India Nuclear News And Discussion

[Theo_Fidel]

I think he is talking about removing the outer containment dome in favor of the cavern. Something like Cheyenne mountain in reverse. Essentially the entire facility will be under containment. All radiation leaks will be held underground. WRT cost the design would change to some thing a lot more linear. The new Banihal Railway tunnel has a 9.5m (30 ft) Diameter and cost about 60 Crore per KM with internal lining. Sounds crazy but...

[somnath]

You are talking about more extensive containment. The zeroth order thing to do would be to make the containment vessels x2 stronger. Going under a mountain a la INO is a serious overkill. And, your cost estimate for civil works is low. The total cost of INO, including the ICAL, is about 1,200 crores but an NPP will need at least 10x more volume. For a ball-park estimate think in terms of Rs 1- 2k per m^3 of rock excavated. The problem of services is also there -- you will need to move a lot of water for cooling

AFAIK, there is also a problem of complexity of excavation...Wasnt there huge issues reported in completing the earthworks at Narora? Mountains in India are typically all in seismically active zones, IMHO wont work either...

Vandana Shiva Challenges George Monbiot on His Support of Nuclear Power

The ironic thing is Vandana S does nothing to counter Monbiot's rationale...She simply takes recourse to rhetoric and mobocracy ("I have 10000 people marching against nukes in Jaitapur"!)..Which is precisely what Monbiot has also accused the Greens of doing in the series of articles on nukes...

the most disengenuous is this whole business of "coal free, nuke free" future, now adopted by born-again Greenpeace activists on BR..Based on that rationale, "solar" is supposed to be our "saviour"...No amount of data can deter them - not the very high carbon footprint of solar, not the fact that even in the US median capacity of solar plants have halved, certanly not the failure of solar to graduate to anything meaningful despite HUGE subsidies....And of course, they probably think people should switch off lights, fans, ACs, TVs and everything else at night

GP makes a good point about the technology capabiltity question...Thanks to enormous fiscal sacrifices over the years (80-90% of ALL public invetsment in R&D went to 2 areas - nukes and DRDO), India has built up significant capabilities in the area..We have lagged behind in commercialisation of the tech, but we have a finger in the pie of every frontier in the area - fast breeder, cold fusion, the works...If the West gets into a recesive mode thanks to Fukushima, its an opportunity for India to step up and claim leadership...Not recede behind a cocoon...

[GuruPrabhu]

AFAIK, there is also a problem of complexity of excavation...

Which is why I cited the costs from INO study. Cavern excavation is different from tunnel boring.

....And of course, they probably think people should switch off lights, fans, ACs, TVs and everything else at night

Don't forget that all manufacturing will stop an hour or so before sunset and restart an hour or so after sunrise. Of course, no manufacturing on rainy days.

Trains will stop running at night and on rainy days.

Come to think of it, that may be a good thing. Railways will no longer have to worry about taking out $100 trillion liability insurance (large fraction of accidents happen during night time and in inclement weather).

By the way, don't even whisper "hydel" near Vandana-ji -- gets her hopping mad.

[Bade]

GP, thanks for the answer. As I said the biggest advantage is the whole thing being out of sight even at inflated costs. Maybe it can be cross-subsidized with other associated projects. Civilian program separation notwithstanding.

Brihaspati, there are some interesting comments on the peninsular shield.
http://media.eurekalert.org/release_gra ... 7.1_13.pdf

[shyamd]

The agent has spoken of what the PRC is thinking. This is a message to the strategists - "We are watching you and we know what you are upto". This is now the 2nd time I've heard this - 1st was a very reliable source.

Possible, India resumes nuclear test?

16:58, April 26, 2011
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By Li Hongmei (Li Hongmei, editor and columnist of PD Online.)

In the international nuclear talks drama worked out by the U.S., it seems that only North Korea, who exits the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and Iran, who is suspected to be violating the Treaty, are respectively cast in the roles of the No.1 and No.2 negative characters. But the fact is that behind the scene there exists a super antagonist in the US-produced nuclear soap opera, and it is India.

India has so far refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a document signed in 1970 restricting the number of nuclear superpowers to five countries only – China, the USA, the USSR, Great Britain, and France.

India was not listed among those states: the nation conducted a first nuclear test in 1974. The reason why India refused to sign the NPT is that it disagreed with the fact that only five large countries of the world use the NPT to monopolize the right for possessing nuclear arms.

India has long been desperately trying to step over the threshold of nuclear, and gain the international recognition of being a nuclear power. In the conditioning of India, equipped with nuclear weapons, it would boost confidence in dealing with its rivaling neighbor, Pakistan, and pluck up courage to counteract China whom it has long taken as "a slumbering threat" at its bedside.

India has never dropped its dream to overtake China, growing up to be a leading regional, and global power, now that it has self-measured to be the world's No.3 military power.

Given this, India stunned the world after it conducted nuclear tests in the Rajasthan desert in 1998, and the lid of India's nuclear issue has since lifted open.

The tests, a showcase of India's national strength, were reciprocated by its traditional rival, Pakistan, and dramatically raised the stakes in the stand-off over Kashmir, one of the world's longest-running feuds.

