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Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant
Ernest Moniz an MIT Professor co authored a report says electricity generated by
a nuclear plant in 2003 is 60% more costly than power from traditional gas and
coal-driven plants Not one expert including me can give an accurate
decommissioning costs of a nuclear plant as most of the long lived high level
wastes have to be safely stored for a million years, without getting in to the
environment. . A committee of 15 leading scientists from universities, research
institutes and consultancies studied nuclear waste stored in cooling ponds at 103
US reactors. In its report, released publicly on 6 April, 2005 the committee
argues that the cooling ponds in which spent radioactive fuel is kept could be
severely damaged by aircraft, high-powered weapons or explosives. If the water
drained from the cooling ponds, the zirconium alloy fuel cladding would overheat
and burst into flames. This “could release large quantities of radioactive material
into the environment.
Germany is installing solar panels at the speed of light and Iceland is exploiting
its geothermal and hydropower resources beyond its own needs to keep away
from nuke power. Research shows that nuke power not needed to cut CO 2.
Japan is trying to improve energy efficiency to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
USA is proceeding with one of the largest solar cell research effort to increase
the efficiency of solar cells. Solar cells are sensitive only to photons with
wavelengths that correspond to the energy gap of the material from which they
are made. When photons with this wavelength reach the cell, they excite
electrons into the conduction band of the material, where they are registered as
an electrical current. But higher-energy photons cannot contribute to this current,
and can reduce the efficiency of the cell by heating it up. High-energy photons
could be harnessed and converted into current, using a ‘down-converter’
proposed by physicists in Australia and Germany and Solar cells could get an
efficiency from the current maximum of 30% to almost 40%. . The present
commercial solar cells have a maximum of 24.7% efficiency and US efforts are
aiming for 50% efficiency.
Don’t waste huge sums in nuclear power, but go for Jatropa plant cultivation and
solar power generation. Flexible cheap solar panels and panels that converts
heat rather than light is on the way. The ordinary grass converts the solar power
with an efficiency of 1%. A grass burning power plant is now under construction
in UK at a cost of £6.5m in Staffordshire that will burn locally cultivated elephant
grass and will be able to supply 2,000 homes with electricity. A small evergreen
tree Jatropa plant (Botanical name-Jatropa carcass, in Hindi Jangliarandi,
Bagherenda in Kannada Bettadaharalu, Mahaharalu, in Tamil Rattamankku,
Telugu Adaviamudamu, in Sanskrit Arvataranda) yields oil which is used for
making soaps; candle etc. is an ideal diesel substitute. A yield of 9,000- 12, 000/
kg seed / hectare is expected from a rain fed crop. The kernel contains 40% oil.
Trials in or Railways and IOC were successful. Go for environmentally friendly
energy sources.
It would have been ideal if we spend these huge sums being wasted in nuclear
power, in Jatropa plant cultivation and solar power generation. The ordinary
grass converts the solar power with an efficiency of 1%. A grass burning power
plant is now under construction in UK at a cost of £6.5m in Staffordshire that will
burn locally cultivated elephant grass and will be able to supply 2,000 homes with
electricity. A small evergreen tree Jatropa plant (Botanical name-Jatropa
carcass, in Hindi Jangliarandi, Bagherenda in Kannada Bettadaharalu,
Mahaharalu, in Tamil Rattamankku, Telugu Adaviamudamu, in Sanskrit
Arvataranda) yields oil which is used for making soaps; candle etc. is an ideal
diesel substitute. A yield of 9,000- 12, 000/ kg seed / hectare is expected from a
rain fed crop. The kernel contains 40% oil. Successful trial runs by Indian
railways and Indian Oil Corporations were done two years back. Instead of
Nuclear power we should concentrate on environmentally friendly energy
sources.
Those criminals who cry for nuclear power have no idea why many nations have
stopped nuclear power plants. My advice is not to marry anyone working in the
nuclear field including oncology doctors or X ray technicians or those living near
nuclear plants. DAE use daily wage workers for working in radiation environment.
I used to see Andhra labourers along with their kids sitting on the lawns of the
plutonium plant in BARC. The lawns are contaminated with radiation. The
radiation exposure to these workers or their kids was never monitored. BARC
has a radiation protection division that is supposed to monitor radiation exposure
to all radiation related personnel in all establishments in India. DAE had failed in
this mission and that staff and visitors are routinely exposed to radiation from
even in diagnostic clinics using the X ray units all over India. What USA wants
from India is coolies to get exposed in USA for reactor decommissioning, like we
expose our labourers to radiation damage Also USA wants to dump its used fuel
and waste in India to be processed by Indian coolies. USA stopped its plans to
bury its nuclear waste after spending $10billion in a deep rocky formation and is
looking for alternate location or dumps it in India. The reason for the three mile
accident and the Chernobyl accident was the absence of experienced senior staff
in the control rooms of the reactors. DAE is not attracting the best of talents who
are willing to work in radiation environments. Due to lack of shift engineers’
women is put as shift engineers in India. This should not be done as women are
born with all the eggs, and exposure to any radiation can cause birth defects of
their kids. India should not go for unsafe costly nuclear power plants. Instead go
for Wind, tide, solar and gas power plants. Kalpakkam breeder reactor designers
were not knowing what is a tsunami and tsunami had flooded the nuclear plant
and killed many engineers and scientists. Tamil Nadu will become a Chernobyl
once the breeder reactor is operational.. BARC reactors are in earthquake zone
and yet they are not designed for it. RAPP is another earthquake zone. Tsunami
which affected the nuke installation in Tamil Nadu is not even known to any of
the design engineers of Atomic Energy. So much for our nuke installations. US
supplied Tarapur units were a national disaster in terms of contamination and
radiation exposure. Most of the reactors built in Trombay or Narora does not
meet the earthquake criteria and Mumbai becoming another Chernobyl is not far
away.
Al-Qaeda has obtained 40 nuclear weapons from former Soviet Union, including
suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and missile warheads. At least half
the nuclear weapons in the Al-Qaeda arsenal were obtained for cash from the
Chechen terrorist allies. Documents captured in Afghanistan show that Al-Qaeda
had plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased
on the black market. The rogue Paki scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, with his nuke
nerve center in Dubai at his ‘SMB Computer’ shop, sold nuclear technology to
Libya, Iran and North Korea. His undiscovered illegal networks may be still be
manned by Pakistan’s ISI and could be working for Al-Qaeda. ISI is still training
Indian and British muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorist threats to our Nuke
installations have increased after the nuclear cooperation agreement with the
United States. US and Russia had recently signed an agreement to toughen
nuclear counter-proliferation measures. US is seeking Indian help to contain the
threat of nuke attacks by muslim terrorists in US and in India.
Other nations are not going for nuclear power as it is not safe and highly
expensive and is a threat to our future generations. In 2002 there was a news
item that GOI had sanctioned some 3000 odd crores for the construction of
nuclear power stations. Yet no one discussed it in Parliament, but the Coffin
attracted the full attention of the MPs for days. This effect is known as
Parkinson’s Law. Simply put the MPs can discuss only what they can grasp. The
impact of nuclear power which cost around Rs 5 crore per MW is hardly
registered even among the news media. Britain is already planning to wind down
their nuclear power stations by 2050, and our self serving scientists are planning
to bring up the nuclear power capacity to 20,000 MW by 2020. Nuclear power is
simply too dangerous and expensive. Other concerns are radioactive waste,
accidents, terrorism and we may have to safe keep the waste even up to 1.5
million years. A better decision would have been an increased spending on wind,
tide, solar or other renewable power sources.
Soviet Union during the Cold War deployed tactical nuclear weapons throughout
US. These nuclear suitcases had been buried throughout the U.S at remote sites
throughout US for recovery by Soviet agents. No one knows where are these
located. Russian defector Stanislav Lunev confirmed this to US congressional
investigators and he could not pinpoint the locations. Russian military leaders
continue to believe that a nuclear conflict with the U.S. is still inevitable. U.S.
have excavated several sites believed to be possible depots and the only hope of
finding them would be if the Russian government disclosed the locations.
Belgium have found three secret depots containing tactical nukes buried by the
Soviets in the 1960s. Bin Laden hired former Soviet special forces officers whose
job was to know where these buried suitcase bombs are. The nuke attacks in US
may start when these weapons are located. Based on captured al-Qaeda leaders
and documents, nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the
Mexican border with the help of organized US crime group like the MS-13 street
gang. According to other reports,
Bin Laden started plotting the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania when he was in Sudan in 1993. The attack on the USS Cole was
more than two years in the making. Between the first attack on the World Trade
Center and the second one had a gap of 10 years. Bin Laden may re-enacting
the 1945 attack on Japan with one nuclear detonation in India followed by
another in USA days later and India could be a target just because of the Indo
US nuke treachery. But according to al-Qaeda defectors the nuke terror could
take place simultaneously at various sites throughout USA and the plans for this
have been under development for more than a decade. It is designed as a final
deadly blow of defeat to the Great Satan U.S. The targets include New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Houston, Las Vegas,
and Valdez, Alaska, where the tankers are filled with oil from the Trans-Alaska
pipeline. Osama bin Laden’s preferred dates are Aug. 6, the anniversary of the
Hiroshima nuclear bombing in 1945, Sept. 11 and May 14, the anniversary of the
re-creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
India has deployed National Security Guards (NSG) at Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre (BARC) but is not sufficient to stop the suicide bombers. Other nations
have deployed exclusion zones around nuke plants, anti aircraft guns, sniffing
dogs, automatic barriers etc, and India has only the disposable humans to
protect the nuke facilities. External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on 24-11-
06 raised the specter of terrorist outfits operating in India’s neighborhood laying
their hands on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Dec. 16, 2008 The
directorate-general of civil aviation has prohibited flying of aircraft upto the height
of 10,000 feet over the area within a radius of 10 km from the Kalpakkam nuclear
installation in Tamil Nadu. As per The Guardian newspaper dated November 14
2006, British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaeda is determined to attack
the UK with a nuclear weapon. This bleak assessments of Britain is based on an
awful lot of chatter on jihad websites expressing the desire to acquire chemical,
biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. Also Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller,
the head of MI5, had warned recently about 30 active plots to attack Britain at a
time when Dhiren Barot, was jailed in UK for 40 years for plotting dirty bomb
attacks against UK and US
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is al-Qaeda’s north African wing, had
carried out the suicide bombing at the French embassy in Mauritania. One
French-Algerian nuclear terrorist, arrested in France, in Oct 2009 was an
engineer at the nuclear research centre on the French-Swiss border. He also
worked at CERN famous for its particle collider that aims to recreate the
conditions of the Big Bang, This French nuclear terrorist had been in contact with
AQIM and had suggested French targets for attacks.
