JOIN USKudankulam's turnaround
Nuked protest The uproar over, the reactors at the nuclear plant will become operational soon.
India’s nuclear power establishment may greet this Easter Sunday (April 8) with a profound difference as it never did before.
For it rings in new hope for the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), when nuclear power was almost written off, post-Fukushima disaster, as a dream spookily gone.
As commissioning activities recently resumed in full swing at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) site in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, it’s a virtual resurrection for the most controversial project that almost got grounded eight months ago in the wake of an unprecedented agitation by the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) at its backyard.
No wonder the KNPP turnaround seems an Easter miracle, with its first 1000 MW unit marching towards criticality in the next two months, 24 years after India and former Soviet Union inked the deal in 1988.
“We have a directive from both the Central and State Governments to produce electricity in two months from unit-I,” an excited and much relieved R S Sundar, KNPP Station Director, told Deccan Herald. He, with his team, is working round the clock to make it happen.
Three months after the first unit’s commissioning, the second 1000 MW unit is also expected to go critical, wheeling power to the grid to help Tamil Nadu partly tide over its present acute power deficit of 4000 MW. Fuel loading (enriched uranium) would begin at the earliest in KNPP’s first reactor after the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s (AERB) clearance, assures Sundar.
In fact, Chief Minister J Jayalalitha’s expectations from KNPP has soared exponentially that she wants the entire power generated for Tamil Nadu, against its total allocated share of 925 MW only from both the units. “With the severe power shortage, we require and deserve this power,” she unhesitatingly wrote to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh.
The tone of ‘Amma’s’ letter drove home that it was the AIADMK regime’s nod to resume KNPP operations on March 19 that finally breathed fresh life into the Russian-aided two huge ‘VVER’ (pressurised water) type reactors, the first of their kind being commissioned in India.
But all this is a far cry from last year’s mid-September blues. The PMANE’s stir to shut down the plant had peaked then under the vigorous leadership of a former political science teacher in the US turned anti-nuke activist, S P Udayakumar. The Jayalalitha Cabinet’s earlier resolution asking the Centre to halt all works at KNPP until the Kudankulam area people’s fears and concerns were allayed, virtually pushed it into a limbo.
Jayalalitha’s tactical move then on the Panchayat polls’ eve ended Udayakumar’s first phase of an “indefinite fast” with thousands of his followers outside St Lourdes’ church at Idinthakarai coastal hamlet near Kudankulam. It also raised her stakes against the UPA-II regime in Delhi.
Picking up the cue, at the Prime Minister’s behest, DAE appointed a 15-member Experts Group (EG) headed by Dr A E Muthunayagam, noted environmental scientist with roots in Kudankulam, to ally the local people’s fears that got reinforced by the horrific Fukushima accident visuals on their TVs.
The NPCIL’s “communication bungle” during the first unit’s ‘hot run (with dummy fuel)’ in July 2011 only worsened locals’ doubts. But Udayakumar’s fine grassroots work, ‘morally’ backed by the Tuticorin Catholic Diocese, gave his agitation, alternating between continuous relay hunger strikes and indefinite fasts by a core group, a unique ‘Gandhian’ hue.
Project’s safety
The DAE’s EG interacted extensively with the State group that included the anti-KNPP representatives. They produced two brilliant reports, testifying to the project’s safety from all aspects – earthquakes, Tsunami, a reactor core meltdown, radiation exposures to fishermen’s catch - and answered all queries to allay locals’ fears. But even by January-end 2012, nothing seemed to “convince” the protestors, who kept raising more issues.
Meanwhile, even former President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam made a splash with an “independent review” of the plant and its additional safety features. But the conflict-resolution took a decisive turn only when Jayalalitha herself appointed another State-level panel in February 2012, headed by former AEC Chief Dr M R Srinivasan, to revisit the safety issues, amid increasing pressure from other parties to clamp down on the protestors.
Even as ‘Amma’ took time to take a call on that report and also announced a Rs 500 crore development package for Kudankulam area, the Union Home Ministry began a crackdown by probing alleged fund diversions by some NGOs’ down South for fuelling the Kudankulam protests, violating the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA).
Protestors cornered
The Centre and the CBI, along with the State Crime Branch also zeroed in on four NGOs in particular, including blocking the FCRA numbers given to Tuticorin Diocesan Association and Tuticorin Multi-Purpose Social Service Society, and freezing their bank accounts.
This swift action came after Dr Singh’s interview to a science magazine, openly airing his annoyance over some US and Scandinavian NGOs’ hindering India’s nuclear power programme, prompting the Russians to counter, “We told you so.”
An unfazed Udayakumar refuted all charges of accepting foreign money, as his Trust that runs a school in Nagercoil along with his wife, and their residence came under Home Ministry’s scan. Almost simultaneously, in lightening speed, on a tip-off from Intelligence Bureau (IB), a German tourist, Reiner Hermann, was arrested from a hotel in Nagercoil and deported back home for allegedly helping to raise funds (about Rs 12 crore) to fuel protests against KNPP.
The anti-KNPP agitation was set for an ominous showdown when the Tamil Nadu Police and Central forces in large numbers encircled KNPP and enforced prohibitory orders in Radhapuram taluk. Mass arrests, including that of Udayakumar, was anticipated with some of his close associates already booked under sedition charges. But eventually good sense prevailed in Udayakumar’s camp as he called off their indefinite fast on March 27. A ‘Nandigram’ in Kudankulam was, at least for now, averted. The KNPP is all set to bloom to drive the region’s economic development.