It was a move that was bitterly criticized internationally as well as within the country.
Some in India argued that by going nuclear it had actually lost its conventional military edge over Pakistan. Others felt that the tests had opened the door to international, in particular, American intervention in Kashmir dispute, something which India has traditionally opposed.

But years later, it is still a moot point whether India lost more than it gained by going nuclear.

Increasingly, it appears that by self-claiming to have joined the nuclear club, India has forced the world to take it seriously. But, the 1998's "large step forward" to go nuclear has yet to make India feel more secure. Instead, the desperate move has indeed incurred the higher risk of being attacked upon India, and its national security would accordingly be downgraded.

Currently, the international situation seems delivering a pleasant message to India---if the sweeping unrest in the Middle East continues and the unpredictable war is prolonged in Libya, the world's attention and the US top concern will be shifted to the ongoing upheavals, neglecting the Sub-continent.

And perhaps, once the Middle East situation further exacerbates, the US would risk helping India become a nuclear-weapon state. Considering this, India is likely to resume its nuclear tests. For this, China and all the neighbors should sharpen their vigilance on India's every maneuver.

[Pratyush]

^^^ WTF?? India, not an NWS, What is this dude thinking. India has tested twice and is a defacto NWS. Why doed India need the US to help it become an NWS.

[Sanku]

^^^ WTF?? India, not an NWS, What is this dude thinking. India has tested twice and is a defacto NWS. Why doed India need the US to help it become an NWS.

No not really a NWS, not yet -- remember 123, Hyde act and NSG issues.

We are not really a NWS in the comity of nation. He says US will remove the restrictions they have forced on us.

Fat chance.

[somnath]

^^^ WTF?? India, not an NWS, What is this dude thinking. India has tested twice and is a defacto NWS. Why doed India need the US to help it become an NWS.

That article is utter rubbish...

1. The concept of anyone helping someone becoming "nuclear weapon state" is a non sequitor...Technical capability to deploy nuclear weapons is something that needs to be proven and validated...Besides P5, India and Pak have demonstrated that publicly...NoKo and Israel have demonstrated that somewhat ambiguously...

2. NPT members have certain obligations (and rights) - and this is the primary multilateral treaty that defines "nuclear weapon states", and restricts membership of that club in perpetuity for the P5. India isnt a signatory, and will never be one..And the US isnt about to change the NPT to accomodate India..There is no practical requirement for that in any case...

3. The "rights" enjoyed by NPT members, basically of nuclear trade and cooperation within ground rules laid down by the other alphabet soup bodies like NSG - that is the real deal...India got it via the "clean exemption" it got from NSG...

There was never a technical issue (post 1998) about our status as a nuclear weapon state...There isnt any now...What the 123 agreement with the US states simply is that if India tests, US may withdraw nuclear cooperation and trade...The withdrawl is not a given, and most importantly, US is only one of the dozens of countires that trade in things nuclear...To get a global "ban" on India going, US needs to reverse the NSG waiver, which can only happen by consensus..Surely India will never be completely friendless in any situation for that to happen!

Net net, there is no question of the US helping us "become" something that we already are!

The article therefore is possibly as much garbage as the stuff people spew on about 123, NSG etc without understanding a single word of what those things mean and entail...

[somnath]

Independent regulator for civilian nuclear power..

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/govt- ... n/781780/0

Step in the right direction IMO...

[brihaspati]

Bade ji,
thanks for the ref! I suspected so, after looking up the "undetected" paleo-faults issue. So digging into the mountains sides of the "peninsular"shield - perhaps needs to be thought of carefully. Moreover, there is a huge amount of catchment and hydraulics that happen at the sub-surface level there. So prevention of contamination in case of accidents underground may not be feasible.

Maybe this thread should actually be closed - because there is probably a P5 type club - whose members onlee can understand any word of what 123/NSG mean or entail. It is a comprehension problem onlee. The rest of the world can never hope to understand any word of such things because they will never be allowed to belong to the understanding club! Why discuss all this and waste your time!

[RamaY]

1. The concept of anyone helping someone becoming "nuclear weapon state" is a non sequitor...Technical capability to deploy nuclear weapons is something that needs to be proven and validated...Besides P5, India and Pak have demonstrated that publicly...NoKo and Israel have demonstrated that somewhat ambiguously...


Net net, there is no question of the US helping us "become" something that we already are!

The author is reflecting on how PRC and Pakis have become nuke-powers. He is just seeing the world thru those colored eyes.

The article also hints at the assured response from PRC/TSP combo. If India tests a thermo-nukes, Pakis too will return the favor; more boons to Bhasmasur.

[ramana]

The agent has spoken of what the PRC is thinking. This is a message to the strategists - "We are watching you and we know what you are upto". This is now the 2nd time I've heard this - 1st was a very reliable source.

Please let me know about the other source by e-mail if possible.

[brihaspati]

Who is testing what? India a "thermo-nuke"? Again?!! Wasn't the test a resounding success? Actually get ready to test, say that you will sign the NPT after doing xxx tests for future peaceful research and simulation purposes onlee. Do underground tests around the LOC on the northern side - you know to keep contamination away from populated areas - so that leaks do not happen too! Surely the P5 cannot object to that - after all India promises to be a good boy after that and sign on the dotted line!