When the nuclear bomb project was taken up Indira Gandhi had instructed that
not a single muslim should be employed even as a typist in that section. The
complete group that worked on the project was not told about the purpose of their
work, but everyone was told orally to develop a particular portion of the project
and its end use was not revealed. That was the level of secrecy that was
required as BARC was filled with Pakistani and American spies in administrative
levels. There is a large component of Pak linked persons in DAE and the nuclear
plants are no more safe in India. All it takes is a knowledgeable person willing co
commit suicide, working in DAE to cause a Chernobyl or Three mile Island
accident in India. Recent Kaiga heavy water ingestion is fresh in our memory and
the investigation went nowhere.
US supplied Tarapur units were a national disaster and on 13 May 1992 the tube
leak caused a radioactive release of 12 Curies of radioactivity from Tarapur
nuclear power station and for repairs, DAE had to mobilize all the staff from all
over India and most of them got burned in the highly radioactive areas of Tarapur
and many died.
Japanese are protesting over re-opening of Japanese nuclear reactor
today the 7 May 2010. Protest is against Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)
starting of its fast-breeder Monju nuclear reactor that was shut down following a
liquid of sodium leak and fire in 1995. The accident happened just after four
months of its start-up in August 1995. Japanese does not want any more
Hiroshima, or Nagasaki from nuclear power station. In Germany a fully
completed fast breeder was not put in to operation due to fears of safety. India is
just starting with our own fast breeder reactor and we do not need terrorists to
create a Chernobyl in India
Well water of heavily populated Mumbai suburb Chembur which is just 3 kms
from BARC showed heavy radioactive contamination in the seventies and this
information was kept secret. But in December 1991, due to a serious radioactive
leakage from underground pipelines at CIRUS reactor in Bhabha Atomic Cancer
Centre this information became public. Very high levels of Cesium-137 activity
found in the soil and water samples taken from within BARC. In 1992, marine
organisms like crab samples taken from the sea behind BARC showed as high
as 500 milli Becquerel gram radioactivity showing that any fish caught near any
where in Mumbai seashore will result in cancer, miscarriages, birth deformities
and low sperm count
Nuclear power plants should be in a 1.6 km exclusion zone. In practice,
settlements should be at least five kms away. In Tarapur, the Ghivali village, of
3000 inhabitants, is just 1.23 km from the Tarapur nuclear waste immobilization
plant. Radioactivity from the plant drainage pipe was directly connected to the
storm water drains. It contaminated the subsoil water in the village and killed
cattle heads, buffaloes and caused many diseases among the villagers. Other
severe long term effects could be damages to the chromosomes, that can lead to
abnormal childbirths or disabled children. Genetic damage can appear, not in the
first generation, but could surface in the unborn generations. In one instance,
drinking water to the water cooler was also given to a radioactive processing
plant through a non return valve. Valve malfunctioning had caused radioactive
water backing up to the water cooler and its consumption at CIRUS, in BARC. So
never marry anyone working in any nuclear plants.
Non tech persons of India have no idea about nuke technology. The agreement
with USA is like an agreement between two Eskimos on how to construct a
multistoried building on ice. Both have no idea about what they are doing. USA
stopped nuclear power plants some 31 years back. No good engineer will opt for
a stagnant nuclear field . USA has no nuclear fuel and it is obtained from Russia
and other countries. Manmohan stopped our mining of Uranium while he was FM
and trapped us now to a useless agreement. The only beneficiaries is Swiss
bank account holders of Indian politicians
If a nuclear plant comes up, the only advice I can give to others is to run away
from that area or city. Huge deposits of Uranium were found by the Atomic
Minerals Division in about 1337 hectares across Lambapur, Namapuram,
Yellapur and Peddagutta villages of Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. The
Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL) is planning to set up Rs 600 crore plant
in Nallamala region. Supreme Court on Aug 30, 1999 issued notice to the Union
Government, Uranium Corporation of India; the Atomic Energy Commission and
the Deputy Commissioner, Singhbum district of Jharkhand on a public interest
petition seeking a direction to take immediate steps to insulate people living in
the vicinity of the Jaduguda uranium mine from the hazards of untreated effluents
and pollution of uranium mining in the wake of alarming reports that villagers
were affected by the radiation from mines. There are environmental impacts for
any such uranium opencast mines.
UCIL says mining in AP will not cause health problems and claimed that the
water from mining area will not reach Nagarjunasagar which is located nearby
because of impervious granite rock formations. There are always fault lines in
such rocks and water can definitely reach the reservoir if not immediately, but in
due course, and this probability is further increased as the seismic level in these
region is quite high. They also claimed that where the tailings pond where
uranium waste would be dumped is 10 meters lower than the Akkampally
drinking water reservoir which is quite near. Akkampally reservoir is a drinking
water source for Hyderabad city. This is also not a good argument as over time,
water bodies at higher levels could get contaminated from lower lever sources
due to rainwater flooding and similar natural reasons. So if the AP mines become
operational, the best way Hyderabad citizens to escape the genetic damage and
other radiation related problems is to run away from the city.
India’s human right commission should investigate the operation of the American
supplied Tarapur power station had killed some of our Engineers due to radiation
overexposure and the damage to the population who are living nearby. Added to
this, the DAE chairman and other management level directors have sent
practically every DAE employee, for the repair of the contaminated, highly
radioactive Tarapur power plant, supplied by USA, in which these unfortunate
humans were exposed to lethal level of radiation.. From every DAE department
the head of the division have sent engineers, scientists and highly experienced
technicians whom they don’t like very much, to be irradiated at Tarapur. The
children born to those who were sent there have developed cancers and other
diseases. The details of exposure to each individual is kept secret and not given
to them. It can be roughly said that for every 1 RED of radiation, the life span of
the will be reduced by one year.
Many nuclear power plants also have ‘once through’ cooling water intake
systems that require two and a half times as much water as fossil fuel plants with
similar cooling systems, that seriously harm water resources and aquatic water
systems. There is an acute shortage of water in places like Rajasthan. The Kota
nuclear plant accident had earlier resulted in radioactive heavy water leakage in
to the nearby river. With the radioactive waste being pumped in to the sea, the
sea water and marine life will get contaminated. These radioactive pollutants will
be concentrated by the fish. For example the radioactive strontium will be
concentrated by a factor of one lakh by the fish and it will find its way to our food
chain. A city like Chennai is planning for desalination of sea water for its drinking
purposes. Industrial pollution, is up to four miles in to the sea, and the fish is
already contaminated with it. In future, the radioactivity will also be there in the
fish.
Subsidy the USA nuclear industry received was US $66 billion. The cost per unit
for nuclear power is five times the cost of other methods with subsidies. In India,
there is heavy subsidy for the nuclear power plants. There is also the taxpayer
financed insurance policy for the nuclear plants. It is known that if a major
accident occurs like the Chernobyl, whole areas will be laid to waste and the
people had to be shifted out. In Trombay, in Mumbai city with more than five
reactors and reprocessing plant. A terrorist strike in Trombay will result in total
paralysis of Indian economy and Mumbai will become uninhabitable. Assuming
that the nuclear power plant is far away, from populated area, a minimum of US
$300 billion could be the cost in damage to lives and property due to a major
nuclear accident. Price Anderson Act that limits nuclear liability in the event of an
accident to about US $7 billion in USA. After an accident, US taxpayers have to
make up the difference
Reprocessing plant of France contaminated the Normandy coast in 1997.
Greenpeace activists forcibly shut down its beaches when divers found
contamination levels in the ocean to be exceedingly above accepted levels.
France’s breeder reactor project, the super Phoenix, riddled by accidents,
collapsed in its own ashes, Now India is proceeding on the Fast Breeder reactor
programme, for which it had sent our Engineers to France, are all now retired
and the present group of Engineers are much juniors. India’s first pressurized
heavy water nuclear reactor at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan, called RAPS-I that
achieved criticality in 1972 was decommissioned in April 2002 as it was a high
risk plant and the radiation level in and around the units was a major health
hazard.
There were ten terrorist incidents against European nuclear installations between
1966-1977. New York City’s water reservoirs were contaminated with plutonium
in April 1985. The testing confirmed it as they detected femto curie levels of
plutonium in the water. A caller said to be a member of the Nuclear Liberation
Front claimed responsibility for a bomb explosion in the parking lot of Sandia
National Laboratories, California, next to LLNL at 1:30 A.M on 28-11-1987. In
Pennsylvania at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1987 a man drives his
station wagon through the fence and wanders on foot for a period of time before
he was captured. In Feb 1990 Azerbaijani rebels unsuccessfully attacked a
Soviet military depot near Baku where nuclear weapons are stored. Soviet troops
were sent to secure the base. In Mar 1992 box of radioactive material was stolen
from Pridniestroviye, Transdnestr and the thieves threatened to blow up the
material if fighting in Moldova was not stopped.
Our fast breeder reactor is coming up in Kalpakkam. Last time a tsunami flooded
the plant as these things were not thought of during design. Every fast breeder
reactor is unstable and danger to the population as these reactors are inherently
unsafe because of its positive void coefficient. Only one small test fast reactor
operates in India in Kalpakkam. The construction of a larger prototype fast
breeder reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam that use mixed plutonium uranium oxide
as fuel in its core, with a blanket of depleted uranium oxide that will absorb
neutrons and transmute into plutonium 239 is expected by 2010. Liquid sodium
will be used to cool the core, which will produce 1,200 megawatts of thermal
power and 500 megawatts of electricity. Only low IQ Tamils will allow 80km away
such a potential bomb near Chennai city.
In Kalkar in Germany the first full size, commercial fast breeder reactor was
constructed by spending $ 5billion.Yet in 1991 the German Government decided
to abandon the project as the reactor was unsafe to that nation. It was sold for
$30 million and converted to an amusement park. United States that built the first
breeder reactor and spend lot of money for more than 20 years abandoned the
breeder programme in late 1970s. Japan has shut down its Monju reactor after a
sodium fire in December 1995. French breeder program, remained inoperative
for the majority of its 11-year lifetime until it was finally shuttered in 1996. Indian
Engineers who work in Kalpakkam were trained in France and they are going to
cause grief to India in the near future. Fast breeder reactors aren’t ready for
commercial use. Fast reactors could become a nuclear bomb in layman’s
language.
In fast reactors, an accident that rearranges the fuel in the core could lead to an
increase in reaction rate and an increase in energy production. If this were to
occur quickly, it could lead to a large, explosive energy release that might rupture
the reactor vessel and disperse radioactive material into the environment. They
have positive coolant void coefficient, that can result in Chernobyl type accident.
It means that if the coolant in the central part of the core were to heat up and
form bubbles of sodium vapor, the reactivity, a measure of the neutron balance
within the core, which determines the reactor’s tendency to change its power
level would increase. Core melting could accelerate during an accident. A
positive coolant void coefficient, not involving sodium, contributed to the runaway
accident in April 1986 Chernobyl reactor. Light water reactors typically have a
negative coolant void coefficient so that a loss of coolant reduces the core’s
reactivity.
Our smaller fast breeder test reactor, with its much smaller core, doesn’t have a
positive coolant void coefficient. DAE doesn’t have real experience of a large fast
breeder reactor and these bastards are taking the nation for a radioactive ride.
