An Unpopular, Untimely, and Necessary Counterpoint

"Indian nuclear planst have stood the test in the past."

Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister of India

It is not my intention to make light of a horrific situation, nor is it my opinion that the catastrophic events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant should be downplayed by the pro-nuclear community. The aftermath of the earthquake and the tsunami has already claimed thousands of lives, and experts around the world have noted that this sudden occurrence will further set back an economy that has been stagnating for decades. The President of American University, Dr Cornelius Kerwin, sent out a professional yet touching memo, affirming the support of the AU community to our foreign students from Japan, and assured the AU community that all AU students currently in Japan are safe and unharmed. A close friend studying in Tokyo observed that conditions in the Japanese capital city remain relatively normal, aside from the panic induced by the situation in the north.

I did not wish to write this entry, but the senseless posting of a BBC article on my wall has compelled me to offer this trifle amid the panic and the madness. At least 75% of this blog's followers are aware that last semester I held a position in the European Atomic Forum, a trade association and lobby that represents the entire nuclear industry within the European Union. After that brief but enriching experience, my position on nuclear energy is, I claim, slightly better informed, which is sadly much more than that most can claim. Nuclear energy, because of its association with its evil weaponized counterpart, has become an increasingly polarized debate, one that will have direct repercussions within the next several decades. Though I cannot claim to be pro-nuclear, I believe that my current stance is indeed more toward favoring the inclusion of nuclear energy in our national policy. That debate, however, is one on which I have already expressed my views, and the purpose of this entry is rapidly losing its focus.

I did not intend to express my own opinions, but rather to bring to the reader's attention one concise article entitled "Lessons to Learn," under the heading: "A Thought For Today" that appeared in yesterday's Times of India. For your convenience, I have personally retyped the text below. For anyone wishing to learn a considerable amount about nuclear energy and the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, there is an excellent blog by a man named Rod Adams that I have been following for the past several months. His blog can be found here. Below is the article.

Let's avoid knee-jerk responses to Japan's nuclear crisis 

Given the rapidity with which events are unfolding, it's impossible to predict how the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will play out. To a watching world, the situation serves as a sobering reminder of the possible hazards of the use of nuclear power. The crisis has caused soul-searching among governments and the public at large about the safety of nuclear installations. This is understandable. But any such debate must be carried out with a clear head, and that requires us to guard against knee-jerk reactions such as denouncing nuclear power in toto and demanding that plants be shut down. If anything, there's much we should learn from Japan's nuclear crisis regarding the need to frame far more stringent guidelines for the operation of nuclear power plants worldwide. 

There are raised voices against nuclear power both in civil society and among politicians around the world. In India, existing frictions over the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant has been exacerbated with opposition becoming more strident. Nuclear disarmament hawks have stepped up as well. But, as the prime minister out, India's safety record should be kept in mind as also the fact that the Kakrapar atomic power station withstood the Bhuj earthquake of 2002 while the Madras station came through the 2004 tsunami safely. Former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar too has vouched for the safety of our nuclear installations. Nor can we deny the economic necessity of nuclear power as part of a diversified energy basket-including renewable and conventional energy-for sustaining India's growth. 

Like China, we have big plans on nuclear power, hoping to push up generation to 63,000 megwatts by 2032. It's therfore all the more necessary that we revisit safety issues. Safety measures at today's plants are constantly being upgraded, making them orders of magnitude safer than earlier installations. This should not make us complacent. Here and globally, there'll be greater focus now on plugging every possible chink in safety assessments, and on choosing building sites more carefully and strengthening the structural integrity of installations and reactor designs with better materials and technological inputs. This can only be good for the nuclear energy sector. The other positive is that countries are likely to focus more on renewables.

 What happened in Japan was freakish: the most powerful earthquake in its history followed by a tsunami that was the main cause of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. The right lesson to be drawn from events unfolding there is that even the freakish must be planned for where nuclear energy is concerned. The wrong lesson would be to impose an indefinite moratorium on nuclear power.