COVER STORY COVER STORY

work. “The study does not seem to have months before in December 2004, an
any immediate medical significance, ‘accidental tsunami’ hit Indonesia but it
even if it is an excellent scientific missed destroying the only Fast Breeder

Geopolitics and safety

work,” said Raghuram K. Nair of the
Thiruvananthapuram-based Regional Cancer
Centre. While ionisation radiation is known
to cause cancer and other chromosome
functional reactor in Kalpakam, India.
Subsequently the Nuclear 123 agreement
was forced upon us by every major-minor India is the only
geopolitical players. Suddenly all their
country

considerations push
breakages, experts have so far failed to
report unusually high rate of genetic
aberrations among residents of the area. The
purpose of these studies is very clear: either
governments became very generous and
friendly towards India. They had earlier pursuing the
denied the same spent nuclear fuel for
plutonium based reactors for last four thorium based
fast breeder

India’s nuke energy

remove the sand in the name of public safety decades.
or remove the population in the name of
radiation fears so that Indians will not be
Questions about foreign reactors reactors and has
able to use this resource. The third is It is also clear from the reports that they are achieved success
giving us only up to generation 3 reactor
destroying the source of the thorium by in utilising this

button
opening the reef that connects Sri Lanka
with India in the name of navigation.
India is the only country pursuing the
thorium based fast breeder reactors and has
achieved success in utilising this freely
available resource. It was precisely when
we were ready to commercialise in 2005,
designs, which have safety concerns and
not the most advanced generation 4 reactors freely available
towards which geopolitical western powers
are migrating. These countries will resource.
manufacture them either outside or assemble
them inside India. The functional safety of
these will always be questionable with the
new discoveries of Stuxnet virus in Iranian

W
hether nuclear energy or not, India
needs energy for the rapidly
growing needs of population and
development. But nuclear energy is a
controversial topic. It is the geopolitical
goals of major geopolitical players that
manipulate both sides of the nuclear politics
and non-proliferation studies in developing
the world in general and resource country
India, in particular. Let us view some of the
n Srinivas Kidambi
facts and concerns of nuclear energy raised
by activists, scientists and proliferation
experts in the Indian context.
Banking on thorium
We know that we invented nuclear energy
in 1930s and discovered its effects since
1960s. We have 3,19,000 tonnes worth of
thorium freely available in the sands of the
Indian coastline, mainly in Kerala. It is
reported that the cosmic rays and sun’s heat
beating down on the open sands react with
thorium and that radiation more than 100
times what might have been leaked from
regular or faulty 1 2 3 generation reactors
has been present in the sands since the
formation of the coastline. However,
thousands of generations lived there
unknowingly in this 100 times more
dangerous constant radiation. But
surprisingly, there are no genetic deformities,
cellular damages or changes in mutations
found because of radiation. There are more
genetic deformities, cell damages or
mutation changes in northern Kerala because
of use of Endosulfan in cashew plantations
for the last 30 years. Either the local
population is unknowingly doing something
in their daily routine that has prevented
radiation or there is a need to understand
the limits of radiation effects in the light of
Kerala habitat survival.
Though many international scientists were
bent upon proving that Kerala sands cause
cancer since we started the thorium fast
breeder process (the last of which was as
recent as 2002) and concluded that there
are some minor mitochondria based
adjustments on similar lines of Chernobyl
in Kerala, too. The fact they are forgetting
is that in Chernobyl it happened rapidly in
20 years, but in Kerala, if at all such changes
were noticed, they are natural adjustments
after thousands of generations lived over
there. These reports were dismissed by Members of Nuclear Suppliers Group
Indian experts as non-provable insignificant

Business Economics 18 February 01-15, 2011 Business Economics 19 February 01-15, 2011