The growing incidents of radioactive contamination and improper security arrangements at the Nuclear Installations in India are catching the world’s attention and creating an alarming situation for the region. People living in the neighboring countries of India should also prepare themselves in current crisis situation because the extremely irresponsible attitude of India is throwing this region into a living threat of radioactive contamination.

I would like to share a report here which would support my view point.

http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2009/12/12/deals-that-threaten-disasters/

by: J. Sri Raman

Deals for 16 reactors in a single day – so read India’s nuclear score card on December 7, 2009. On this date, an agreement was reached in Moscow, under which the country would get four more nuclear reactors from Russia. Simultaneously, in New Delhi, a US Commercial Nuclear Mission told the media that, under the US-India nuclear deal, “a minimum” of 12 plants would be set up, with the work on them starting in 2010-2011.

This latest advance of India into its own “nuclear age” – as the atomic establishment and its loyal acolytes hail it – came within two weeks of the latest of nuclear “incidents” to shake up the nation.

The surge in the deals has followed in quick succession to similar media-celebrated agreements with five other countries – France, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Mongolia and Canada. The rude shock came from the “incident” in the nuclear complex at Kaiga in the south Indian State of Karnataka.

The complex has been in operation since March 2000, under the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. Kaiga has four of the eight nuclear reactors officially acknowledged as strategic and, therefore, placed outside the purview of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Kaiga is close to India’s major naval base, INS Kadamba.

The radioactive contamination of drinking water in the complex, which led to hospitalization of scores of employees (figures varying from the officially cited 55 to 92 according to some sources), shook India, though no life was lost. It revealed in a flash the potential magnitude of the danger that the functioning of this proud asset of the county’s nuclear establishment represented.

The theories about the incident emanating from the authorities and others do not diminish the danger at all. According to the authorities, some “mischief-maker” or “mischief-makers” among the employee of the complex – rank “insiders,” in other words – seem to have added tritium-contaminated heavy water to a drinking water cooler. The serious crime, it is said, could be either a particularly nasty prank or a case of sabotage.

Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen also known as hydrogen-3, can be used as a booster in the making of fission bombs as well as thermonuclear weapons or hydrogen bombs. Tritium emits beta rays which, if ingested, can cause death, cancer and mutations.

By one unofficial version, the incident resulted from inter-union rivalry. By another, it was a case of disgruntled employees trying to discredit the management. Some political mischief-makers outside the complex indulged in loud speculation about the hand of “illegal” Bangladeshi immigrant laborers behind the incident, hoping to start another anti-Muslim hate campaign. Mercifully, however, investigations have reportedly ruled out that possibility.

Many questions, meanwhile, have been raised without getting any serious official response. Why did it take so long for the incident to be reported in any detail? It took place the night of November 23-24. A single-line story first appeared in the scroll of a television channel on November 25, but the full official acknowledgment of the incident had to wait for several days. It took even longer for authorities to go to the police. Was this not a hush-up attempt, bound to fail as the families of the victims could not be silenced?

Whether an accident or sabotage, how did the allegedly ironclad regime of procedures in the reactors allow it? As anti-nuclear activist Surendra Gadekar asks, how could anyone steal a vial of tritium, made at a cost of up to $100,000 a gram, with such ease?

Questions have been asked – and remain unanswered – about other, past “incidents” at Kaiga as well. Some Truthout readers may remember the report on “Death of an Indian Nuclear Scientist” (June 24, 2009). The mysterious end of Lokanathan Mahalingam was reported on India’s television channels on June 13. It took us ten full days to hear from the authorities in the subject. They cited a forensic laboratory finding to assert that it was a suicide.

Mahalingam was training young scientists and working in the simulator training division of the plant. A simulator is a precise replica of the control room of a nuclear power plant The scientist had created a similar mystery ten years before, while working in the Kalpakkam nuclear complex in the neighboring State of Tamilnadu, which has two of India’s strategic nuclear reactors. Then, too, he is said to have disappeared one day and returned home after a never-explained gap of five days.

Among the questions raised in June were: Why was his body, found in the nearby Kali River, cremated before the results of the DNA test done at the insistence of his family were released? How did the authorities instantly rule out murder when he did not leave a suicide note?

The Mahalingam mystery was recalled after the latest Kaiga incident, but not any of the questions. No one seemed interested in reopening the case. The authorities have not succeeded so easily in an earlier case of mysterious death. Ravikumar Mule, a non-scientist employee at Kaiga, was found “dead” in an apartment in the township on April 7, 2009. His widow, Ashwini G. Mule, has now demanded a fresh investigation, rejecting as final the reported police finding that her husband had committed suicide.

This is not the first incident at Kaiga. Even during construction in 1994, one layer of the first unit’s containment dome collapsed, delaying by four years a start to its operations. Nor is Kaiga an exception in India’s nuclear establishment in this regard.

A similar incident took place in the heavy water plant of Rawatbhata in the State of Rajasthan in 1991 and, to date, the findings of any official investigation into it have not been divulged. The long list of other incidents includes, besides several cases of workers’ exposure to impermissible doses of radioactivity, a fire in the Narora plant in the State of Uttar Pradesh (1993), the flooding of the Kakrapar station in the State of Gujarat (1994), and a heavy water spill in Kalpakkam (1999).