[Bade]

Bade ji,
thanks for the ref! I suspected so, after looking up the "undetected" paleo-faults issue. So digging into the mountains sides of the "peninsular"shield - perhaps needs to be thought of carefully. Moreover, there is a huge amount of catchment and hydraulics that happen at the sub-surface level there. So prevention of contamination in case of accidents underground may not be feasible.

That is concern irrespective of the site used for a NPP, coastal, inland, deserts or otherwise not to mention test sites underground.

[shyamd]

The agent has spoken of what the PRC is thinking. This is a message to the strategists - "We are watching you and we know what you are upto". This is now the 2nd time I've heard this - 1st was a very reliable source.

Please let me know about the other source by e-mail if possible.

Done

[JwalaMukhi]

How does the black swan event pan. Underestimation of risk (risk mismanagement) is big business. It can make or break a case. Nuclear industry is well aware of that. What does the black swan proponent think of the nuclear risk? Pl. see the link below.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm

The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: " The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1x10^6 per year (that is , at least 1 per million years)".

That policy was designed only 8 years ago. Their one in a million-year accident almost occurred about 8 year later (I am not even sure if it is at best a near miss). We are clearly in the Fourth Quadrant there.

spent the last two decades explaining (mostly to finance imbeciles, but also to anyone who would listen to me) why we should not talk about small probabilities in any domain. Science cannot deal with them. It is irresponsible to talk about small probabilities and make people rely on them, except for natural systems that have been standing for 3 billion years (not manmade ones for which the probabilities are derived theoretically, such as the nuclear field for which the effective track record is only 60 years).

The problem is more acute in Extremistan, particularly the manmade part. The probabilities are undestimated but the consequences are much, much more underestimated.

4) As I wrote, because of globalization, the costs of natural catastrophes are increasing in a nonlinear way.

And his paper has some interesting highlights... Read it all.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1669317

The shocking result is that for 10 standard deviations
(that is, routine events), a 25% uncertainty about #
leads to a multiplication of the mass in the tail, causing
the underestimation of the risk by a factor of 10^7. But
we don't need so much; for 20 standard deviations, a
similar effect is reached with mere rounding error.

[abhishek_sharma]

Chernobyl and the future: Too soon for a final diagnosis

Nature 440, 993-994 (20 April 2006)

Dillwyn Williams and Keith Baverstock

Dillwyn Williams is in the Thyroid Carcinogenesis Research Group, Strangeways Research Laboratories, Worts Causeway, Cambridge CB1 8RN, UK.
Keith Baverstock is in the Department of Environmental Science, University of Kuopio, 70211 Kuopio, Finland.

Twenty years ago, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl exposed hundreds of thousands of people to radioactive fallout. We still have much to learn about its consequences, argue Dillwyn Williams and Keith Baverstock.

Why should we still be concerned about the Chernobyl accident after 20 years, some 3,000 papers and many conferences? One reason is that the consequences of the world's worst peacetime nuclear accident are relevant to national debates about building new nuclear power stations. Another is that at this point we cannot predict the future health consequences of Chernobyl with any certainty.

The radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident differed greatly from that created by the atomic bombs in Japan, yet only fragmented studies have tracked the human consequences of Chernobyl, in contrast to the coordinated approach of Japan's Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (now the Radiation Effects Research Foundation). Without a similar approach, speculation about Chernobyl's human cost will be unconstrained by hard evidence, and interested parties will be able to exaggerate or underplay the consequences.

This month, UN agencies will mark 20 years since Chernobyl by publishing an international assessment of the accident's health, environmental and economic effects. A draft [1] issued last year detailed the health consequences and predictions for the future, but the accompanying press release downplayed the predicted number of cancers, emphasizing reassurance rather than the uncertainties.

Misplaced confidence

For example, simply by citing a specific number — up to 4,000 predicted deaths from radiation exposure — the press release suggested a certainty unwarranted by the underlying studies (see Special Report, page 982). The figures quoted in the body of the report suggested that there may be an additional 5,000 radiation-related deaths in heavily contaminated regions. Yet these predictions ignore the large number of Europeans who received very low radiation doses. The dose–response relationship at low doses remains uncertain; it could be linear, but also higher or lower [2, 3]. If it is linear, there may be tens of thousands more attributable deaths.

In 1965, 20 years after the atomic bombings in Japan, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission reported significant increases in the incidence of just two cancers — thyroid cancer and leukaemia. It was another decade before a significant increase in other cancers was reported. Almost 45 years after the bombs, unexpected and significant increases in a range of non-cancer diseases, including heart disease, were found [4]. And nearly 50 years after exposure, significant increases were reported for ten different cancers, with risks approximately doubled for colon, lung, breast, ovary and bladder tumours5. Given that about one in four people anywhere develops cancer, detecting these and more modest increases in other cancers would have been impossible without the long-term, large-scale studies conducted on some 80,000 Japanese bomb survivors.

In Chernobyl, the type of radiation exposure was different from that in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the aftermath will take a different form. The atomic bombs resulted largely in whole-body radiation from -rays and neutrons, exposing all tissues uniformly. Exposure from Chernobyl was, apart from in those working near the reactor, largely internal, from radioactive isotopes in fallout — so different tissues initially received different doses.