The smaller German reactor designed to produce 760 megawatts of thermal
energy would produce 370 mega joules in the event of a core-disruptive accident.
In the case of the PFBR, the DAE has lied as usual the worst-case core
disruptive accident would release an explosive energy of 100 mega joules only.
The U.S. Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which was designed with a
heterogeneous core like PFBR was eventually cancelled. Four percent of the
thermal energy could be converted into mechanical energy and can cause
ejection of radioactive materials into the atmosphere that can cause vast areas of
Tamil Nadu a Chernobyl. The Tamilians are sitting on a possible catastrophic
nuclear holocaust from a poorly designed fast breeder reactor.
In June 21 2003, a radiation leak was noticed at the nuclear fuel reprocessing
plant at Kalpakkam near Chennai which is just 48 km from the city. Two scientific
officers, B.P. Singh and Sridharan, and a worker named Raju went into the
radiation free zone of the reprocessing plant to take routine samples and had
suffered excessive exposure to radiation due to this. Kakkodkar tried to hush up
the issue. After a week the agitated DAE workers went on a flash strike. Then the
management in Kalpakkam to come out with the truth to the media and the
public. There is an unhealthy concentration of nuclear power and research units
in Kalpakkam that can make Chennai unsafe to live in case of a major accident.
The MAPS I and II reactors produces 340 MWe, the IGCAR research reactor
produces 30 kilowatts, the fast breeder test reactor produces 40 MWe and the
prototype fast breeder reactor using mixed-oxide fuel is scheduled to produce
1,400 MWe by 2008.
Read Daniel Patrick Moynihan the US ambassador (1973-75) wrote a book- A
Dangerous Place – ISBN 0316586994. . Economist Dr Ashok Mitra was also
Chief financial Advisor to Indira Gandhi wrote a book titled ‘A Prattler’s Tale’ ,
Samya, 2007, ISBN : 81-85604-80-0, Dr Ashok Mitra was a well known
economist and was a former Finance Minister of West Bengal. His book says that
the USA asked P.V. Narasimha Rao to make Manmohan Singh as finance
minister in his Cabinet. Manmohan Singh was flown back from Washington in a
CIA plane, late in the night 20-6-1991 and on 21-6-1991 Singh was sworn in as
Finance Minister along with PV Narasimha Rao as PM.. So Manmohan’s foray in
to NPT is not surprising. Better the media do the digging on Manmohan’s true
background. Sonia Gandhi was planted in India and before marriage was
working for ISI under Salman Tassir in London.
Manmohan Singh has sold our DAE to Americans and our future in nuclear
technology is doomed because of the additional expenditure that is required to
bifurcate civil and military nuclear installations. With less and less good
engineers joining DAE, coupled with a total lack of interest in basic sciences by
the brilliant, our nuclear installations are headed in the direction of Chernobyl.
India operates 17 reactors of which 13 are Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors
(PHWRs) reactors. and another 5 are under construction. These PHWR reactors
are CANada Deuterium Uranium reactors (CANDU). . All the current CANDU
reactors share a characteristic known as positive coolant void coefficient of
reactivity. Under a Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LBLOCA) it may lead
to a positive feedback, which can, in turn, cause a large power pulse. Recent
experiments suggest that this feedback effect may be stronger than originally
believed.
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Radioactive water is ingested from water cooler by the staff in nuclear plants.
Filtered water to a water cooler could be linked to some radioactive utility tank
line that holds radioactive water. These branches are provided with isolating
valves and check valves. But there were cases where these check valves
malfunctioned after years of service and the radioactive water backing up to the
water cooler line. There are many areas were a totally isolated line can not be
given to a water cooler. Such things go on unnoticed for sometime. During
maintenance workmen in a totally covered suit and with fresh air mask may
wrongly connect pipes in radioactive areas. The number of such accidents run in
tens of thousands. Kakkodkar has just a day more in service and it is a bad way
to end his tenure, after his three times illegally extended service.
A heavy water leak at Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) forced the reactor
to be shut down in September 1988. On 5-3-1991, 0.847 tonnes of heavy water
escaped from the moderator system. 350 kg was recovered and over 53 %
spilled heavy water was released into the atmosphere through the stack and
about 3 % was released into the sea. The radioactivity concentration of the heavy
water was 10 curies/litre and the radioactivity concentration of the air in the
chamber was 3,225 DAC (Derived Air Activity).. In the case of tritiated water
vapor, the DAC is 20 micro curies/cubic meter. Clearly, 3,225 DAC of tritium air
activity is dangerously high. A worker will receive more than the annual limit if he
or she were to work in such an atmosphere for even an hour. This exposure is
similar to heavy water ingestion.
At Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) on 26-3-1999, 14 tonnes of 2 curies/kg
level of radioactive heavy water from the coolant cycle spilled from the second
unit and seven tones or 14,000 curies have been released into the atmosphere
through the stack. The permitted level is 300 curies per day per reactor . 42
workers who mopped up the spill for 4 days were subjected to heavy exposure .
Seven workers who plugged the leak have been placed in the “removal category”
(The Hindu, April 9, 1999). Workers received tritium uptake in excess and that
these employees have been removed from regular work. (The Hindu, April 21,
1999). There have been at least two similar accidents at MAPS. The environment
pollution result in general public receiving radiation doses from tritiated heavy
water. Public exposure limit is 1 mSv/year (or 0.1 rem/year) per person as
recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection
(ICRP).but the spill resulted in many times the prescribed limit
Tritium is present naturally in the environment, this amount is too small for
practical recovery. Naturally occurring tritium was about 34 million curies, of
which 22.2 million curies were contained in the oceans and 9.2 million curies
were present in inland areas before the advent of nuclear energy. Nuclear
weapons testing has added about 3,600 million curies of tritium in the northern
hemisphere. By 1970, only about 2,900 million curies was left, mostly in the
oceans; the rest had undergone radioactive disintegration to become helium-3.
American light-water reactors generate about 15 to 23 curies of tritium per
megawatt year, of which no more than 1 curie is normally released into the
environment. CANDU reactors generate about 620 curies per megawatt year, of
which about 16 curies to the air, 4 curies to the water are normally released into
the environment. The radiological significance of tritium is due to its easy
incorporation into all parts of the body that contain water.
Tritium for strategic purposes is produced artificially, with neutrons that are made
to strike a target of lithium or aluminum metal, which gives tritium and other by-
products or by a neutron reaction with helium-3 which gives tritium and hydrogen
as by-products. Tritium is produced in Reactor moderator heavy water, due to the
capture of neutrons by deuterium atoms in the water. Tritium is used in medical
diagnostics, for hydrogen bombs and to boost the yield of both fission and
thermonuclear weapons. Each thermonuclear warhead contains 4 g of the
isotope. For neutron bombs designed to release more radiation uses 10-30 g of
tritium. USA’s total tritium production since 1955 is about 225 kg which after
decay is now has some 75 kg.
Tritium is produced in nature by the action of cosmic rays from outer space. It is
also produced by atomic explosions and by nuclear power plants. Each CANDU
reactor produces from 30 to 100 times as much tritium as a comparable
American light water reactor, because the heavy water in a CANDU “breeds”
tritium while the reactor is operating. Tritium resulting from neutron generators
etc, is mostly drawn off from the plants into the atmosphere by way of waste gas
lines. The tritium poisons the air and since tritium adds on to or builds into water
vapor the radioactivity returns to the earth’s upper surface, for example through
rain water and can thereby cause environmental poisoning.
Most of the tritium produced in a reactor is as a byproduct of the absorption of
neutrons by a chemical known as boron. Boron is a good absorber of neutrons,
which nuclear reactors use to help control the fission chain reaction. Toward that
end, boron either is added directly to the coolant water or is used in the control
rods to control the chain reaction. Tritium can also be produced by absorption in
lithium or to a lesser extent from the fission process itself. Tritium can be
produced in large amount when neutrons are absorbed heavy water moderator
and coolant. Like normal hydrogen, tritium can bond with oxygen to form water.
When this happens, the resulting water is called tritiated water and is radioactive.
Tritiated water is chemically identical to normal water and the tritium cannot be
filtered out of the water. Nuclear power plants routinely and safely release dilute
concentrations of tritiated water.
Tritium is almost always found as a liquid and primarily enters the body when
people eat or drink food or water containing tritium or absorb it through their skin.
People can also inhale tritium as a gas in the air. Once tritium enters the body, it
disperses quickly and is uniformly distributed throughout the soft tissues. Half of
the tritium is excreted within approximately 10 days after exposure. Workers in
weapons facilities; medical, biomedical, or university research facilities; or
nuclear fuel cycle facilities receive increased exposures to tritium. A tritium
concentration to yield a 4 mrem per year dose as 60,900 pCi/L and the maximum
contaminant limit is 20,000 pCi/L. Like all radioactive substances, tritium is a
carcinogen, a mutagen, and a teratogen. Laboratory work with mice and rats has
clearly shown that tritium is particularly potent as a mutagen and teratogen
Due to an accident, radioactive heavy water or tritiated water leaked out from the
core area of the reactor through the pump seals and mingled with the emergency
cooling water, contaminating it with 3,500 curies of radioactive tritium and this
necessitated a deliberate dump of 3500 curies of tritium into the Ottawa River
upstream of Ottawa in Canada, on 19 July, 1981, with no warning to the
population or to municipal authorities.
Drums of radioactive heavy water were dumped in to the river by mistake at
RAPP. The dumping of high amounts of tritium began in the middle of the 20th
century, in multiple locations near nuclear power plants, such as Savannah River
in the U.S., or Marcoule in France. Cases of exposure to the radioactive material
have been documented in other facilities around the U.K. and Russia.
Tritiated water can be ingested in the liquid form. It can also be inhaled or
absorbed through the skin in the form of water vapor or steam, which makes
tritium an occupational hazard in CANDU nuclear power plants. In pregnant
females, tritium ingested by the mother can cross the placenta and be
incorporated directly into the fetus. Like all radioactive substances, tritium can
cause cancer, genetic mutations, or developmental defects in unborn children.
Passage of tritium in the form of tritiated water from the mother through the
placenta and into the fetus results in shrunken heads, sterility, stunting, reduction
of the litter size etc. Tritium is capable of inducing dominant lethal mutations,
chromosome aberrations and point mutations. Even in low levels, tritium has
been linked to developmental problems, reproductive problems, genetic and
neurological abnormalities and other health problems.
No threshold or “safe dose” of tritium has been scientifically established for any
of these effects. Tritium is four or five times more dangerous for causing cancer
than that would be predicted just on the basis of its energy alone. Additionally,
there is evidence of adverse health effects on populations living near tritium
facilities. Tritium contamination has been reported in many nuclear reactor site in
ground water soil from operational releases and accidents. The tritium pilot plant
at BARC, Trombay was set up in 1992 and is called the detritiation plant. Tritium
is extracted from moderator heavy water that is being used in research and
power reactors. The tritium build up in reactors increases with the number of
years of plant operation.
CANDU reactors poison us with tritium. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen. It is
created and released into the environment in far greater quantities from CANDU
reactors than from other nuclear power reactors, such as US light-water designs.