The question of questions about all these “incidents” is: why has no independent, external inquiry ever been conducted into any of them? The unstated answer is: such an inquiry cannot even be contemplated, since every nuclear installation is part of India’s security establishment.

This perverse notion of “security” makes every one of India’s proud nuclear deals a threat of disaster.

The repeated security lapses and alarmingly low level of response to these kind of incidences raise multiple questions about the vulnerability of Indian Nuclear Assets.

The most shocking is the painful incident at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) the mysterious fire cooked two young scientists and left their families with a painful question mark!!

The detailed report is posted here for the readers

http://www.topnews.in/family-cries-foul-barc-scientists-body-are-handed-over-2248639

Mumbai, Dec 30 : As investigators struggled to find the cause of a fire in the country’s premier Bhabha AtomicResearch Centre(BARC) that killed two scientists, the family members of one of the victims Wednesday have demanded a “thorough probe” into the accident.

“We are shocked at the attitude of the BARC officials though an incident of such a magnitude has taken place. We want a complete inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into it,” Munna Singh, uncle of Umesh Narayan Singh who died in the blaze, told IANS.

A loud explosion followed the fire that had broken out in a room on the third floor of the modularlaboratory Tuesday noon when the two junior scientists were present on the premises. Both were killed.

As per preliminary investigations, the fire is suspected to have erupted following a chemical reaction that led to a blast in the laboratory housing analytical instruments.

Grieving over the loss of his nephew as the victim’s body was brought home here late Wednesday, Singh said that usually there would be five or six fellow research students and a senior person present on the premises.

“Why were these two boys alone in the laboratory at the time of the incident? We want answers to these questions as it has national security implications,” he demanded.

His friends have alleged that police and the BARC officials made them run from pillar to post before they finally got Umesh’s body – charred beyond recognition – from the Sir J. J. Hospital‘s morgue.

Though police have tentatively ruled out foul play or negligence on the part of BARC, they have sent samples of the victims to the Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Kalina and also taken the DNA samples.

The cause of the fire remains unknown so far even as police and BARC officials spent the entire day in investigations at the complex in Chembur, northeast Mumbai.

Hailing from a humble, lower middleclass family of a former mill worker, Umesh was working in BARC for nearly five years. He was just six months away from completing his doctorate.

“The BARC did not have the courtesy to inform us officially, we learnt only from the media that Umesh is no more,” Umesh’s brother-in-law Uday Pratap Singh told reporters.

The grieving family members of the other victim, Parth P. Beg, 26, also arrived from Kolkata to collect his remains. His family members refused to speak to the media but said that he was doing his research at the BARC for the past 18 months.

Meanwhile, police in Trombay has registered a case of accidental fire and investigations into the cause of the fire are in full swing.

All top BARC officials remained incommunicado throughout the day as the fallout of the incident was being probed – both by the BARC and the police.

However, Chairman of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) Srikumar Banerjee was present in the BARC Wedensday, an official said.

However, there was no danger to the main reactor in the BARC or any other sensitive facilities that could lead to radiation or radioactivity, the spokesman said.(IANS)

It is most disgusting to note that main stream Newspapers and Channels of India take this matter on low profile due to constant pressure of the Government. The present situation is also a visible sign that it can be linked to the fact that America is constantly pressurizing India to open up its nuclear installations to be checked by their officials to asses the security level and aid Indians to build some sort of protection to avoid future mishaps.

Indians are quite unaware that accelerating incidents of Uranium thefts, radioactive contamination and kidnapping of scientists could be engineered by CIA to convince Indian Government to seek USA’s help to secure its nuclear assets thus providing clear route to US agencies to obtain complete information and facts about the Indian Nuclear capabilities plus complete intervention in the activities in these installations.

Another possibility also emerges as the anti Indian forces are penetrating inside its nuclear assets and have arrived to the understanding that poor security arrangements may give potential opportunity to them to pull out the blue prints, the material and the technology of creating Nuclear Arsenal to be used for any sort of terrorist activity.

In short, India is proving to be a dangerous nation for the world’s security. The growing lapses of security in the most important Nuclear Installations raised huge alarms before and now the water is rising above the heads.

It is also the responsibility of the world community to pressurize India through the platform of United Nations, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Green Peace and other global environmental protection groups to convince India to allow western assistance to elevate the security level of its Nuclear Installations. In the other case, Indian nation and the people living in the neighboring countries should prepare themselves to face the worst incident of radioactive contamination in this region or a possible nuclear explosion by the terrorists like Maoists or Al Qaeda. India gave the world a never forgetting disaster of Bhopal gas leakage which killed thousands of people. Now any such catastrophic disaster would lead to a very dark future for the people of this region.

I would ask the Global Community to act together and raise their voice on this issue because it is the matter of great importance and any weakness in plucking the possibility of radioactive contamination would lead to never ending disaster in this region.

Creator of Blog “Pakistan Hopes”

http://pakistan_hope.bravejournal.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/indian-nuclear-assets-posing-threat-to-the-environment-1651890.html

Share