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Nuclear deal: why not a referendum?
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM
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Compromising national sovereignty apart, there are serious misgivings on the cost, safety and risks
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The November 18 issue of The Hindu carried two news items. One was the AICC resolution stating that the Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement would end India’s isolation in the international community and would enable it to access technology to significantly increase the contribution of nuclear energy to electricity supply over two decades.
The other was the content of a recent editorial in People’s Democracy, the CPI(M)’s mouthpiece, which says that the most important benefit of the agreement would be for the American firms who “for the first time in three decades will be able to invest in India’s nuclear industry.”
The editorial goes on to say: “The deal is to revive the profits of an industry that is being starved of orders in the U.S. itself because of the U.S. policy to discourage nuclear power generation considering the enormous damage that may occur in the likelihood of an accident.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s earlier hailing of the 123 Agreement as ‘nuclear renaissance’ was an echo of a phrase coined for the 2002 Washington D.C. conference of nuclear industry executives and U.S. government officials — a gathering to boost the comeback of commercial nuclear power in the U.S.
There has not been an order of a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident shattered public trust in nuclear technology. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster damaged confidence in atomic energy worldwide. But the nuclear industry and its allies in the U.S. government are back for a “renaissance.”
This is at variance with the research findings of world’s top ‘think-tanks’ — MIT, Harvard University and Oxford Research Group. MIT’s Report of 2003 has this to say: “The prospects for nuclear energy as an option are limited by four unresolved problems: high relative costs; perceived adverse safety, environmental, and health effects; potential security risks stemming from proliferation; and unresolved challenges in long-term management of nuclear wastes.”
ORG’s July 2007 Report endorses this: “For these risks to be worth taking, nuclear power must be able to achieve energy security and a reduction in global CO{-2} emissions more effectively, efficiently, economically and quickly than any other energy source. There is little evidence to support the claim that it can, whereas the evidence for doubting nuclear power’s efficacy is clear.”
India’s ruling dispensation is pursuing the commercial nuclear route to compensate the U.S. energy giants. Commencing from the early 90s American agencies have been imposing their will on India’s reform process. USAID scripted the power sector reforms advocating a supply-sided restructuring model that favoured America’s power producers.
Under the ‘restructuring’ model, State Electricity Boards were to be dismantled and turned into ‘independent organisations’ with ‘unbundled functions.’ These entities were to be privatised to facilitate their sale/long lease. Despite full backing and funding by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank this did not succeed.
To make this happen by triggering the market, the Electricity Act 2003 introduced the ‘open access’ mechanism. Under this, theoretically, any generator can sell to any consumer and any consumer can buy from any generator. This ‘cherry-picking’ model also has not taken off.
These models did give scope for technologies like gasification combined cycle process; pithead clean-coal power plants and coastal plants with imported coal. But alternatives like renewable sources including wind, hydropower and solar energy had no place.
Compromising national sovereignty apart, there are serious misgivings on the cost, safety and risks of nuclear power as well as its effectiveness in combating global warming. Just by catering to about 10 per cent of India’s energy needs at the best of times, this source will not have the critical mass to provide energy security to the country.
These are of crucial concern to the present and future generations of India and cannot be lorded over by one political party heading a coalition. In the event, former Prime Minister Deve Gowda’s suggestion for a referendum on this issue is valid because it is the people of India who should have the final say.
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