Nuclear Energy

to detect all the problems, and anti-nuclear activists have called for scrapping the construction of the
reactor for this reason alone!
Environment Destruction Ministry
We had stated in our concluding remarks in Chapter 3, citing some of the world's most
renowned nuclear experts: Nuclear technology “is a complex technology... with such high-
technology systems involving extremely hazardous materials, it is in the very nature of such
systems that serious accidents are inevitable. In other words, that accidents are a “normal” part of
the operation of nuclear reactors, and no amount of safety devices can prevent them.”
As if this risk was not enough, the government of India has seen it fit to import giant
reactors, whose safety has been questioned even by experts in their home countries! On top of it, it
has passed a nuclear liability bill, indemnifying the foreign equipment suppliers of all liabilities in
case of an accident in a reactor supplied by them!
The Kudankulam 1&2 reactors were given approval without an Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA) or public hearing. dlxxxvii For the next stage of the project involving construction
of another four reactors, a farcical public hearing was held in June 2007. dlxxxviii
For the Jaitapur EPR reactors, an EIA was prepared, a public hearing conducted, and finally
the MoEF granted its approval on November 28, 2010. That the EIA was a mere ritual, and was
prepared because it was mandated by law to do so, is obvious from the fact that it was prepared by
the National Environmental Engineering Institute (NEERI), which has acquired a notorious
reputation for sloppy work favouring promoters of dubious industrial projects. So far as nuclear
reactors go, NEERI, by its own admission, does not have the technical competence to assess
radiation related hazards of nuclear reactors. dlxxxix And yet, wonder of wonders, NEERI prepared a
1600 page EIA report of the Jaitapur EPR reactor!
Despite its bulky size, the report is a fraudulent exercise is obvious from the fact that it does
not deal with any of the serious environmental problems of nuclear power, nor does it deal with
the known problems of the EPR reactor!! That based on this flawed report, the MoEF's approval
was going to be a mere formality is obvious from the fact that land for the project was acquired
even before the Environment Ministry gave its approval. The MoEF actually fast-forwarded its
approval, giving the environmental clearance to the NPCIL just 80 days after it received the EIA
report from NEERI, a process which normally takes six months or longer! dxc The reason: so that the
agreement with Areva for supply of the reactors could be signed during the French President
Sarkozy's visit to India in December 2010. Let us take a brief look at this EIA.
Jaitapur EIA: Phoney Exercise
The EIA does not at all discuss the most important shortcoming of the EPR, its known
design problem. Safety regulators of France, Finland, the UK and the USA, all have expressed
concern about the design of the Control and Instrumentation (C&I) system of the reactor (discussed
in detail in Chapter 6). The C&I system is the “cerebral cortex” of a nuclear power station,
142