Koodankulam: Serious Environmental and Safety concerns

M.G.Devasahayam

Shri M. G. Devasahayam is a former IAS and Managing Trustee, Citizens Alliance for Sustainable Living, Chennai

Nityanand jayaraman

Nityanand Jayaraman is an environmental researcher and activist based in Chennai.

The Koodankulam Nuclear power Plant (KKNPP) is being commissioned without any legal Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a fact admitted by the Ministry of Environment & Forests in a sworn affidavit filed in the Madras High Court. According to this affidavit, environmental clearance for Units 1 and 2 was given ‘as early as 9^th May 1989’ and renewed on 6^th September 2001. Since EIA Notification under Environmental Protection Act came into existence only on 27^th January, 1994 and provision for public hearing was introduced only on 10^th April, 1997 there was no need for KKNPP to go through these critical processes.

Nuclear establishment has taken shelter behind this fig-leaf to ram a 2000 MW nuclear power plant down the throat of over 1.5 million PAP without even going through the most basic process of EIA and public hearing. What is more, Nuclear Power Corporation Limited (NPCL) has been consistently refusing to share the Site Evaluation (SE) and Safety Analysis Report (SAR) with the PAP.

This forced PMANE to appeal to the Central Information Commission who in turn ordered NPCL “to provide an attested photocopy of the SAR and SE Report after severing any proprietary details of designs provided by the suppliers to the appellant before 25 May, 2012.” But the NPCIL has refused arguing that SAR ‘is a third party document belonging to a Russian company’ and therefore ‘cannot be shared with anyone.’ NPCIL even threatened to take CIC to court. Obviously NPCL is more interested in protecting a Russian company (third party) than safeguarding the PAP (first party)!

In the face of such persistent stone-walling, the humble PMANE scientists dug deep and did some quality research. Result is the startling revelation that there has been a serious breach of contract and perhaps deceit in that the VVER reactor under commissioning at KKNPP differs from the one featured in the inter-governmental agreement between Russia and India.  According to documents published in 2006, there was no weld on the beltline (middle portion) of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV).  Now AERB says that there are two welds on the beltline of the RPV installed at KKNPP exposing it to high failure risk that could lead to offsite radiological contamination. If the reactor is hot-commissioned, it will be virtually impossible to subject the vessel to a detailed inspection and remediation. From a safety perspective, the IAEA-mandated study of pressurized thermal shock has to be done before commissioning the reactors at Kudankulam.