Quantities of tritium accumulate in the heavy water existing in the reactor, which
is a highly dangerous radioactive substance, and these quantities are higher and
higher as the reactor’s operating time increases. The reactors requires heavy
water top up throughout the reactors’ lifetime of about 30 years for the water loss
through seals etc. This amount is around 12 tons per year per unit and will result
in the radioactive pollution with tritium. Higher the heavy water losses means
higher the concentration tritium pollution at the nuclear plant. It would be nothing
special, but because of the lack of tightness inherent in any industrial plant, a
part of the heavy water infested with radioactive tritium escapes outside the
plants and infests the area.
Tritium gas is currently used in certain illuminating devices, as phosphorus can
easily be made to glow, by the electrons emitted by the radioactive material.
These device, known as ‘tracers’, are used to make self-powered lighting key-
chains, exit signs, and watches. The military experiments make use of the similar
properties of the radioactive radium in order to make gun sights for fire arms, but
have recently been replaced by tritium, since exposure to the radium has greatly
increased the risk of getting bone cancer.
40 to 50 employees ingested contaminated water from the water cooler on the
premises of heavy water reactor-1, which has been closed for maintenance.
Their urine samples were showing increased tritium levels. The most abundant
isotope of hydrogen, protium, has one proton and no neutrons in its nucleus.
Deuterium is isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron in its nucleus
and is stable and non radioactive. Tritium nucleus has one proton and two
neutrons. Deuterium oxide or heavy water is used in nuclear reactors. Tritium is
produced in the reactors and is radioactive. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years,
meaning that 5.5% of tritium will decay into non radioactive helium-3 every year.
Tritium decays to helium-3 atom plus emission of an electron and an electron
neutrino and when inhaled and ingested, it can result in radiation poisoning.
Radio active normal water ingestion from water coolers have happened in CIRUS
reactor in Trombay due to malfunctioning check vales.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) developed the Candu-6 reactor in the
early 1970s. The CANDU-6 is the only reactor AECL has sold. Nine CANDU-6s
have been built internationally in China (2), Argentina (1), South Korea (4) and
Romania (2). Two were built in Canada in New Brunswick and in Quebec.
Despite its current promotion of the prototype Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR),
the CANDU-6 remains central to AECL’s business plans. AECL hopes to sell
additional CANDUs to Argentina, Romania and Turkey India etc. Ontario
abandoned its plan to build a CANDU-6 reactor in 2006 as design did not meet
safety requirements. AECL is marketing antiquated reactor design. In 1972,
AECL started up a prototype reactor called Gentilly-1. The magnitude of positive
reactivity by Gentilly-1 was so great it could not operate stably. Containment
would not withstand an explosive power pulse of Gentilly-1 from failure of the
emergency shut down system and Gentilly-1 was permanently shut down in 1977
CANDU Design has positive reactivity flaw and could experience an explosive
power pulse. All new CANDU reactors were mandated to have two independent
emergency shutdown systems, that diverged from the approach taken by most
other international regulators. The ability of CANDU shutdown systems to
operate under accident conditions has not been confirmed by test or experience.
Confidence in the estimated effectiveness of CANDU shutdown systems in
accident situations is low because of the significant uncertainties in modeling
such situations. The CANDU and Chernobyl RBMK reactor designs both exhibit
positive reactivity. A significant contributor to the 1986 Chernobyl accident was
positive reactivity. The Chernobyl accident spurred Canada’s nuclear regulator to
reassess its assumptions regarding the hazards posed by positive reactivity in
CANDU reactors. Studies showed a high degree of uncertainty in the
assumptions underlying safety assessments for CANDU reactors.
New international safety standards preferred reactors with negative reactivity.
AECL complained that the application of international standards would have
negative impacts on the marketing prospects of the CANDU-6 internationally and
would reflect badly on operating CANDUs in Canada. If modern international
safety standards were strictly applied, a reactor with positive reactivity such as
the CANDU-6 could not be built. In 2008, AECL was forced to abandon the
commissioning of two small MAPLE reactors at Chalk River because they
exhibited uncontrollable positive reactivity. In 2001, AECL began a marketing
push in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom for its prototype
Advanced Canada Reactor (ACR). Unlike the CANDU-6, the ACR is intended to
have negative reactivity in order to meet modern licensing requirements. To do
this, it uses slightly enriched uranium instead of natural uranium, and light-water
cooling.
The CANDU is a pre 911, 2001 design and was not designed to resist a terrorist
attack and are vulnerable to terrorism. In 2006, Ontario abandoned its plan to
build a new CANDU-6 because of the design changes required to meet post-
September 11th safety requirements. While requirements for reactors to be more
robust against terrorist attacks continue to evolve since September 11th, it is
clear that the CANDU-6 would not meet current standards if they are applied
rigorously. AECL is interested in selling additional CANDU-6 reactors to countries
such as Turkey, India and Jordan. The economic re-building and extending the
life of CANDU reactors, of nuclear power station, is weak and dependent on the
modern regulatory requirements and upgrades to the reactors. India does not
have a independent and proper Nuclear Safety Commission or safety
requirements to protect its citizens as all things are done in house.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) bribed officials in Argentina and South
Korea in the 1970s in order to obtain reactor sales. Those bribes totaled at least
$22 million. As recently as 1994, AECL’s agent in South Korea was convicted
and imprisoned in that country for corruption and bribery, after giving a bribe to
the head of KEPCO, the Korean state utility that owns and operates that
country’s nuclear power plants. AECL has in the past disguised bribes as agent
fees like that was done by the Bofors thief Rajiv Gandhi. AECL’s corrupt
practices are never stopped and will benefit the UPA government.
Canada has shut down one third of its own nuclear power reactors due to
technological problems. AECL is selling the same flawed technology to other
countries. In 1996, CANDU performance was by far the worst of all major reactor
types. In Canada, there have been no new reactor orders since 1978 like in USA,
where the last uncancelled reactor order was placed in 1973. AECL’s attempt to
sell CANDU reactors to Turkey at Akkuyu Bay in December 1996, was cancelled
because of a nearby earthquake fault. Terrorists do not need nuclear weapons if
they can trigger a catastrophic radiation release by sabotaging or bombing a
nuclear power plant. Potential security threats to a nuclear plant in India is both
internal and external. India is in a terrorist war with muslims of India and
Pakistan. CANDU reactors, or other reactor designs, can experience catastrophic
accidents. CANDUs have had their share of serious accidents, and it is only a
matter of time before a disastrous accident occurs.
BARC is pouring an enormous amount of radioactive waste in to the Mumbai
sea. Similar thing is happening all over the world at the nuclear installations. This
unseen undersea radioactive contamination, is finding its way into the food chain.
If one goes around the fish market in Mumbai with a Geiger counter I’m sure that
one could detect radiation. Other non nuclear agencies are also dumping
radioactive waste in to the sea. Italian mafia is dumping European radioactive
waste off the coast of Somalia. Europeans are finding that their raw and finished
metal stocks are slightly radioactive and in some cases exceeding 70
microSieverts per hour. Western industrialized nations have been
indiscriminately dumping their polluted metal waste material to the emerging
world because in country disposal is both hazardous and expensive. Much of that
came from decommissioned nuclear reactors that were sold into metal recycling
industry
UK nuclear industry revealed many waste disposal sites planned and being used
but was kept secret for decades. In US nuclear waste is stored in a salt formation
655 meters under the Chihuahuan Desert near Carlsbad in New Mexico. It has
also chosen Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert as a potential repository for
irradiated fuel from reactors. Deep underground repositories are being
investigated in Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium and France. The
consensus of scientists internationally is that burial in stable geological
formations below 300 meters is likely to be the safest method of disposal in the
long term. In India we are yet to see the detailed plan for waste disposal.
In the history of reactors three major accidents are counted of. The first
happened in Windscale, England, in 1957, the second case was in the Three
Mile Island nuclear power plant in the USA in 1979. The third and most tragic
event occurred in the 4th unit of the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. The 1957
reactor fire at Windscale was possibly the most serious nuclear accident to occur
outside the Soviet Union. Large amounts of assorted radio-isotopes were
released. Government records altered in cover-up and the name was changed to
Sellafield. The accident led to discharges of between 600 and 1,000 TBq of
iodine-131, between 444 and 596 TBq of tellurium-132, between 22.2 and 45.5
TBq of caesium-137 and about 0.2 TBq of strontium-90. An estimate of 1369 TBq
of Polonium-210 was also released during the fire. It is estimated that due to the
fire some 1000 lives were lost due to cancer etc.
Europeans do not consider nuclear energy as an option to tackle the energy
supply. There is no more nuclear renaissance in the West. In Bulgaria, Germany,
France and Romania the number of people who think nuclear reactors can be
run safely has fallen. EU citizens consider that the current share of nuclear
energy in the energy mix should be maintained or reduced and they don’t want to
increase nuclear power. They feel that there is no security to protect nuclear
power plants against terrorist attacks. Another major danger is radioactive waste
associated with nuclear energy. Paki terrorists will target our nuke plants and
limiting nuclear damages is anti Indian. India should look for green alternates.
Placing solar battery panels on the roofs of 10% of houses and buildings and
constructing as many windmills at parks and other places as possible could
generate 120 million kw, equivalent to the electricity generated by dozens of
nuclear reactors.
Human cost and environmental costs are high for nuclear power. Stop the mad
rush to nuclear power in India which is capital intensive. After the Three Mile
Island accident nuclear power projections were wind down in West. Once the
power production is over we have to dismantle the site. Disposal of radioactive
waste is a major problem. India has pursued the CANDU type reactors of
CANADA. Canada stopped such reactors as these are inherently unsafe due to
positive void coefficient and does not meet the 911 safety criteria. CANDU
reactors release 20 times more tritium than other type reactors that are in use
elsewhere. This result in dangerous discharge of tritium, a highly poisonous
radioactive contaminate, similar in toxicity to radon in to the environment. Tritium
a low energy beta emitter, and once ingested can damage cells, proteins. Once
tritiated water is inside it cannot be detected and result in a slow death. So living
near a nuclear power plant in India is not advisable.
Major accidents were seen in Windscale, England, in 1957, the Three Mile Island
nuclear power plant in the USA in 1979 and the meltdown of the 4th unit of the
Chernobyl power plant in 1986. After 30 years of no nuclear power construction
USA has no nuclear manpower to decommission its old reactors and want
radiation coolies from India and this is the only reason for this agreement. A
survey of official records since the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in 1979
shows there have been more that 23,000 accidents at U.S. nuclear reactors and
the number is increasing. In 1986, there were more than 3,000 reported
accidents, up 24 percent since 1984. On first January 1992 about four tons of
heavy water was spilled at Rajasthan nuclear power plant . On 13 May 1992 the
tube leak caused a radioactive release of 12 Curies of radioactivity from Tarapur
nuclear power station supplied by America. Thousands of such incidents were
never reported. India is sitting on a powder keg nuclear disaster.
