Violence grows over India’s nuclear goals

Violent protests at the site of one of India’s most ambitious nuclear installations have thrown into sharp relief the domestic resistance the country faces in achieving its nuclear power ambitions.

French group Areva hopes to complete a $10bn deal by mid-year for two third-generation European pressurised water reactors in India, despite increasingly violent local protests against the project.

The reactors would be the first of six Areva intends to build for the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India at a site in the village of Jaitapur on western India’s lush Konkan coast.

The project has met firm resistance from local residents, some nuclear experts and prominent intellectuals. Opposition intensified following the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan.

“However many safety systems you may deploy, the vulnerability has been proved by Fukushima,” said Advait Pednekar, a Mumbai-based engineer and volunteer with the Konkan Bachao Samiti, or Save the Konkon Forum.

Villagers fear that radioactivity and hot water from the installation will ruin local agriculture, fishing and health, and also bitterly resent the state’s forced acquisition of 936 acres of private land to set up the nuclear power park.

The opposition took a violent turn earlier this week when the construction of the compound wall began. Protesters and police clashed, resulting in a 30-year-old man being killed and several people injured.

Police said the mob attacked a police station. But activists said their peaceful demonstrations for the release of fellow protesters were met with open fire by the police, which led to the death and injuries.

The government has now ordered an inquiry into the firing and death.

However, the Congress-led government is adamant that it will go ahead with the project to fill India’s huge energy deficit, and state government officials have vowed to punish what they describe as “troublemakers”.

Jairam Ramesh, the environment minister, said the events at Fukushima were “a wake-up call” for India, but that the country could not abandon its nuclear ambitions of installing 30,000 megawatts of nuclear power by 2020.

But A. Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, said he opposes India building the new reactors with a technology that has yet to be tested through actual operations anywhere in the world.

“It takes about 10 or 15 years before you can say, ‘Now I have a trouble-free reactor’,” he says. “Go and prove it somewhere, and when it’s all ready and well cooked, we can try it.”

Areva executives in Paris told visiting Indian journalists this week that the company would answer any questions the Indian government had about safety, but that the company had “the highest safety standards”.

Areva is expecting to sign a commercial deal with NPCIL by mid-year, though construction may have to await India’s clarification of its new nuclear liability law, which lays out liability in case of a nuclear accident.