Early cases of thyroid tumours after Chernobyl differed from later ones in unexpected ways.



The large increase in childhood thyroid cancer so soon after the Chernobyl accident [6, 7] — the first cases appeared after just four years — took experts by surprise. Experts' expectations were based on known adult exposure risks (minimal) and assumptions about latency times (ten years or more). They were wrong, and there is every reason to expect more surprises over the next 20 years. The high incidence of thyroid cancers has been linked to the huge amount of 131-iodine in fallout, and to consuming local milk in particular. But the thyroid is not the only tissue to concentrate radioiodine: the salivary glands, breast and stomach also take it up to a lesser extent, potentially increasing their risk of malignancy. Any female who was lactating or pubescent at the time of the accident could be particularly at risk of breast cancer. The future is uncertain, although there is recent evidence for an approximate doubling in breast-cancer incidence in Gomel, Belarus, and other heavily contaminated areas of Belarus and Ukraine [8]. Studies of the atomic bomb show that 20 years is far too early to assume, as some have, that radioactive fallout causes only thyroid cancer.

The most detailed studies since Chernobyl, of the thyroid-cancer epidemic, yielded much valuable information [9]. We have learnt that the risk of developing thyroid cancers depends heavily on the age of exposure to fallout, with children under one being the most susceptible. Several thousand excess cases of thyroid cancer have occurred so far in the three most exposed countries, allowing researchers to link the speed of tumour development with molecular changes and with different tumour types (see figure). The early tumours were clinically aggressive and pathologically unusual. Later ones were more typical and less aggressive, with a changing pattern of oncogene mutation. But the future epidemiology even for thyroid tumours is unpredictable. Other types of thyroid tumour may emerge, and an increase in the lethality of these usually curable tumours cannot be ruled out. Continuous medical surveillance is necessary.

As well as radioactive iodine, Chernobyl exposed millions of people to much lower doses to the whole body from 134- and 137-caesium. The dose range overlaps with that received by survivors 1 to 2 kilometres from the hypocentre of the atomic bombs. In addition, the 90-strontium released is a potential source of bone cancers.

The UN report acknowledges the need for further epidemiological studies to assess the effects of low-dose exposure after Chernobyl; such studies must include verification of the primary data. But existing patchy and uncoordinated studies will not answer all the questions. We believe that, even now, a coordinated approach to monitoring exposed populations would at least provide an upper limit to the long-term health risks from fallout.

Fortunately, very few of those who contracted thyroid cancer have died from the disease (15 children so far), but it is too early to conclude that present or future cases will show a similarly low death rate. Other cancers are not so easily treatable. The need for an international effort to monitor all possible health consequences, using the studies of Japanese bomb survivors as a model, cannot be over-stressed. At the very least, comprehensive studies should be conducted on the hundreds of thousands in the most affected areas of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

A loss of trust

Who should fund such studies? The 2005 budget for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation was US$40 million. Currently, the United States and the European Union are committed to providing more than a billion dollars to make the Chernobyl sarcophagus safe, in addition to the many millions they have already contributed to humanitarian assistance and other studies. We do not suggest diverting funds from these worthwhile efforts, but comprehensive studies of the health consequences of Chernobyl would cost only a tiny fraction of the amount spent annually by the nuclear industry on energy production.

Studying the effects of Chernobyl would cost a tiny fraction of the amount spent by the nuclear industry.

In terms of public health, the psychological consequences of exposure to the accident are probably more important than the physical consequences. Millions were exposed to fallout; all must have some concern for themselves and their children. For hundreds of thousands, fear of the unknown was compounded by forced evacuation and loss of trust in government, caused by poor risk communication. Those living near the 30-kilo-metre exclusion zone were troubled by rulings that it was dangerous to live just inside the boundary, but perfectly safe to live just outside.

Public mistrust of the authorities was heightened by mismanaged responses to the accident. At the time, the Soviet nuclear industry and government failed to alert the public to take safety precautions. Later, various national and international organizations downplayed the effects, while others exaggerated them to gain financial support, often contrary to the best evidence. Environmental organizations and the media have been important whistle-blowers, but have also used unsubstantiated figures, selective quotations and horrific images to paint the worst possible picture of the consequences. The nuclear industry has been equally selective in its use of figures and quotations, often equating a lack of evidence for an effect with evidence of its absence. As a result, rational public debate is very difficult.

The importance of Chernobyl lies therefore not only in numbers of cancers or deaths, or the economic costs, but also in its effect on people's attitudes. Villagers meeting a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1990 voiced their fear of radiation, fear for their children, and mistrust of officialdom [10]: "What chance do the inhabitants of strict control regions have to raise normal children?" "People have been deceiving us for five years — will you tell us the truth?"

If a full, independent study of the consequences of the world's worst nuclear accident is not established, and its results published for all to assess, wildly differing claims will continue, and public mistrust of the nuclear industry will grow further.


