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Wednesday 28 November 2012

Will Kolar become India's nuclear waste dumpyard?

Centre plans to dump hazardous waste from Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu in the disused mines at Kolar Gold Fields (Credit: indiacurrentaffairs.org)

Centre plans to dump hazardous waste from Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu in the disused mines at Kolar Gold Fields (Credit: indiacurrentaffairs.org)

People in Karnataka’s Kolar district are seething with anger. On November 23, irrespective of political affiliations, they took to streets to protest against the Nuclear Power Corporation of India’s reported plan to dump hazardous waste from Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu in the disused mines at Kolar Gold Fields (KGF). Almost all the government offices, business houses, educational institutions and even cinema halls remained shut and life came to a standstill.
The protests started following media reports about India’s Solicitor General Rohinton Nariman informing the Supreme Court on November 21 that Kolar has been identified as the final long-term geological repository for long-life nuclear wastes. When the Supreme Court judges asked NPCIL officials where the hazardous spent fuels from Kudankulam would be transported to, the solicitor general said in the open court that the waste would be taken to the deep abandoned mine shafts at the KGF, according to media reports.
This stirred a hornets’ nest in Karnataka. Civil society organisations and political parties are up in arms. Chief minister Jagadish Shettar did not mince words when he came out openly against the Centre. “We’re shocked to know about this plan. The Central government has never consulted the state on this. We have conveyed people’s anxiety about their safety to the Centre. If the Central government goes ahead with the plan we will oppose it,” he said.
KGF is located 100 km from Bengaluru, Karnataka’s capital city. It is right in the heart of southern India where three big states, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, intersect. This is a highly populated area. According to the 2011 population census, 1.54 million people live in Kolar district, and other two districts adjacent to KGF, Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh and Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu have population of 4.2 million and 1.8 million respectively.
Besides, the elevation of Kolar is 3,981 metres while that of Thiruvannamalai, Vellore, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri towns that lie just south of the Kolar area is between 168 m and 631 m. Quite naturally, people fear about the possible dangerous impacts of the hazardous radioactive nuclear waste that will be lying there for the thousands of years on the ground water of the low-lying areas Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Centre denies Kolar plan
S K Malhotra, spokesperson for the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), has said that the department has no plans to dump any nuclear waste either from Kudankulam or any other nuclear plant anywhere near Kolar. V Narayanasamy, minister of state in Prime Minister’s Office has also denied the Kolar plan. In the wake of the protests in Karnataka, he gave a statement saying the nuclear waste would not be taken to KGF. He has repeated his earlier statement that the chances of getting nuclear wastes from the Kudankulam plant were very few and it would be recycled in the plant itself.
“I had spoken to Central minister K H Muniyappa (who hails from Kolar district) and also discussed with seni¬or officials of my department. On behalf of the department, I firmly say uranium waste will not be taken there.”
Affidavit contradicts denial
But the affidavit filed by Ashok Chauhan, executive director of NPCIL, on November 7 in the Supreme Court contradicts Malhotra and Narayanasamy. The affidavit has clearly stated that a long-term deep geological repository (DGR) has been developed in one of the Kolar mines. It states, “ research and development work (for DGR) has been in progress for over three decades… the initial focus of work in the eighties centered mainly on setting up generic underground research laboratories in one of the abandoned mines in India and resulted in the development of an underground chamber in Kolar gold mine located in South India.”
In fact, the underground research laboratory in Kolar was opened in 1964 mainly as a laboratory for conducting research on the atomic particle neutrino. According to DAE's own documents, the lab was shut down in 1992 following closure of the mines.
“If Kolar was never in the reckoning, then where did Nariman get this idea from? Who is speaking the truth and who is not?” asks S P Udayakumar of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which is spearheading the agitation against Kudankulam power plant. “All we can deduce from this culture of nuclear deception is that KGF is going to be the nuclear killing fields of India.” The atomic energy department must share the waste depository studies with the local public and the state government, he adds.
PMANE points out that the DAE has made an ambitious plan of generating 40,000 MW of nuclear power in the next 15 years but it lacks a fool-proof and well thought out strategy for spent-fuel storage and clear and concrete plans for long-term high-level waste disposal. There is apprehension among civil society groups and political parties all nuclear roads may finally lead to Kolar, and when all the planned nuclear plants in the country come up, Kolar may become the nuke dumpyard of the country.
“If our governments, scientists and technocrats have not managed to clean up the dangerous Bhopal waste that has been lying there for the past 28 years, how are they going to convince us about Kolar?” asks Udayakumar.