NALGONDA URANIUM MINES MY ARTICLE PUBLISHED YEARS BACK
Huge deposits of Uranium were found by the Atomic Minerals Division in about
1337 hectares across Lambapur, Namapuram, Yellapur and Peddagutta villages
of Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. The Uranium Corporation of India Ltd
(UCIL) is planning to set up Rs 600 crore plant in Nallamala region.
Uranium is a nature’s gift to us. We already have Jaduguda uranium mines in
Jharkhand which is being operated by UCIL. Uranium is very important for
nuclear programme and some Western nations like France have occupied
African nations for the sake of uranium deposits. It is very important that we
exploit this natural resource urgently and what we should do is to avoid pitfalls
we had from such mines at Jaduguda. Our Supreme Court on Aug 30, 1999
issued notice to the Union Government, Uranium Corporation of India; the Atomic
Energy Commission and the Deputy Commissioner, Singhbum district of
Jharkhand on a public interest petition seeking a direction to take immediate
steps to insulate people living in the vicinity of the Jaduguda uranium mine from
the hazards of untreated effluents and pollution of uranium mining in the wake of
alarming reports that villagers were affected by the radiation from mines. There
are environmental impacts for any such uranium opencast mines. One important
requirement is to resettle the population in and around the area. It was seen in
Jaduguda uranium mines, that women faced reproductive problems like
spontaneous abortion, infertility; children are born with physical and mental
deformities. Even crops and trees have shown deformities in that area. The
Nalgonda district is already facing fluoride problem and this mines will add further
difficulties for the population and hence large scale resettlement of population
from five to ten kilometer radius of the mining and tailing ponds area is a must.
Our lessons at Jaduguda will come a long way to avoid the pitfalls we observed
there. It was found that that the radiation from nuclear waste crippled the
Jaduguda Tribals. Nuclear wastes should be piped to the treatment area from the
mines rather than use drains as this will prevent seepage and consequent
subsoil water contamination. As we lack honest civic administration or political
administration, such precautions should be implemented under the supervision of
AP High court and some retired Judges should be made the chairman of any
committee formed for such supervision.
The track record of Dept of Atomic Energy or that of UCIL was bad in safety
aspects so far. Newspapers claimed that the biggest radiation overexposure in
India occurred at the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant in Tamil Nadu on 21st
January 2003 to some six staff. This came out in the open after three months
back when BFEA, the employee association of this BARC facility gave a strike
notice. This claim of biggest radiation accident is not true as the worst accident
had happened at Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) in the seventies, when
the whole plant was contaminated with fission products. A stage had come when
every employee at Tarapur was overexposed and workers and engineers were
sent from BARC and other atomic energy establishments for the repair jobs at
TAPS. The radioactive contamination had spread in and around Tarapur and up
to the railway station there. Tarapur was the worst in terms of nuclear accidents
and yet so far the public is not aware of it. It is no wonder then that the president
of BFEA, R.K.Shenoi was transferred to NRG facilities, Tarapur for his trade
union activities, by the Department of Atomic Energy.
Radiation exposure is a fact of life and should be accepted as an occupational
hazard by those who work in the Nuclear field and it is like the hazard our
Jawans face in the war front. What is required is transparency and accountability
so that we avoid pitfalls in the future and avoid wasteful expenditure in the name
of national interest. Our plentiful Thorium reserves can be irradiated and
converted to U233 fuel that can be used in future breeder reactors. France had
trained many of our engineers and scientists in fast breeder technology and a
research centre was setup by DAE at Kalpakkam. For India this route is a highly
wasteful in terms of our precious resources and we should stop funding the fast
breeder programme and this could save us some Rs 3200 crores. We should
also develop uranium enrichment technologies.
UCIL had claimed that the mining will not cause any adverse impact on
environment and public health. I have never heard such a tall claim. They also
claimed that the water from mining area will not reach Nagarjunasagar which is
located nearby because of impervious granite rock formations. There are always
fault lines in such rocks and water can definitely reach the reservoir if not
immediately, but in due course, and this probability is further increased as the
seismic level in these region is quite high. They also claimed that where the
tailings pond where uranium waste would be dumped is 10 meter lower than the
Akkampally drinking water reservoir which is quite near. Akkampally reservoir is
a drinking water source for Hyderabad city. This is also not a good argument as
over time, water bodies at higher levels could get contaminated from lower lever
sources due to rainwater flooding and similar natural reasons. All these could be
overcome by suitable design and proper planning. We should look for maximum
credible accidents and carry out independent detailed environmental impact
assessment studies, to mitigate all problems. Bad planning and implementations
could cause death knell of even Hyderabad city so that all clearance should be
given after ensuring proper implementations of protective arrangements to
prevent contamination of the drinking water sources. Recent studies have shown
that statistically significant cancer cases will be present in surrounding human
populations after a period of just 20 years of the existence of even fuel fabrication
plants.
In the Banjara Hill area, in Hyderabad, the rocks there have up to 25ppm of
Uranium in it and the resultant radioactive radon gas that can cause lung cancer
could be high there. A six to seven fold increase in lung and respiratory tract
related infections due to pollution is reported in Hyderabad compared to the 1999
figures. With new Uranium mines that can contaminate the drinking water sauces
to the city, the dangers to the city are increasing. If the mining project is not
implemented without utmost care and seriousness, it could adversely affect some
2.4 crore people in six districts of Andhra Pradesh. Based on the past
performance of our Atomic Energy Establishment, one should move away from
Hyderabad if the operation of the Uranium mines in Nalgonda is started.
DAE use daily wage workers for working in radiation environment. I used to see
Andhra labourers along with their kids sitting on the lawns of the plutonium plant
in BARC. The lawns are contaminated with radiation. The radiation exposure to
these workers or their kids were never monitored. From the beginning BARC
used to have a radiation protection division that is supposed to monitor radiation
exposure to all nuclear field related personnel in all establishments in India. DAE
had failed in this mission and that staff and visitors are routinely exposed to
radiation from even in diagnostic clinics using the X ray units all over India. What
USA wants from India is coolies to get exposed in USA like we expose our
labourers to radiation damage. Another reason for the treaty is to sell all the junk
design that is lying with US firms that are 3 decades old. Nuclear agreement was
signed by President George W.Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh July
18, 2005,with out finalizing any details, and now hiring lobbying firms to canvass
it in USA. Government of India has hired Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, headed by
former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwell, and the Venable Law firm, at a
cost of $ 1.3 million to the Indian tax payer. US corporate that wants to get
contracts in nuclear construction in India have hired one of the most expensive
lobbying firms in Washington known as Patton Boggs, to push the Indo-US
nuclear agreement in the US Congress,. US corporations that never got any
nuclear contracts, for the last 31 years in USA, as not a single nuclear power
reactor was constructed in USA for the last 30 years will take away the contracts
that is normally given to L&T, BHEL by DAE. This is one more reason for the
agreement.
US president Carter on 20th February 2006 along with the US Senator Barbara
Boxer is calling for Nagaland to secede from India that too at a time the current
US president Bush is expected in India in March 2006 for a visit. Apparently
Jimmy Carter is pressurizing their CIA man Manmohan Singh to help Nagaland
to break away from India.. It will be wise if we do not proceed with the agreement
that is not in our national interest. We should never trust US on any nuke
agreement as US has gone back on an earlier nuke agreement we had on TAP I.
In 1979 at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and
in 1986 at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union there were serious nuclear
accidents. TMI had a profound impact on the public’s view of commercial nuclear
power. The TMI plant was a pressurized light-water reactor one of its type was
supplied to us and India suffered radiation deaths from it. Chernobyl was the
worst reactor accident in history, with 31 people dying of direct radiation
which could eventually near some 4000 fatalities. It also found that most of the
five million people living in contaminated areas received doses of radiation when
the No. 4 reactor exploded, spreading contamination over Ukraine, Russia,
Belarus and parts of Western Europe that resulted in the evacuation and
relocation of 350,000 persons. If US has to start nuke power after a lapse of 30
years, its manpower has to come from India and this is another reason for this
agreement. US nuclear power plants, its accumulated waste are also vulnerable
to terrorist attack. US require low level workers to clean up any radiation mess
and that can only be carried out by Indians.
In the early nuclear days, reactors that used plutonium were promoted for
offering a solution to the world’s energy problems. Not only do they use
plutonium as a fuel, but it was claimed that they even produce or breed more of it
during operation. Over the years, all fast breeder reactor programs have turned
out to be costly technical failures, whether in France, US, Japan, UK, or
Germany. The only fast breeder reactor operating today, with numerous technical
problems, is the experimental BN-600 in Byeloyarsk, Russia. USA has none of
the type of reactors we are interested or have experience in it.as a working
nuclear reactor for power production. So it is very evident that the treaty is a
treachery on India and is of much importance to USA. Our Breeder reactors
envisage Thorium to U233 conversion and US does not have this know-how.
Americans are not an intelligent community and never had brilliant fellows. They
solved the problem by taking in even Nazi scientists to develop their rockets, and
now taking all intelligent immigrants
like our Tamil and Andhra Brahmins. It in the nuclear field that the Americans
never got many outsiders, with the result that they continue to commit blunders at
the highest level. In 1977 Jimmy Carter signed an executive order which banned
the reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the US. US thought that when the spent fuel is
processed and the Plutonium is separated, it could possibly be stolen, and
terrorists might be able to use it to make atomic bombs. Carter and his lot knew
that Plutonium is used in atomic bombs, but really did not know that the
plutonium separated from the reactor was not useful for making the bomb as that
Plutonium contains all types of plutonium isotopes and such bombs will not
explode. To get bomb quality plutonium, we have to limit the burn up of uranium.
So this foolishness by the Americans has resulted in the accumulation of reactor
waste over a long period of time. One reason for this nuke agreement is to make
us process their waste.
European Union promised more than 200 million Euros to finance efforts to
prevent another Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster for early closing of reactors in
Bulgaria , Armenia etc, but these did not materialize so far. Many nuclear plants
there are operating in earthquake zone like in India’s case. In India we never
discuss the issue of earthquake or tsunami as we are totally ignorant about it. For
eg, BARC reactors are in earthquake zone and yet they are not designed for it.
RAPP is another earthquake zone. Tsunami which affected the nuke installation
in Tamil Nadu is not even known to any of the design engineers of Atomic
Energy. So much for our nuke installations. US supplied Tarapur units were a
national disaster in terms of contamination and radiation exposure.UK bill is
£50bn to clean up the nuclear material that has already been created and the
amount India has to spend is not even estimated. Placing solar battery panels on
the roofs of 10% of houses and buildings and constructing as many windmills at
parks and other places as possible could generate 120 million kw, equivalent to
the electricity generated by dozens of nuclear reactors.
9500 tons of Uranium in Meghalaya (News 4-7-05) and also has enough nuclear
fuel for the next 40 years as per the CAG report in newspapers on 22-2-2009.