References

International Atomic Energy Authority, Vienna http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Ch ... ndex.shtml
Brenner, D. J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 100, 13761–13766 (2003). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
Brenner, D. J. & Sachs, R. K. Radiat. Environ. Biophys. 44, 253–256 (2006). | Article | PubMed | ISI |
Shimizu, Y. et al. Radiat. Res. 130, 249–266 (1992). | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
Thompson, D. E. et al. Radiat. Res. S17–S67 (1994). | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
Kazakov, V. S. et al. Nature 359, 21 (1992). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
Baverstock, K. et al. Nature 359, 21–22 (1992). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
Pukkala, E. et al. Int. J. Cancer doi: 10.1002/ijc.21885 (2006).
Williams, D. Nature Rev. Cancer 2, 543–549 (2002). | Article |
The International Chernobyl Project Tech. Rep. (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1991).

[abhishek_sharma]

Nuclear waste: Chernobyl and the future: Forward planning

Nature 440, 987-989 (20 April 2006)

The global future of nuclear power may rest in large part on local politics, reports Geoff Brumfiel.

Like 83% of the state of Nevada, the land to your right as you head up from Las Vegas towards Reno is owned by the federal government. A military airstrip for unmanned aerial vehicles and a nuclear-weapons test range stretch into the distance; enormous concrete tubes that once held MX missiles lie baking in the sun. The only signs of civilian life are a state prison, a brothel and a few small clusters of air-conditioned trailer homes.

It is here in Nye County — where 38,000 souls occupy 47,000 square kilometres — that the US Department of Energy would like to bury more than 70,000 tonnes of highly reactive nuclear waste. The federal government says that Yucca Mountain, a low peak on the western edge of its nuclear test site, some 100 kilometres northwest of Las Vegas, is one of the safest places in America for spent fuel to make its several-hundred-thousand-year journey to harmlessness.

Local residents want jobs, so they are not wholly opposed to the repository. But other citizenry of Nevada, many of whom remember the consequences of above-ground nuclear-weapons testing in the 1950s and 60s, are deeply sceptical. And so are their elected representatives. "The state of Nevada is committed to stopping this thing by any legal means possible," says Steve Frishman, a geologist and the technical policy coordinator for the state government's Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Virtually every democratic nation that has embarked on a programme for the disposal of 'high-level' nuclear waste has run into similar trouble, and few have found a way forward. Bitter fights with concerned citizens have derailed plans in Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom. "All of the world's programmes now recognize that the non-technical problems are bigger than the technical ones," says Charles McCombie, a nuclear-waste consultant who has worked extensively on the Swiss, Canadian and Japanese disposal programmes.

Nations around the world with stocks of waste — including those anticipating rapid growth in such stocks (see 'Booming nations go nuclear') — are realizing that to dispose of their nuclear waste, they need to build trust with local communities, and that it is on these efforts that much of the future of nuclear power depends. "If we don't solve the waste problem, we're going to have major trouble continuing the revitalization of nuclear power," says Tom Isaacs, director for policy, planning and special studies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

A lasting legacy

The decay of the isotope uranium-235 in nuclear fuel rods creates atomic nuclei with a wide range of radioactivities and chemical properties. Some, such as neptunium-237, are present only in small quantities but can remain radioactive for millions of years. Others, including caesium-137 and strontium-90, make the waste a health hazard for decades or centuries, and raise its temperature to above 500 °C. The most problematic is plutonium-239, generated from uranium-238, which when purified can be fashioned into a nuclear weapon.

'Reprocessing', in which plutonium-239 and unused uranium-235 are reused as fuels or for weapons, reduces the amount of high-level waste produced. But as yet, it has never proved an economic way of making nuclear fuel. And even if reprocessing were to improve dramatically, or if the use of reactors or beams of particles to transmute some of the isotopes into less noxious ones were to prove practical, generating energy from nuclear fission would still produce some waste posing a hazard for millennia. And that waste will need to be put somewhere.


Figure 1: IMAGE: B. HOFF/GREENPEACE

Since the late 1950s, the scientific community has more-or-less agreed that the best way to deal with this waste is to put it deep underground, says Malcolm Gray, a nuclear engineer with the waste-technology section of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. Providing safety and security for surface facilities, such as the spent-fuel ponds used at nuclear power plants, is costly, especially in the long term. Properly chosen and engineered sites can remain stable for millennia and would not require the modification of international treaties on dumping. "Geological disposal is the only practical solution," Gray says. Sites for such disposal are under consideration around the world (see graphic).

Yucca Mountain should serve as a cautionary tale, for such efforts, on two grounds. One is that despite years of research it is still not clear how well this particular site would meet the stringent regulations called for by the National Academies of Science (NAS). The NAS recommends a regulatory period of several hundred thousand years, which could mean keeping the waste safe all the way through the next two ice ages. The other is that the local people have never been more united in their rejection of the plans.

Yucca Mountain has been studied as a possible site for nuclear-waste disposal since 1978. A bevy of experiments in an eight-kilometre tunnel built in the side of the mountain have looked at how water, heat and stray radioactive material might move through the rock. The data are used to estimate exposure rates for humans who might stumble across the site centuries or millennia into the future.

