Reassurances Don’t Guarantee Nuclear Safety: M V Ramana

Mv Ramana

M V Ramana is a nuclear physicist working in Princeton University.

His latest book, “THE POWER of PROMISE: Examining Nuclear Energy in India” has helped generate informed debate on nuclear energy and nuclear safety in India.

Click on cover to see the book in Flipkart.com

Article courtesy: Kafila

On 23 March 2013, NDTV featured one of its Walk the Talk features withShekhar Gupta interviewing Yukiya Amano, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This was reproduced a few days later in the Indian Express. Coming shortly after the second anniversary of the multiple accidents at Fukushima, the purpose of the interview is made clear by Gupta late in the interview when he says:

…some of us who support the idea of [expanding] nuclear power [in India] need more reassurance from people like you.

And Amano does oblige by asserting,

with more caution, with further measures, I am very confident that nuclear power is much safer than before.

To those already supportive of more nuclear reactors, the interview is likely to have been successful in offering them the assurance that they need, not so much for themselves, but to silence those skeptical of the expansion. But if one reads the interview more carefully, it is clear that the assurance is not really a guarantee that no catastrophic accidents will happen.

The interview is a strange mixture of candid admissions and misleading or disingenuous assertions, and it is worth teasing out some of these. [The whole interview could, of course, be subject to a much more elaborate analysis, but that task is well beyond what is attempted here.] Further, the assertions about safety and what is needed to achieve safety are in contradiction with what is known about the state of nuclear power and safety in India. Likewise, Amano’s admissions alsodeviate from the “party line” offered by nuclear officials in India. Unfortunately, the interviewer let all of them pass without further comment.

Perhaps the most important and candid of the admissions is this - “We cannot say there is 100 per cent safety” when it comes to nuclear power plants.”

Contrast this with the multiple statements made by various high functionaries of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) claiming complete safety.

On March 20, 2011, an interview of the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) by the science journalist Pallava Bagla for NDTV,  involved this dramatic exchange:

NDTV: Are Indian reactors safe?

Srikumar Banerjee: One hundred per cent.

In a similar vein, Banerjee asserted in November 2011 that the odds of accidents at nuclear plants was “one-in-infinity” or zero.  But the implication of Amano’s statement—“cannot say there is 100 per cent safety”—is that the odds of a severe accident at any nuclear plant is necessarily greater than zero.