| Action Requested Write to express your support for the
local and international communities' concern about the
Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project and the damages it
might cause, asking the government to cancel the entire
project.
Send Letters or Faxes to:
The Honourable Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee,
150 South Block, New Delhi, 110-004, India
Fax: 91-11-301-6857 / 91-11-301-9545 / 91-11-301-8906
c.c. Copy to:
1. The Honourable Minister for Power and Non-Conventional
Energy Sources
20 Shram Shakti Bhavan, Rafi Marg, New Delhi 110-001
Fax: 91-11-371-7519
2. The Honourable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu,
Government Secretariat, St. George Fort, Madras 600-005
Fax 91-44-235-0570
3. Diplomatic representatives of India in your country
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Background
In November 1988,
then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then India Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed the Koodankulam Nuclear
Power Project deal in Delhi. It is important to note that
this agreement came within just two years of the
nightmarish Chernobyl accident that occurred on April 26,
1986 with disastrous consequences. Several opponents
organised a massive rally against this project. The
Koodankulam project was shelved during 1989-1991 due to
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of Rajiv
Gandhi.
In March 1997, Indian Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and
Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed an agreement, a
supplement to the 1988 agreement, to commission a
detailed project report on Koodankulam project. According
to the deal, Russia would deliver two Russian designed
standard high-pressure VVER-1000 water-cooled and water-moderated
reactors that would produce 1,000 Megawatt of power per
unit.
Since November 1998, Russian and Indian nuclear engineers
have started working on a $57 million Detailed Project
Report. The reactors are expected to be ready by 2006 and
the cost would be roughly $3.1 billion.
In November 1999, opponents of the Koodankulam project
decided to revive the local struggle against it. Since
the beginning of January 2000, several hundred
organisations and individuals around the world have been
sending pettition to the Indian and Russian authorities
to scrap the Koodankulam nuclear power project. The
followings are reasons for the petition:
(1) Unresolved technical and safety questions:
The Russian VVER-1000/392 design will be the first of its
type anywhere in the world. Therefore, India and
Koodankulam will be the testing ground for it. The safety
of the design is unproven. Several technical problems are
set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency in a
publication named "Issues Book" such as a
possibility that the steel reactor vessel may crack; the
control rods (used to control the nuclear reactor) may
fail to insert properly during an emergency; or small
tubes in the plant's steam-generators may fail and lead
to uncontrollable leakage or radioactivity. These
accidents had happened in many nuclear plants in Russia,
Eastern Europe and France. Anti-nuclear activists believe
that there is no reactor design and no reactor type that
presents acceptable levels of risk for the society as a
whole, and the consequences of any accident will last for
hundreds of thousands of years.
(2) Livelihood and health impact:
The temperature rise of the sea at Koodankulam is bound
to affect fishing and the discharge of radioactive
pollutants into the sea will damage the health and the
environment of the people there. Experience shows that
while the Madras Atomic Power Plant at Kalpakam near
Madras runs and discharges to sea at its present capacity
of 350 Megawatt, the sea water temperature rises from 85
to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, the fishermen at
Kalpakam are able to catch only dead fish. Moreover, it
is claimed that radiation from the nuclear waste
discharge has already damaged the health of the people
and the environment at Kalpakam cost. If 350 MW could
inflict such a damage at Kalpakam, what would be the fate
of the fishermen and their environment at Koodankulam
when a 2000 Megawatt nuclear plant goes into operation?
(3) Contaminated under-ground water:
The additional fuel processing needed for feeding the
Koodankulam nuclear plant would further pollute the
already polluted under-ground water belt in Hyderabad,
the capital city of Andhra Pradesh. While processing the
fuel for the other existing nuclear plant, the Nuclear
Fuel Complex (NFC) is discharging daily 50,000 tons of
nuclear waste water and this radioactive discharge has
already polluted the under-ground water belt upto 10
kilometres radius around the NFC. The Department of
Atomic Energy itself has warned the people who live near
NFC to not drink well water. If the present fuel
processing has already polluted the underground water
belt at Hyderabad, what will be the situation at
Hyderabad if additional fuel for Koodankulam is to be
processed?
(4) Escalating cost and project delayed:
VVER-1000 projects in Eastern Europe suffer from
unreasonable escalating costs and hence have become the
subject of great controversy and strong opposition. The
Temelin nuclear plant in the Czech Republic is currently
three years late in start-up, and the cost escalation is
expected to be over US$1billion. According to recent
Czech government reports, it will be delayed at least
another 2 years and another US$1.2billion in cost overrun.
It is quite possible that the Temelin VVER project will
collapse. If this happened, it will be an undesirable
drain of India's hard-earn revenue. The cost will be an
avoidable burden on future generations.
(5) Does the Indian people need the Koodankulam nuclear
power plant?
India is blessed with rivers. The utilisation of hydro
potential of India is not even 25 percent. By
constructing small and medium size hydro-power plants,
one could get not only electrical power but also,
irrigation, drinking water, navigation, fisheries and
damage to the environment will be negligible. On the
other hand, nuclear power plants pollute the environment
with dangerous radiation, the effect of which remains for
thousands of years threatening all forms of life on earth.
By avoiding the costly Koodankulam project, India could
also find funds for developing alternate sources of
energy such as solar, wind and tidal power. Therefore, a
relevant question is whether any nuclear reactor
development of this kind is in the interests of the
Indian people?
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