We should scrap the nuke deal which is meant to stop our nuke testing program
and nothing to do with our nuclear power programme or fuel requirement. India
has 319,000 tons of Thorium that is sufficient for 2500 years. Thorium can be
converted to U233 which is a fissionable nuclear fuel. USA has no nuclear fuel
and are importing it from Russia etc. The nuclear treaty is worse than signing
NPT as per our retired AEC chairman Setna. The agreement was done using ISI
CIA agent Manmohan Singh and ISI, CIA, OPUS DEI, KGB agent Sonia. Menon
was promoted over many and three extensions given to a characterless anti
national traitor Anil Kakkodkar to get the nuke deal signed. The treaty is a
treachery on India by the christian controlled congress party of India. Anti Indian
christian Congress wanted 70% foreign FDI in the Banking sector and the
communists stopped it and saved India from meltdown like that happened in
USA. One cannot start a nuclear plant in Kerala as the ordinary persons are
aware of the dangers of nuclear power. But in Maharastra, Tamil Nadu etc the
ordinary persons have no knowledge of the dangers of nuclear waste or nuclear
power plants. Even the politician are of very low IQ in Maharastra. Ordinary
citizens of Maharastra are ready to believe the corrupt politicians like Sharad
Pawar of Dhabol power plant and Enron fame. Sharad Pawar has converted
Maharastra in to a suicide belt by surrendering the seed business to
multinationals. The onion price rise has another reason which is the 300% rise in
its seed price supplied by multinationals. What India requires is few research
reactors that supply medical and industrial isotopes to the whole of India. These
research reactors will produce sufficient Plutonium for our Bombs. But policies of
Manmohan made India inferior to Pakistan with around 80 bombs with India
against around 95 nuclear bombs with Pakistan.
Reproduction of fish populations are affected in the ocean exposed to nuclear
fission products from past atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. The Fish
Population Declined following the nuclear tests. Very large declines of fish-
populations were observed, after low-altitude nuclear tests. Gradual recovery to
pretesting levels have been observed both in the Atlantic and Pacific, strongly
suggesting that the eggs of fish and the developing young are far more sensitive
to internal radiation from low-level fallout than had been anticipated, very much
as in the case of the human-embryo and fetus.
The University of California, home of the Manhattan Project – the atomic bomb
project that never ended, will forever be known as the University that poisoned
the world. Uranium in environment is causing a global epidemic of diabetes.
WHO says that global diabetes rates will increase 10 times by 2030. Animals are
also affected and this is accelerating the collapse of the web of life. Mass
extinction of all species like the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago. Uranium
in drinking water in Los Angeles doubled in 2007 alone, from depleted uranium
bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2006 depleted uranium was reported in the
UK in 7-9 days after bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. High increases of diabetes
is seen in Tasmania, and 50% of the Tasmanian Devil population has been
exterminated by mouth cancers since 1993, when uranium mining doubled in
Australia. The radioactive dust is carried in southern hemisphere atmospheric
circulation patterns to Tasmania in a matter of days.
The European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) says that chronic exposure
to low-Ievel ionizing radiation is up to 1000 times more biologically damaging
than the International Committee on Radiation Protection (ICRP) standards and
risk model predict. This was based on 550 epidemiological studies of exposed
populations, an independent low-Ievel ionizing radiation report for the European
Parliament. The ICRP standards and risk model are based on the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb studies, which were deceptively conducted by the U.S.
Government, in order to protect the future development of a nuclear weapons
program. Public health impact from global pollution by depleted uranium is worse
than the fission products, and was not officially measured or reported from bomb
testing. All atomic and hydrogen bombs have thousands of pounds of depleted
uranium packed as “tamping” around the small plutonium core weighing less than
20 lbs.
There was major contribution from depleted uranium to global radioactive
pollution due to atmospheric testing. A global diabetes epidemic beginning in
1945 with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has had a major contribution
from the effects of uranium pollution from atmospheric testing, nuclear power
plants, and depleted uranium weaponry introduced to the battlefield in 1991.
Uranium is particularly damaging to the pancreas, insulin production, information
flow, and cell function. And diabetes in pregnant women has a serious effect on
the foetus. Pancreatic cancer mortality in Japanese males increased 12-fold
between 1945 and 1965, during the peak of atmospheric testing. Nuclear fission
power plants has problem of high-level waste disposal. Building new plants
would be a serious mistake. There is no future for nuclear power as of now.
Nuclear fusion efforts should continue. Electricity generation from this source is
very attractive but it may take another half a century.
Battlefield uranium weapons should be illegal under various conventions of war.
Uranium is not localized and the uranium aerosols are long lived in the
environment and are able to travel thousands of miles. It was detected in
Reading in UK and the DU was used in Baghdad a distance of 2500 miles. This
was a lesson learnt during the atmospheric nuclear tests of the 1960s and the
subsequent Strontium-90 in milk, and during the Chernobyl accident. The use of
battlefield uranium weapons, like the new bunker busting bombs which have
more than 1 ton of uranium in the warhead and can result in significant exposure
to the public in many countries. Uranium is a powerful genotoxic stressor. The
ceramic sub micron Uranium oxide particle can cause heritable genetic effects in
areas where uranium has been used and these particles generated.
Since 1945, the University of California and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Labs
together with other nuclear states have blanketed Planet Earth and the global
atmosphere with accumulating uranium and fission products with an unknown
biological outcome. Low level uranium contamination, even below EPA drinking
water standards, is an estrogen or hormone disruptor at a minimum, which
means it will have a global affect, and not just on females of many species.
Infertility will increase in each future generation because of chronic low-Ievel
ionizing radiation exposure, cancers of reproductive organs in females will
increase, and the viability of future generations will decline. The link between
diabetes and uranium exposure is also significant to the reproductive system,
since pregnant women who have diabetes and little health care produce
unhealthy babies. The impact of uranium on the pancreas and production and
function of insulin, another hormone, is very significant damage to another
system.
Uranium is an endocrine-disrupting chemical. It is like the herbicide atrazine,
pesticide DDT, plastics-bisphenol A compound found in Nalgene that was
banned from baby bottles. Populations exposed to environmental uranium will
have increased risk of fertility problems and reproductive cancers. Exposure to
uranium and its daughter elements has been linked to lung cancer, kidney
damage and bone disease and other medical conditions, from degenerative
nerve disease and birth defects to a variety of other cancers. Tailings piles
contribute to U contamination in water sources. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency limit for drinking water standard for uranium is 30 micrograms
per liter and the Canadian standard is 20 micrograms. These carcinogens cause
a cell’s DNA to mutate, eventually leading to cancer. Radiation causes the fragile
chains of DNA to break, also leading to errors and mutations.
After a series of Bomb blasts since 1993, to 26/11 it is clear that the problem of
Mumbai is not to go away. The muslim terrorists will now concentrate on our
nuclear installations in Mumbai. It will take only one suicide bomber to lay waste
Mumbai if the terrorists are concentrating their attention on our plutonium plant or
one of the many nuclear reactors in Trombay. Already LeT operatives are in
place in our Air Force and the regular crash of MIG21 could be one of the end
results of that. Our nuclear secrets are in the hands of Pakistan as many of the
muslim staff who worked in DAE and went to Gulf nations was debriefed by Pak
delegations to which I am a witness. So it is only a matter of time that our
Trombay will become another Chernobyl and I advise all Mumbaikers to plan for
relocation as our IB or Govt. is unable to protect these installations. Remember
that Sonia and Manmohan were working for ISI and even removed the ban on
SIMI and Sonia even went to the extent of defending SIMI in parliament.
As per US Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules a nuclear plant builder should
have a damage insurance guaranteed by the U.S. government. In our case GOI
have to give a similar guarantee if the plant were to be built in India so that if a
Chernobyl happens, the US industry or the Indian company that built it will not be
liable for any damages. This make the tariff from a nuclear power plant built by a
U.S. company in India costlier besides subsidizing the U.S. firm’s investment in
India. Because of this provision, no new nuclear plant has come up in USA for
the last 30 years after the Three Mile Island accident. Bush violated the 123
agreement which said other countries would be called into play if fuel supply to
India was disrupted. Bush now says no legal binding on fuel. With terrorism in
India by christian Maoists and Muslim terrorists, a Chernobyl is waiting to happen
any time now. If two suicide bombers attack nuclear installation, places like
Mumbai will become another Chernobyl.
NPCIL is the only government unit that can install nuclear power plant in India.
Uranium is not the only issue, but the component suppliers including the reactor
vessel worldwide is very acute. Japan Steel Works is the only supplier of reactor
pressure vessels except Russia and its capacity is just five vessels per year and
it cannot meet India’s demand. JSW order book is full till 2016 and buyers have
to pay a premium of $100 million for booking a new vessel. There are only 80
nuke plant component suppliers and 200 certifications companies whereas thirty
years back these figures were 400 and 900 respectively. The annual nuke plant
constructions in the world is less than 4. Indian demand cannot spur production,
as US or Europe are not going for nuke power plants anymore. Plant
construction around the world is less than four a year. Indian firms cannot invest
the huge sums for nuclear component fabrication as certification to IAEA
standards have become mandatory with the nuke agreement.
Nuclear power in France works, was a documentary that went missing after a
month. The reason was that there were accidents at two French nuclear
installations, injuring seven workers. A third of the French public now oppose
nuclear power. Nuclear safety is not there for any nuclear power plant as was
seen in Indian incidents. More than 250 secret nuclear reactor accident reports
were kept secret. Some of the underreported incidents:
February 1983 — Bulgaria’s Kozluduj nuclear power plant lost pressure in the
primary cooling system;
June 1983 — three of four pumps fail in Argentina’s Embalse nuclear plant;
August 1984 — the primary cooling system in West Germany’s Bruno Leuschner
plant in Greifswald burst;
January 1985 — at Pakistan’s Kanupp reactor, radioactive heavy water leaks
while being transferred through a rubber hose;
April 1985 — radioactive water and sludge swamp two rooms of an auxiliary
building at Belgium’s Tihange reactor.
In several of these previously unreported nuclear slipups, a meltdown was a real
possibility. A survey of official records since the Three Mile Island reactor
meltdown in 1979 shows there have been more that 23,000 accidents at U.S.
nuclear reactors and the number is increasing. In 1986, there were more than
3,000 reported accidents, up 24 percent since 1984. India is sitting on a powder
keg nuclear disaster as a result of reliance on the peaceful use of the atom and
we may not require muslim terrorists of India and the Paki muslim terrorists to do
the damage.
The Guardian reported on 14 November 2006 that Al-Qaeda is plotting nuclear
attack on UK. more nuclear power stations means grater risk of terrorist attack.