In recent years, some of those experiments have shown that waste could migrate to the water table more quickly than expected. And studies of young volcanoes around the mountain have raised concerns about a breach occurring at the site (see Nature 412, 850–852; 2001). A big problem is that no models can be expected to precisely predict exposure over such vast time periods. As Michael Voegele, a geological engineer with more than 25 years of experience at the site, puts it: "It's impossible to know exactly how water is going to move through the mountain when Chicago's under 5,000 feet of ice."


Keep out: storing radioactive waste in surface facilities such as spent-fuel ponds is expensive and risky.


These uncertainties fuel the doubts of Las Vegans, says Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an environmental group that is trying to block the project. Local people think Yucca Mountain was picked because Nevada is thinly populated and has little political representation in Washington. "I am not an expert," Johnson says. "All I know is that when something is based on politics, it doesn't make it sound science."

Looking to the leaders

Repositories cannot be built without addressing this blend of political and scientific concerns, says Tero Varjoranta, director of nuclear waste and materials regulation at Säteilyturvakeskus (STUK), a nuclear research centre and regulatory authority in Helsinki, Finland. Varjoranta says it is critical that government agencies be, and be seen to be, impartial and authoritative. "We're not selling the repository," Varjoranta says of his own office. "We try to convince people that if it is built, it will be safe."

In neighbouring Sweden, such impartiality has been vital because of the strength of local municipalities, says Saida Engström, a member of the board of directors at Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB (SKB). Based in Stockholm, SKB is a company formed by the government that is charged with developing Sweden's waste repository. When Engström was in charge of assessing the environmental impact of a repository in the village of Tierp, 67% of the population supported her work, she says. But the city council vetoed the project by one vote.

"I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't bothered by it — I was," she says. "But for the credibility of the project it is vital that you involve local people in the process." Ultimately, the veto at Tierp showed that SKB was serious about respecting local wishes and strengthened the programme's reputation in other parts of the country, she argues. The company is continuing investigations at Oskarshamn and Östhammar, where public support for the project continues to be strong.

Attempts to gain public trust have put the two Scandinavian nations far ahead in their efforts to build a repository, and other countries are now looking to them for inspiration. In the United Kingdom, a government committee was established in 2003, to tackle radioactive-waste management. The committee, which includes environmentalists and social scientists as well as physicists and engineers, will determine whether a deeply buried repository is the best way to dispose of waste. Lessons have been learnt after plans to build a repository at Sellafield were thrown out by a public inquiry in 1997. "That was the end of an old tradition where scientists, industry and government got together behind closed doors, thought up the right option, thought up the right site and then announced it," says Gordon MacKerron, an economist from the University of Sussex who chairs the committee.

Yet others worry that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of public opinion. "There's a view out there, which basically says that science is not reliable anymore," says David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University in London. Ball resigned last spring from Britain's committee on radioactive-waste management, in protest of what he saw as an over-reliance on public opinion. "They didn't see science as holding any objective truth and replaced it with the good old common sense of the man on the Clapham omnibus," he says.

Winning trust

Keith Baverstock, a radiation health expert at the University of Kuopio in Finland (see page 993), adds that the Finnish and Swedish success is not due to national public acceptance. "The Finns have never had more than about 40% of the general population agree that this form of disposal was the correct way to do it," he says. The key, he says, is to find a local community willing to accept the project.

The views of local communities will not be determined only by local issues, such as jobs or worries about contamination. "Many groups began opposing Yucca Mountain because they didn't want new nuclear power and they didn't want it seen as the solution that allows for the construction of new nuclear plants," says Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, which opposes the Yucca Mountain project. And in Sweden, there might be more local resistance to the country's waste-repository project if the government wasn't already committed to phasing out nuclear power across the country. At least, that's the view of Johan Swahn, director of the Swedish Office for Nuclear Waste Review — an environmental group that uses government funding to monitor the repository project. "People are more willing to participate in the process with the understanding that nuclear waste is a finite problem," he says.

Regardless of what scientists and engineers believe is technically possible, they must be prepared to address these sorts of cultural concerns, says nuclear-waste consultant McCombie. More broadly, governments eager to see a nuclear repository built must work harder to win their citizens' respect. That's no mean feat and can only be achieved through time and transparency, McCombie says: "You can't just build it like you would a filling station; it has to be a long process with buy-in and the potential for reversal at each stage."

[abhishek_sharma]

Nuclear agency faces reform calls: International Atomic Energy Agency's remit under scrutiny

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110426/ ... 2397a.html

From the name, one might expect the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to have been a major force in the response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan. Instead, its performance was sluggish and sometimes confusing, drawing calls for the agency — an independent organization that advises the United Nations — to take a more proactive role in nuclear safety.

Ministers from the countries that oversee the IAEA will meet in June at the agency's head­quarters in Vienna to discuss lessons from the nuclear accident. A shake-up of the agency's function in emergencies is likely to be on the agenda. "The IAEA itself will acknowledge privately that it did not cover itself in glory," says James Acton, who studies nuclear policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. But nuclear experts say that the agency's complicated mandate and the constraints imposed by its member states are big obstacles to any major reforms.

