Nuclear Energy

spent fuel. There is no other logical way in which this radionuclide could have found its way
into the tailing pond!
The state of UCIL’s newest mines is no better. A Tehelka reporter cdxc visited the Banduhurang
open cast mine in September 2010. This is UCIL’s newest mine, commissioned in 2009. He found
no prohibitory signs, no warnings about radiation, no barbed wire and no demarcation of territory.
Mounds of radioactive waste from the mines lay scattered everywhere, sometimes inside the
villages surrounding the mine. The radioactive waste water released from the mines simply joined a
stream flowing through the villages where children were found bathing and women washing
clothes. Trucks carrying uranium ore were loosely covered with plastic sheets, radioactive dust
flying in the wind. This, when just a few years ago, the Chairman of the DAE had filed an affidavit
in the Supreme Court claiming that all precautions were being taken to check and control radiation
arising out of uranium waste from UCIL’s mines. UCIL officials tried their best to prevent the
reporter from visiting the mines and filing his report, slapping all kinds of charges on him, putting
him behind bars for 12 hours, seizing his equipment… cdxci
Accidents galore
As if this was not enough, due to UCIL’s faulty technical and management practices, there
have been numerous accidents. Tailings pipelines, carrying uranium mill tailings from the Jadugoda
uranium mill to the tailings ponds, have repeatedly burst, causing spillage of the radioactive and
toxic sludge into nearby homes and water bodies. The latest such pipeline burst took place on
August 16, 2008; before this, bursts had taken place on February 21, 2008 and on April 10,
2007. cdxcii
One of the worst such accidents took place on December 25, 2006. The tailings pipeline
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. cdxciii
Terrible health costs
The impact of all these radiation releases on the health of the people of the nearby villages
has been colossal. In 1993, the Bindrai Institute for Research Study and Action (BIRSA), (a
research and documentation centre started by intellectuals and activists related to various people’s
movements of Jharkhand) conducted a survey in seven villages within a kilometre of the mining
site, specifically the tailings dams. The field health workers who conducted the survey were trained
by Dr. Imrana Qadir of Centre for Social Medicines, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New
Delhi. It took two years to complete the survey. The report revealed that 47 per cent of women
suffered disruptions in their menstrual cycle, 18 per cent said they had suffered miscarriages or
given birth to stillborn babies in the last 5 years, 30 per cent suffered fertility problem. Nearly all
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