New generation of nuclear power stations proposed for the UK is more
susceptible to terrorist attack. US nuclear power plants are also vulnerable to
attack by muslim terrorists. Nuclear waste storage facilities in 103 US reactors
esp the cooling ponds in which spent radioactive fuel is kept could be severely
damaged by aircraft, high-powered weapons or explosives. If the water drained
from the cooling ponds, the zirconium alloy fuel cladding would overheat and
burst into flames and could release large quantities of radioactive material into
the environment. A large cloud of lethal radioactive fallout could be released by a
terrorist attack on the nuclear waste. Such an attack on a cooling pond could
release more radioactivity than the Chernobyl reactor accident in Ukraine in
1986. Such a release would cause thousands of deaths from cancer.
Some 130 crore people have died since nuke tech has been in vogue. By
suitably defining the effect of radiation this figure is reduced to zero. Radioactive
fish from the sea is being caught off the Mumbai seashore, since the BARC was
started as most of the liquid radio active waste is simply dumped in to the sea.
Same is true for all other nuclear plants including nuke power stations. With no
independent monitoring, that was facilitated by the Chidambaram, as AEC
chairman people are being irradiated from radiation in DAE facilities. Even
without a terrorist attack the poor present leadership of AEC, has made the
safety of Indians a big question mark. If there is a terrorist attack, with a dirty
bomb, the only option for the public is to leave the place.
In the seventies, one professor sent a neutron source back to BARC by post
without any shielding and it came to the table of a scientist in Hot laboratory.
Seeing the condition of the old capsule he thought of checking for radiation, and
found to his horror that it was a highly radioactive capsule. In the seventies,
radioactive aluminum scrap tubes stored in the BARC compound were found to
have been stolen and later it was found that they were used as construction
material for the Janata colony that is adjacent to the BARC colony in Anushakti
Nagar. Lakhs of radioactive devices are in use in hospitals, for which there is no
long-term disposal plan. These are tiny capsules of radioactive cesium isotopes;
cobalt-60 pellets. Radio active Americium241 is present in smoke detectors and
they have to be disposed of as radioactive waste. Yet India has no practical
plants that works at the ground level. On 21.07.06 and on 29.01.07 India lost
Industrial Gamma Radiography exposure device containing Ir-192 source. On
26-8-2009 a radiography device, weighing around 28 kg, fell off the vehicle near
Ambedkar Chowk in Pimpri, on the outskirts of Pune while being transported
from Mumbai. It was picked up a group of street boys and taken to a nearby
village. This could be collected back as the loss was detected after few hours.
Hundreds of such cases happen but are never reported as the AERB that is
responsible for monitoring it is under DAE and they always try to hush up the
incidents. Last year radioactive stainless steel buttons cast in Vipras foundry in
Pune, reached France after machining and transportation through many firms
exposing everyone along the way. French workers were exposed and it became
an international news. Yet the case was never followed up in India. Thus buying
and steel or stainless steel product is a dangerous thing in India. In AP, a
hospital cobalt source went missing and health minister said that it was washed
away by rain. Government hospitals radioactive waste is ending up in scrap and
it end up radio active steel in many Indian homes as furniture. Nuclear power is a
one way street that can contaminate every thing. In Mexico a hospital
radiotherapy machine with cobalt 60 was sold as scrap for $10 and tons of
radioactive steel entered USA. . In USA some 4363 radioactive sources have
been lost, stolen or abandoned, over the past 10 years and in India in this regard
no information is available. These lost materials are dangerous and can kill
public. In India there is not even a record of how many radioactive sources exist
nationwide. If the radioactive material falls into terrorists’ hands could end up in a
dirty bomb, or one that uses conventional explosives to scatter radiation.
Oncology doctors or X ray technicians or those living near nuclear plants or daily
wage workers working in radiation environment will have a shortened lifespan.
DAE had failed in this mission to monitor and regulate the radiation equipments.
Staff and visitors are routinely exposed to radiation in diagnostic clinics using the
X ray units all over India as proper shielding for walls are not provided and
radiation badges are not given to these staff to limit their exposure to the
permissible limit.
There were many instances of radiation spreading from our nuclear plants. Once
a staff from the Plutonium plant had stolen radioactive gold seal of a pump from
the plant in BARC. Once a dog that ingested radioactive water when it fell in a
pool in the plutonium plant escaped from BARC to outside carrying Pu burden in
its body.
Various ancient sites in Indian continent, could be highly radioactive. While we
were developing India’s nuclear bomb at BARC, we were trying to find ancient
hints about its construction in our Hindu Vedas. Mohenjo Daro and Harappa
ancient Indian cities were destroyed in a nuclear blast some 6000 years back . In
Mohenjo Daro, in an epicenter 150 feet wide, everything was fused, melted,
crystallized; 180 feet from the center the bricks are melted on one side, and
human skeletons are highly radioactive even today like that was observed in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
bit.ly/9fFOmI,
bit.ly/cPvH8E,
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported that it is notified of about
200 lost or stolen radioactive sources each year and that since 1983 20 sources
had been accidentally melted at steel works and other foundries. IAEA says it is
aware of 49 meltings world-wide at 1998 and the situation is aggravated by
increasing amounts of scrap originating from decommissioning of nuclear
reactors, weapons and submarines. As per general information 65 meltings of
radioactive steel have occurred world-wide. As a result, radioactive materials are
entering the public domain in an uncontrolled manner are creating a serious risk
of radiation exposure for workers and the public. US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission says that over 2300 reports of radioactive materials found in
recycled metal scrap.
On 21 December 1994 a load of mixed alloy scrap described as titanium turnings
but was radioactive due to depleted uranium swarf, was delivered to ELG Haniel
Ltd in Sheffield in UK. In March 2000 it was discovered that a waste tip manager
from Suffolk had been carrying a radioactive 12 kg lump of depleted uranium in
the back of his van for about 6 months because he thought the metal might have
some value. In 1996 Georgian soldiers receive severe exposures from sources
left by departing Russian troops. In January 1999 two Turkish scrap dealers were
exposed to a Cobalt 60 radiation source on the outskirts of Istanbul and were
hospitalized. They were trying to break up a 2-ton block of iron and lead they had
bought weeks before. In March 1999 an Amsterdam hospital gave a medical
instrument containing 114 kilos of depleted uranium to a scrap dealer.
In February 2000 three scrap yard workers in Thailand died after breaking open
an abandoned radiotherapy device and receiving fatal radiation doses from a
Cobalt 60 source. In April 2000 Uzbek State customs committee reports the
interception of radioactive scrap traveling to Pakistan from Kazakhstan. In April
the Science and Technology Agency, Japan, investigated a case of
contaminated waste stainless steel imported from the Philippines and detected at
the gates of Sumitomo Metal Industries in Wakayama City, near Osaka. Another
incident occurred in May at the Kobe Steel plant, Kakogawa City 23. There have
been evidence from contamination in consumer products and there are plenty of
unreported radiation exposure incidents.
Italy is a key route for transport of radioactive scrap involving Italian organized
crime. The report says that between January 1997 and October 1999 113
incidents were recorded. An estimated 5,000 tonnes of radioactively
contaminated metals are entering Italy each year. Interpol alerted in February
1998 that Britain was being targeted by Russian criminals trading scrap metal
contaminated with radioactivity. Scrap metal contaminated with radioactivity is
smuggled into the UK. In May 2000 the Avesta Steel plant in Sheffield melted a
small plutonium 238 source that is most likely to have been an abandoned
cardiac pacemaker which itself an unregulated radioactive source.
The melting a cardiac pacemaker resulted in about 16 tonnes of metal and slag
being contaminated with radioactive plutonium 238 that has a half life 86 years
and had to be disposed of as radioactive waste 27. Once melted, contaminated
metals find their way into new products. In Spain in May 1998 a Cesium 137
source entered the smelting process in the Acerinox plant in Algeciras, near
Cadiz 28 releasing a plume of contaminated off gases which triggered detection
monitoring equipment between 25 May and 2 June in France, Italy, Switzerland,
Germany and Austria and resulted in some temporary detection measurements
up to 1,000 times higher than background radiation levels. Some detection points
were 2,500 km from Algeciras.
Skoda engine parts mainly cylinder heads have been cast from contaminated
radioactive metal. About 100 cylinder heads were produced of which 60 were
traced and 40 were never located. Whole railway wagons were produced with
radioactive steel in Slovakia and it was detected only when wagons went to
Autria where they triggered radiation monitors at the crossing point. In Taiwan
radioactively contaminated steel in pipes and fittings were identified in buildings
containing 1,600 apartments constructed between 1982-83. In mid-1998 around
6400 people had been identified as living in this radioactive environment for up to
16 years. People still occupy these apartments as they have no option, and have
cancers and congenital disorders and unusual chromosomal and genetic
damages.
Cobalt 60 pellets from discarded radiotherapy equipment in Mexico in 1983, were
melted in foundries in the United States and the reinforcing bars for concrete and
table legs were manufactured out of it. This was discovered on 16 January 1984
when a lorry carrying rebars passed close to the Los Alamos laboratory, USA,
and set off the radiation alarms designed to warn of radioactive material leaving
the site. In the intervening period significant volumes of potentially contaminated
metal had been produced and distributed by several foundries. In Mexico,
surveys were made of 17,600 houses which could have incorporated
contaminated rebars and as a result 814 houses were demolished. In the USA, a
search for the table legs, which covered 1400 customers, revealed 2500
contaminated items which were returned to Mexico for disposal. Some 4000
people were exposed.
Radioactivity was detected in the well water in Chember area in the seventies,
but were not told to the public and they are still using it in many places. Radon
makes the Banjara Hill area in Hyderabad not a good place to live as the rocks
contains 28ppm or Uranium. Contaminated scrap arising from decommissioning
nuclear reactors in USA, Europe is set to flood Indian market as more and more
nuclear plants are decommissioned. In Taiwan radioactive steel used in 1,600
apartments exposed 6400 people for 16 years. 65 meltings of radioactive steel
have occurred world-wide and radio active railway wagons in Slovakia,
radioactive Skoda engine cylinder heads, contaminated rebars produced in USA
resulted in the pulling down of 814 houses in Mexico, contaminated 2500 steel
table legs exposed some 4000 Americans etc are just tip of the iceberg.
There is no regulatory controls or clearance required for lightly radioactively
contaminated metals for reuse in consumer goods or for engineering or industrial
purposes. Consequences are very severe additional small radiation doses which
people could receive from lightly contaminated consumer products will result in
damaged future generations. Contaminated scrap arising from decommissioning
nuclear reactors in USA is set to flood Indian market. The US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission permitted BNFL to recycle contaminated scrap recovered during its
$200 million decommissioning work at the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant,
Tennessee, despite the absence of nationally agreed clearance levels. Oak
Ridge is estimated to hold 100,000 tonnes of assorted contaminated scrap metal
including 6,000 tonnes of contaminated nickel estimated to be worth $41 million
but presently further free release has been refused by the US Energy Secretary.
In 2008 radioactive stainless steel buttons cast in Vipras foundry in Pune
reached France and installed in 600 Otis lifts. News came on Oct 22, 2008 that
France’s Mafelec firm delivered thousands of lift buttons to Otis lifts that were
sent from India and 20 workers were exposed to excessive radiation. Radioactive
Cobalt-60 laden stainless steel were sent to Mafelec by two Indian firms, Bunts
and Laxmi Electronics, and they in turn purchased the inputs from SKM Steels
which in turn sourced its materials from a foundry called Vipras Casting in Pune.
