Nuclear Energy

India’s Nuclear Installations: Safety and Other Issues
Part I: India: Nuclear dictatorship
Chapter 9
The nuclear industry is notorious all over the world for suppressing information. Even then,
in the US and West European countries, at least some information is officially available on the
release of radioactivity into the atmosphere by uranium mines and nuclear power plants (some of
which we have given in Chapter 3). In India, however, no such information is available. The nuclear
authorities in India take refuge behind the draconian Atomic Energy Act of 1962 to deny all
information about the state of India’s nuclear installations and the various accidents-incidents taking
place in them, under the plea that all such information is “classified”, and cannot be disclosed in the
interests of national security! cdlxiv Obviously, the DAE has mixed up national security with nuclear
safety to cover up its safety lapses, and the Indian courts including the Supreme Court of India
have gone along with its interpretation (we discuss this in greater detail in the next section). The
Indian Atomic Energy Act of 1962 is so authoritarian that the DAE is not accountable even to the
Parliament! cdlxv In fact, the DAE has used the Atomic Energy Act to prevent nuclear plant workers
from accessing their own health records too!! cdlxvi
India's nuclear establishment has become such a monolithic and autocratic entity that even
when major accidents have occurred and news about the accidents have leaked out through the
media to become public knowledge, even then the AEC / DAE / NPC / UCIL have refused to admit
to radiation releases from their installations. A few examples:
ix. On December 25, 2006, the pipeline carrying radioactive waste from the uranium mill to the
tailing pond in Jadugoda (Jharkhand) burst and continued to spew toxic sludge into a creek for
nine hours before the flow of the radioactive waste was shut off. Consequently, a thick layer
of toxic sludge on the surface of the creek killed scores of fish, frogs, and other riparian life.
The waste from the leak also reached a creek that feeds into the Subarnarekha River, seriously
contaminating the water resources of the communities living hundreds of kilometers along the
way. cdlxvii However, all that the UCIL website admits is: “The pipe burst spilling tailing slurry
in December 2006 … was attended in the shortest possible time and corrective measures were
also taken.” cdlxviii That's all, not a word more!
x. A major mishap in Tarapur in 1980 resulted in thousands of litres of irradiated water gushing
out from the reactor. But the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission reluctantly
acknowledged only a “pinhole” leak, even though the water had gushed out from a 15 cm
tube! cdlxix
xi. On March 26, 1999, six tons of highly radioactive heavy water leaked out from the Madras
Atomic Power Plant. The accident was serious enough for the plant management to declare an
emergency, which means the plant was just one step away from being evacuated. The plant
authorities initially tried to suppress the news. But the workers union revealed it to the press
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