Experts contacted by Nature agree that the IAEA must deal with emergencies more quickly than it has in Japan. Under a 1986 convention, member states are obliged to report certain details of any nuclear accidents to the agency, which has an Incident and Emergency Centre ready to respond. Accordingly, the IAEA was in touch with Japanese nuclear regulators within hours of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered several reactor shutdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on 11 March. After a massive explosion rocked the unit 1 reactor the following day, the agency posted a series of brief statements on its website as the situation developed. But IAEA officials did not hold a press conference until 14 March, and its technical experts did not begin on-the-ground assessments for a full week.

Even after regular IAEA briefings began, they were often a mind-numbing string of temperatures, pressures and radiation readings, with little context. The agency's performance in this regard differs sharply from that of other United Nations groups, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), based in Geneva, Switzerland. During the first weeks of Japan's nuclear emergency, the WHO issued clear and reassuring statements about the health risks posed to citizens. After concentrations of the radioactive isotope iodine-131 rose to worrying levels in Tokyo tap water, it stated clearly that there was "no immediate health risk" to adults in the city. The IAEA, by contrast, simply repeated official statements from Japanese government authorities on its website.

"It should give its own independent assessment using all the information that is available," says Olli Heinonen, a nuclear expert at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If information isn't available, he adds, the agency "should seek it actively".

Yet seeking data in the middle of a nuclear emergency is not easy. "If you say to a reactor operator: 'Your reactor is melting down, please do not forget to fill in form 33b and fax it to the IAEA', they're not going to do it," says Andreas Persbo, a specialist in arms control at VERTIC, an independent organization based in London that verifies compliance to international agreements. But he adds that if member states were willing, automated systems could be used to send the IAEA valuable real-time data on conditions at a nuclear plant.


Remaking the IAEA in the image of more effective groups such as the WHO, or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, would be no small task. The IAEA not only has a much smaller budget than the other international agencies (see 'A nuclear minnow'), but also has multiple and seemingly contradictory roles. Set up in 1957, the agency has 151 member states, 35 of which make up a board of governors that recommends budgets and policies to the rest of the members. The agency is a promoter of nuclear power, but at the same time guards against the spread of technology that could be used for nuclear weapons. It sets voluntary international standards for safety in civilian nuclear plants, and offers assistance in times of crisis.

The WHO, in contrast, has an explicit remit to provide information during natural outbreaks of disease that spread across borders. This means that nations in a threatened region are eager for its expert assessments, says Duncan Snidal, a expert in international relations at the University of Oxford, UK. The IAEA, in comparison, actively probes the nuclear endeavours of members, including any undeclared weapons programmes, so they are reluctant to give it too much authority.

Nowhere has the IAEA's short leash been more apparent than in its International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. The agency introduced the numerical severity scale in 1990 to facilitate quick communication about nuclear accidents, but, bizarrely, it is national regulators that determine the rating of a particular emergency. Japan initially ranked the Fukushima crisis at level 5 by treating each reactor at the plant as a separate event, but a month after the event it grouped the reactors into a single incident and upped the rating to 7, the highest on the scale. The sudden change created confusion in the press and anxiety for the public, and showed just how inadequate the scale is, says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation programme at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington DC.

Whether the IAEA can gain more independence to assess nuclear accidents is uncertain, but its emergency scale is very likely to be revisited given the confusing way in which it has been used. Some commentators have also called for a stronger IAEA that can enforce global safety standards or take control in an emergency, but Acton labels such ideas "insane". Nations might begin to feel that "safety is not our responsibility", he says. Moreover, a nuclear plant's operators are often better placed to handle a crisis than are outside officials unfamiliar with the facility. In any event, Acton doubts that countries will abdicate oversight of their reactors. "The whole thing is fanciful," he says.

Lewis says that a more outspoken IAEA could have dispelled some of the confusion around the impact of Fukushima. Japanese authorities played down the severity of the accident, for example, while US regulators on the scene described a much more frightening worst-case scenario. But if the IAEA is just one more voice in the tumult, "and if it is incompetent, then it makes everything much, much worse", Lewis adds.

It will ultimately be up to the member states to determine how much independence the IAEA will have in a future crisis. The agency's own position is unknown: it declined Nature 's interview request for this story.

[GuruPrabhu]

I am not sure that I can compete with the high intellectual standards of "fooledbyrandomness.com", but I will try.

Let us take the estimated one death per million years claim. Since there have been ZERO deaths thus far, I am not sure how the model is falsified.

But hey, why stop someone from waxing eloquent about the lack of tails in the Binomial distribution? Every Blank.com website deserves its day in the sun.

Of course, they could be making solar powered electricity while they enjoy their day in the sun.

[GuruPrabhu]

Folks,

It is hopeless to speak rationally to Blank.com websites. One day they will not have electricity to power their website and then they will learn. I can just imagine a Blank.com server under a windmill waiting for a breeze so they can spread their nonsense propaganda.

[somnath]

^^^Nassim Taleb is usually very good, but he is missing the point here..In his famed Extremistan, low probability events have outsized payoffs...In the case of Fukushima and nuclear, the event is "low probability", but the payoff is hardly "outsized"! I mean we have had a total death count of "0"!

Its a bit like banking bonuses these days - they are a low probability event, and when they happen the payoffs are quite small!

Seriously, NNT has missed a few plots here...

