Sunday on a weeklong official visit. He inaugurated
the joint Russian-Indian Centre for Advanced Computing Research yesterday.
RICCR, setup jointly by the Pune-based advanced computing Centre (C-DAC)
and Russian Institute for Computer Aided Design, is equipped with the
Indian supercomputer 'Param 10,000' and will provide a unique opportunity
to experts and scientists of the two countries to develop new software
applications for use in various spheres of human activity including space
research and defence, experts told PTI.
Joshi addressed the students and professors of Moscow State University toda=
y.
Rector of the MSU, Prof Sadovnichy said that Moscow University would train
specialists for the Indo-Russian computing centre.
The minister is scheduled to hold talks with the Russian deputy premier
Viktor Khristenko and release a book on Hinduism, written by a top Russian
indologist, Dr Irina Glushkova, a scholar of the Oriental Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences

(c) Copyright 2000 PTI.
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