Author(s): M Suchitra
Date: Nov 26, 2012


No Plan to Dump Kudankulam N-Waste in KGF: Centre

The Centre today made it clear there was no plan to dump Uranium waste from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in defunct gold mines at Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Karnataka.

Amid media reports that Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has decided to dump the uranium waste in KGF, Minister of State in PMO V Narayanasamy said the waste will not be taken to KGF.

He also noted that the chances of getting nuclear wastes from the Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu was very less.

"I had spoken about this matter to Central minister K H Muniyappa (who hails from Kolar district) and also discussed with senior officials of my department. On behalf of the department, I strongly say that the Uranium waste will not be taken there" he told reporters at the Airport here.

Life came to a standstill in Kolar Gold Fields yesterday following a bandh call given by various political parties to protest the Centre's reported move.

Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar dismissed the government's claim and said the Centre had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying it is planning to use the abandoned gold fields as dumping ground for the nuclear waste.
"It is very clear from the affidavit filed by the Centre (in SC) which talks about the processing of nuclear waste. It has been conducting laboratory tests in KGF and there is every possibility that the waste will be dumped in KGF as it is almost closed," he told reporters at Bangalore after meeting Governor H R Bhardwaj on the issue.

Denying that BJP was making a political issue on the matter, Kumar said it is unfortunate there are four union ministers from Karnataka who haven't prevailed over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking the Centre not to dump the nuclear waste in KGF.

Asked what is the stance of BJP government in the state, Kumar said Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar has urged the Centre to make a statement and dispel apprehensions among people about the proposed dumping of nuclear waste in KGF.

Earlier, BJP leaders K S Eshwarappa, former Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda and former minister Ramchandre Gowda and other legislators met Bhardwaj and asked him to plead with the Centre not to dump KNPP waste.

Kumar urged the Union Government to learn lessons from various nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and withdraw the proposal to dump nuclear waste in Karnataka.

BJP would raise the issue in Parliament on November 26, he said and urged the Prime Minister to assure members that nuclear waste would not be dumped in the state.
 
 
 
 

Nuclear waste not to be dumped at Kolar gold mine: Government to Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: With the people of Kolar in Karnataka vehemently protesting the government's alleged plans to dump the nuclear waste in abandoned gold mine of the district, the Centre today clarified before the Supreme Court that it has no such intentions.
In a supplementary affidavit, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) has told the court that nothing was stated in earlier affidavit which suggested that NPCIL has identified Kolar Gold Mine for storing nuclear waste.

"Considering the sensitivity of the subject and intense public interest in the matter, NPCIL is filing the present supplementary affidavit to clarify the matter as follows. Nothing stated in para 26 of the affidavit or otherwise should be read to suggest that NPCIL has identified Kolar Gold Mine of BGML located in south India as one of the sites for storage of nuclear waste," the affidavit said.
The Corporation said the contents of its earlier affidavit was misinterpreted by a section of media.

The Corporation in its affidavit dated November 7 had said it has developed underground chamber in Kolar gold mines for underground research laboratory (URL).
"Keeping in line with the international developments, initial focus of work in the eighties mainly centred on setting up of generic underground research laboratory (URL) in one of the abandoned mines in India and resulted in the development of underground chamber in Kolar gold mines," the affidavit had said without naming the site where the nuclear waste is to be dumped.

The affidavit was filed in compliance of the apexBSE 0.00 % court order directing the Centre to explain as to how would it dispose the nuclear waste of the Kudankulam Nuclear Plant. (More) AAC RKS RAX





Tuesday 27 November 2012

Nuclear waste images.





NUCLEAR WASTE ??????????????