Dutch customs discovered that an Indian shipment of industrial flanges delivered
to three companies at four sites in western, southern and central Sweden were
radioactive. In India this was never followed up and never tracked the persons
who were exposed to excessive radiation. Thus buying and steel or stainless
steel product has become a dangerous thing in India as these could be the
furniture and utensils.
In 2007 there were big Pakistan government advertisement in major Urdu
newspapers asking the members of the public to inform officials, if they found
any lost or stolen radioactive material. In AP, a hospital cobalt source went
missing and health minister said that it was washed away by rain. Government
hospitals radioactive waste is ending up in scrap and it end up radio active steel
in many Indian homes as furniture. Nuclear power is a one way street that can
contaminate every thing. In Mexico a hospital radiotherapy machine with cobalt
60 was sold as scrap for $10 and tons of radioactive steel entered USA. In USA
some 4363 radioactive sources have been lost, stolen or abandoned, over the
past 10 years and medical facilities have lost track of nearly 1,500 pieces
equipment with radioactive parts since 1996. In India in this type of information is
not published. These lost materials are dangerous and can kill public.
bit.ly/aEWGqJ
In USA about 1.6 million tons of radioactive scrap consisting of gold, silver,
carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, nickel, and copper that came from
decommissioned nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons and the oil and gas
industries are waiting for lowering of per year exposure for radiation to the public,
so that these can be recycled. But the fact is that the long term exposure to low
levels of radiation can be more hazardous than short term exposure to high
levels, resulting in a six to eight times greater cancer risk. The nuclear installation
decommissions produce large quantities of radioactive metals and it is melted for
re use for making containers of nuclear industry and for producing steel granules
for heavy concrete shielding. Italian police have seized 30 tons of radioactive
steel exported from China sent from in May 2007 that had arrived in the northern
port town of La Spezia in Italy.
bit.ly/ayB35D,
Oncology doctors, X ray technicians, those living near nuclear plants, daily wage
workers working in radiation environment will have a shortened lifespan. DAE
had failed in this mission to monitor and regulate the radiation equipments and
exposure of radiation workers. In India almost all hospitals, clinics, diagnostic
centers, are not constructed as per the HTM standards or its equivalents. Walls
and doors require mandatory lead sheet lining but not seen even in corporate
hospitals. Its own staff, visitors, pedestrians, even the consultants, parking area
below are regularly exposed to radiation. The doctors, staff dealing in X ray units
or radiopharmaceuticals are never seen wearing the mandatory TLD badges,
with which the personal exposure can be monitored so that they are never over
exposed. Shoddy and shortcut way things are done in India, which is shameful in
a country like ours where as these things are enforced even in African nations
and India needs to enforce this with an independent authority.
The water sources near any nuclear plants are always contaminated. In BARC
many nuclear reactors were in operation since 1960. Thousands of curies of
radioactive liquid wastes resulting from split fuel rods were drained in to the
Mumbai sea. Fish can accumulate some of the radioactive elements lakhs of
times. Some studies have indicated high levels of radioactivity in marine life. Yet
there is no restriction in fishing or any independent study was done on the daily
catch of fish from Mumbai seas. The human life in India appears to be of no
value for the government. Kakkodkar introduced lady shift engineers in the
reactors, a practice, avoided world over. The reason is that the girls have all their
eggs at the time of their birth, and a female at the reproductive age works in a
radiation environment, the future generations will have serious genetic mutations.
bit.ly/dd2Omm,
BARC staff bear the brunt of the ever present radioactive leakages, over-
exposures, arising out of design deficiencies, poor maintenance, old power
reactors, the hazardous nuclear installations like Apsara, CIRUS and Dhruva
reactors, fuel reprocessing and waste treatment units. In seventies, a university
professor sent a neutron source to BARC by post to the table of a scientist.
Nuclear reactor superintendents like Rakesh Kumar died of radiation induced
brain tumors. So many such cases are hushed from the public view. Even the
total absorbed doses by the staff are revealed to the that staff. Time to make
AERB an independent organization outside DAE for the radiation health of India.
Some 130 crore people have died since nuke tech has been in vogue. By
suitably defining the effect of radiation this figure is reduced to zero. AERB
should be independent of DAE and bring back BARC under AERB purview.
There is a need to put DAE under a full time cabinet minister.
BARC is pouring an enormous amount of radioactive waste in to the Mumbai
sea. Similar thing is happening all over the world at the nuclear installations. This
unseen undersea radioactive contamination, is finding its way into the food chain.
If one goes around the fish market in Mumbai with a Geiger counter I’m sure that
one could detect radiation. Other non nuclear agencies are also dumping
radioactive waste in to the sea. Italian mafia is dumping European radioactive
waste off the coast of Somalia. Europeans are finding that their raw and finished
metal stocks are slightly radioactive and in some cases exceeding 70
microSieverts per hour. Western industrialized nations have been
indiscriminately dumping their polluted metal waste material to the emerging
world because in country disposal is both hazardous and expensive. Much of that
came from decommissioned nuclear reactors that were sold into metal recycling
industry.
R. Chidambaram, who lied about the Hydrogen bomb, through an office
memorandum dated April 25, 2000 while being the Secretary of the DAE, has
ordered that the regulatory and safety functions at the Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre (BARC) and its facilities, which were being exercised by the AERB, were
removed from the responsibility of AERB. This was assigned to be carried out
through an ‘Internal Safety Committee Structure’ of the Director of the BARC to
hide all such exposure to the staff working in BARC. The independent safety
assurance and regulation has thus been made the responsibility of the same
people who manage these installations, defeating the very principle of unbiased
external scrutiny, which is at the core of any such regulation. The radiation
exposures to BARC staff, will be hushed up.
Chidambaram when retired, he promoted another traitor Kakkodkar to that post.
The traitor Kakkodkar was given three extensions by NDA and UPA and both
were following antinational policies at the prompting of Americans. The last
AERB chairman who retired recently S K Sharma has nothing to do with radiation
protection, but everything to do with radiation destruction, as he is from the
Reactor operations side and was responsible for dumping of thousands of curies
of liquid waste in to the sea, that is now got in to the food chain of Mumbaikers.
The policies of the DAE chairmen were to hide all mishaps from the public. If the
public comes to know the true story of contamination from our nuclear
programme, there will be no more Nuclear power programme in India. CANDU
reactors release 20 times more tritium than the light water reactors that are in
use elsewhere. This environmental poisoning by tritium, is similar in toxicity to
radon but once ingested it can slow death.
The position of the Atomic Energy commission was occupied by illustrious
scientists like Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha, who not only contributed to the science
but was also a visionary who created our nuclear programme and brought in
scientists and engineers of an excellent character. After Bhabha, was murdered
by CIA in a plane crash, the next chairman was Dr. Vikram A Sarabhai who
developed our space programme. was also murdered by CIA using their heart
attack method. As per Kovalam staff where he died two ladies came out of his
room after killing him. Kerala is the breeding ground of CIA. Eventually a
dishonest Chidambaram became AEC chairman. Decay in political field is seen
in research establishments. Chidambaram, systematically and deliberately
refused to sit with his previous boss Shri P.K. Iyengar and clear his fake claim
that May 11, 1998 Hydrogen bomb test was a success. They also started putting
pliable AERB chairmen.
bit.ly/drkbfc,
bit.ly/9PgDyi,
With the best of technology, staff and finance, UK, USA and USSR had
undergone serious nuclear accidents. India is about to follow it soon. Poor
leadership of AEC, has made the safety of Indians a big question mark. If there is
a terrorist attack, with a dirty bomb, the only option for the public is to leave the
places like Mumbai. The first major nuclear accident was in 1957. The reactor fire
at Windscale was possibly the most serious nuclear accident to occur outside the
Soviet Union. Large amounts of assorted radio-isotopes were released.
Government records altered in cover-up and the name was changed to Sellafield.
The accident led to discharges of between 600 and 1,000 TBq of iodine-131,
between 444 and 596 TBq of tellurium-132, between 22.2 and 45.5 TBq of
caesium-137 and about 0.2 TBq of strontium-90. An estimate of 1369 TBq of
Polonium-210 was also released during the fire. It is estimated that due to the fire
some 1000 lives were lost due to cancer etc
Indo US civilian nuclear energy agreement was a treachery on India by the prime
minister. Our nuclear bomb making capacity is curtailed with the coming Shut
down of CIRUS reactor that was producing Plutonium on 31-12-2010. It was in
the West’s interest to have this agreement to dump on India unsafe nuclear
reactor types which India is not following or planned to follow. CANDU type was
our power reactors, even though it contaminates the surroundings and cause
cancer to thyroid problems, and does not meet the 911 criteria. Our Thorium
based technology is not known to any other nation. As a person who designed
and installed our first thorium fuel, I can say that our DAE is taking the nation
down the drain. US has not constructed a single nuclear power plant in the last
31 years. In my opinion a terrorist attack in Trombay is simply inevitable and it
could result in total Chernobyl type effect in Mumbai. It is time to shift Bhabha
Atomic Cancer Centre out of Trombay to save Mumbai.
The EPR is European Pressurized Reactor, or Evolutionary Power Reactor, but
is now simply named EPR by Areva.It was developed mainly by Framatome
which is now Areva NP and Electricite de France or EDF and Siemens AG in
Germany. Not a single EPR reactor is in operation anywhere in the world. As of
2010, four EPR units are under construction. The first two, in Finland and France,
are both facing costly construction delays. Construction commenced on two
additional Chinese units in 2009 and 2010. In July 2008 the French President
announced a second EPR would be built in France. Electrical power output will
be 1650 MWe with thermal power 4500 MWt. The reactor can use 5% enriched
uranium oxide fuel, or with up to 50% mixed uranium plutonium oxide fuel. On
November 4, 2009, the nuclear power regulatory authorities in France, Finland
and the United Kingdom issued a joint letter to Areva, citing serious problems
with the EPR’s digital Instrumentation and Control systems (I&C). The letter
stated: The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety
systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside normal
conditions), and their independence from the control systems (those used to
operate the plant under normal conditions). Independence is important because,
if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then
they should not fail together. The EPR design, as originally proposed by the
licensees and the manufacturer, AREVA, doesn’t comply with the independence
principle, as there is a very high degree of complex interconnectivity between the
control and safety systems.” EPRs nuclear waste will be many times more
radioactive than that from conventional reactors.
I support the call to stop the nuclear power plants completely in India. We should
go for distributed solar plants. See my blogs
http://indousnuketrechery.blogspot.com/2005/10/indo-us-nuclear-trechery.html
http://www.sify.com/connect/blogs/blog_display.php?
blogid=1574&pid=3430&page=0
Other blogs
http://iitiansjanissaries.blogspot.com/2005/05/iitian-are-janissaries-stolen-
hindu.html
http://kgbwithcongressofindia.blogspot.com/
Contents can be used freely with an acknowledgement or can post or reproduce
his blogs in other websites .