Nuclear Waste: The Perfect Plague

In the 1300?s an epidemic known as the bubonic plague spread throughout Europe. This epidemic later known as the Black Plague has been historically recorded as one of the worst pandemics in human history. It is was so deadly that once infected only 1/3 survived and those who didn’t died within a couple of weeks. During its peak years from 1346-1351 this disease wiped out more than 50 million people, about 1/3-1/2 of the European population.
The Origins of the Black Plague
The Black Plague was highly contagious, it was caused by bacteria carried in rats and fleas. Back then with poor hygiene and sanitation being bitten by a flea was not a difficult thing. The bacteria apparently originated in Central Asia was characterized by causing infection and swelling of the lymph nodes. It devastated the victim’s immune system causing great pain, nausea, vomit and in the worst case death
Medieval illustration showing the symptoms of the Black Plague

The Black Plague was a thing of the past, nowadays there are barely traces of the disease and if an outbreak occurred, antibiotics have been developed enough to cure almost 90% of the cases. Compared to the past where there were no antibiotics dying from the Black Death was a sure thing.
The Nuclear Plague
Developments in medicine and better sanitation practices have eradicated the Black Plague from the phase of the planet, the battle against this medieval monster was won hundreds of years ago. However nowadays we are facing a bigger threat. It is disguised in the form of an energy fuel and they call nuclear energy.
Many technocrats have tagged nuclear energy as a blessing of modern technology, the triumph of man by harnessing power of the universe. Nuclear energy might be a blessing in the sense of its apparent energy yield, but the thing technocrats stress the least about it is what is left after the consumption of nuclear fuel. What is left is a monstrous byproduct much more worse than the Black Plague that almost exterminated medieval Europe.


The byproduct generated from the fission of nuclear fuel in the form of uranium or plutonium creates what is called nuclear waste. This waste comes in huge variety of extremely radioactive material with half-lives ranging from 8 days to hundreds of thousands of years. In other words their radioactivity takes a really, really long time to decay, thousands of times our human life-times. These fission products if released to the environment will last a long time, and the worst part is that it is almost impossible to decontaminate them.
Nuclear byproducts in Fukushima
In the case of Fukushima radiation has been released in various types. One of them is in the form of rays, the most dangerous being gamma and beta rays. This type of radiation travels like light and once obstructed it can be contained or avoided. Gamma rays are the strongest ray type radiation and it can be blocked by thick concrete/metal or dissipated by distance. This type of radiation is probably the least dangerous if you are hundreds of kilometers away from the source in this case the Fukushima reactors.
The other type of radiation that has been emanating since day one in Fukushima is the particulate radiation. This type of radiation is generated through the vaporization of radioactive substances and radioactive water and it travels in the form of airborne microscopic particles. It is like a radioactive dust, but thousands of times smaller and invisible to the human eye.
Particulate radiation can be easily stopped, just like you can prevent dust at home by covering your furniture or PC. However there is a huge downside, in the case of Fukushima tons of cubic meters of particulate radiation have been released into the environment. All of it invisible and impossible to trace have spread through the neighboring land, water bodies and nature. “Fortunately”, thanks to the favoring wind currents most of it has been blown into the ocean, becoming a different type of problem, pollution of the seawater and fish. But not all the time the wind blows east sometimes it blows inland and that is when these particles start polluting the land, water and the food chain.
The particulate radiation released in Fukushima has been mainly,
  • Iodine-131 8 day half-life
  • Cesium-137 30 year half-life
  • Strontium-90 30 year half-life
  • Plutonium-239 25,000 years half-life
These are just some of the many radioactive byproducts a nuclear fission can generate in a reactor, I just named the most popular ones and the ones the media have mostly focused on. All of them with different half-lives but with one thing in common, deadly toxicity, all of them are associated with cancer.
How particulate radiation spreads like a disease
The radioactive byproducts mentioned above have been released into the environment since the first explosion in Fukushima. Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 have been already detected in tap water, vegetables and milk. That means that they have already reached the bottom of the food chained and have found their way up into human consumption. The government has officially announced the detection of these products and has stated that the level are still “safe”. However, with radiation it is always difficult to draw a line between safe and unsafe, since it is difficult to determine the dangers of such byproducts in the short term.
Since the development of a cancer tumor through radiation exposure can take years to appear. So in the short term at the announced levels the risk of cancer is very low, however it is difficult to determine it in the long term. Once a radioactive particle reaches the human body it remains there and as long as it is radioactive it will contaminate the human cells permanently, creating a small ring of destruction around its path. This is the seed for a cancer tumor. The cellular destruction by a radioactive particle is so microscopic and insignificant at the beginning that it is impossible to identify. The damage is occurring at such a small scale that it remains unnoticeable for years until it breeds a tumor big enough to become a problem.
Just like the Black Plague bacteria radiation particles act in the same way, they enter the body unadvertised and begin spreading the damage throughout the body. The Black Plague manifest itself in days with strong symptoms like nausea, vomit and swelling, advising its presence. This can give enough notice to act and combat it through antibiotics. However, radioactive particles do not manifest any symptoms through out years only when they breed a tumor big enough to become a health risk, and usually it is too late to react.
Particulate radiation the perfect plague
I found that comparing particulate radiation with one of the worst diseases in mankind was not that outrageous, since Chernobyl has been a perfect example of how particulate radiation has spread like a disease killing thousands, and allegedly being the cause of cancer in millions throughout Europe, although the link has not been “officially” proven. Just by curiosity I decided to check cancer trends in Europe, breast and leukemia for example, spiked after 1995 and have more incidence in countries closer to Ukraine, coincidence?
                                                                                    Depiction of a food web with humans on the top of it.

Different from a biological disease, particulate radiation or radioactive waste acts in the same way as an infectious plague in that it sickens the body and spreads like a disease through food and water, contaminating the whole food chain. The only difference is that it does not reproduce by itself, however it is bred in nuclear reactors through nuclear fission. No wonder why the call certain type of reactors, breeders.
These are the things that make nuclear waste products the perfect plague:
  • Invisible to the human eye and almost impossible to trace
  • It contaminates the whole food chain
  • It comes in the guise of clean and cheap energy deception
  • So far impossible to fully decontaminate from the environment
  • It lasts for thousands of years some of them alleged to last millions years, however this last fact has not yet been proven by human experimentation.
I think the above points just make nuclear waste the big winner and although not of biological origin it can be compared in scale of damage and negative influence in society as a perfect plague.
Having an energy that produces a dangerous waste that is much more powerful and deadly than the worst plague that humanity has experienced is just insane. It is like if in the middle ages people decided to use instead of horses, lions and tigers as means of transportation just because they felt these were stronger and faster.
Nuclear energy is just an example of the irrationality of humanity, no power yield in the universe can justify the immense risks and dangers of this energy, and these are the dangers we have confirmed with the disaster we are experiencing now in Fukushima.

Source: http://criticality.org/2011/05/nuclear-waste-perfect-plague/

Paths of radiation to the body.

Paths of Radiation to the Body


No plan to dump Kudankulam nuclear waste in Kolar Gold Fields: Minister

The Centre today made it clear there was no plan to dump uranium waste from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in defunct gold mines at Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Karnataka.
Amid media reports that Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has decided to dump the uranium waste in KGF, Minister of State in the PMO V. Narayanasamy said the waste will not be taken to KGF.
He also noted that the chances of getting nuclear waste from the Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu were very less.
“I had spoken about this matter to Central Minister K. H. Muniyappa (who hails from Kolar district) and also discussed with senior officials of my department. On behalf of the department, I strongly say that the uranium waste will not be taken there” he told presspersons at the airport here.
Life came to a standstill in Kolar Gold Fields yesterday following a bandh call given by various political parties to protest the Centre’s reported move.

No plan to dump nuclear waste at Kolar: Narayanasamy

Nuclear waste from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) will not be stored in Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Karnataka, said Union minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office V Narayanasamy in Chennai on Sturday.


Queried by reporters about Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) planning to store the nuclear waste from KNPP in KGF, Narayanasamy refuted claims that the waste would be sent to Kolar Gold Fields.


Citing discussions with KH Muniyappa, member of the Lok Sabha representing Kolar, and also with officials of his department, Narayanasamy stressed that nuclear waste would not be taken to Kolar.
The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which is protesting the setting up of two 1,000 MW nuclear power units at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu, around 650 km from in Chennai, has charged that the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has not shared basic information on storage of spent fuel from KNPP at KGF.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Chennai/No-plan-to-dump-nuclear-waste-at-Kolar-Narayanasamy/Article1-963782.aspx


HindustanTimes Mon,26 Nov 2012