[ramana]

I think that relying on extreme lo probabilities is not helpful. One has to weigh it against consequences. If consequence is high one has to have an active risk management. The biggest risk of a power reactor is core meltdown and consequences are quite bad from rad contamination prompt deaths to later deaths from exposure. Economic consequences are another matter.

[Chinmayanand]

India to tighten nuclear safeguards at Jaitapur plant

India has pledged to put in extra safeguards at a proposed nuclear power plant in western India after recent violent protests against the plan.

Activists say the $10bn (£6bn) plant in Maharashtra is located in a region prone to earthquakes and fear a repeat of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Local villagers also fear the plant will ruin their traditional fisheries.

India has also decided to set up an independent nuclear watchdog to oversee its existing nuclear reactors.

Construction of the 9,900 megawatt, six-reactor facility, which is being built with technical help from the French energy giant Areva, is due to begin this year.

[Sanku]

Bramha Chellany Tweets

INDIA'S CORRUPT WAYS: China played foreign vendors against each another; India first gifts a nuclear park to each vendor, then seeks pricing

India's decision to let France's Areva build twin-reactor Jaitapur nuclear plant without competitive bidding or safety review is scandalous.

[Tanaji]

Ah, Sanku , you and your competitive bid pricing..

Just curious, were the Russian VVERs purchased after competitive bids?

[Sanku]

Just curious, were the Russian VVERs purchased after competitive bids?

Weren't the Russian VVERs purchased BEFORE anyone other than Russian was trying to sell?

[Pratyush]

^^^

T, Sanku is quoting Brhama Challani. Those are not his own opinions. But, I wonder would it have been wrong if all the Plants were built by the same vendor. Not that I disagree with the current arrangement. One vendor / Site is a form of risk management strategy.

The advantage is that all the vendors must agree to sanctions if they are to work. AS it is, you can count on the French and the Russies to veto that possibility.

[somnath]

One vendor / Site is a form of risk management strategy

Precisely, risk management both in terms of politics and in terms of technology.

[amit]

What BC doesn't Tweet about and consequently his admirers on this thread don't rave about is the other aspect of China, that is the single minded pursuit of nuclear power.

Folks just have a look at this article - China publishes detailed plan to adjust industry structure - lot of interesting nuggets pertinent to the discussion on this thread.

China will eliminate on-grid coal fired power generators of less than 100 mw and shut down coal mine shafts with capacity below 30,000 tons per year, according to the list on the agency's website http://www.ndrc.gov.cn.

Could anyone guess why they want to shut down coal fired power generators of less than 100 MW?

But China will also encourage nuclear power station construction and exploration of uranium as well as further development of advance nuclear reactor technology.

Do note that this report is datelined April 26, well after Fukushima.

Perhaps BC should also tweet about China's unwavering commitment to nuclear power before commenting on its alleged talent of playing one supplier against the other. He should also Tweet on why he's so concerned at entire parks being reserved for a particular country when he opposes the very concept of Civilian nuclear deal which India signed. Would his opposition to the deal have gone away if India could also "play one supplier against the other"? When the deal is bad (according to BC and his admirers) then what's the difference if "corrupt" Indian nuclear officials follow a policy of reservation?

Folks we're noticing right in front of our eyes another case of India missing the bus while China merrily moves ahead. The sad thing is this is/(very soon to be) was one area where we were actually ahead of the Chinese.

But we deserve this when we allow the likes of Shriman Uday Thackeray and other known "progressives" to be arbitrators of our destiny while folks who should know better stand in the sidelines and nod in approval.

Sorry for the rant but I feel bad for my country.

[somnath]

^^^Well, BC is being less-than-honest with facts...the saem EPR that we are still "negotiating" has been ordered by China, not 1or 2, but 4!! Construction of two has started, and China has signed up for two more!

Not sure where BC picked up this "playing one vendor against other" business from, but the story of China's "competitive bidding" is quite interesting...There was a "bidding" held for 4 reactors in 2006 - AREVA lost out to Westinghouse in that, primarily on ToT grounds...Cutely though, China entered into a contract with AREVA in 2007 for two EPRs, on unrevised terms! And thereafter signed a fresh contract for 2 more, I think in 2009...

Imagine if this scenario played out in India, where we selected Westinghouse first in a bidding process, and then went ahead and awarded a new contract to the losing vendor Areva subsequently, and then topped it up with a couple more...SCAM would be written all over it - and every single nationalist, progressive, communist, baba ramdev, Times TV, NDTV, uncle, aunty and joker would be all over GOI...

So much for Chinese propriety and skill:evil:

It is important to keep suppliers diverse in an area where technology is changing fast and political risk is a real and material risk....GOI therefore is keen on ensuring the same - if we have US, France and Russia in bed with us commercially together, we autmoatically create insurance for ourselves against any funny coordinated action at NSG...

Our "uber nationalists" should ideally be happy with this...It creates more political space for us should we decide to test again...But then, who-ever accused them of understanding either science, or geopolitics, or economics!!

[Lalmohan]

there are scams/corruptions galore in china too, and no accountability either
but that is not important right now (in this dhaga)

[amit]

Cross posting from the Fukushima dhaga as I think the article raises some very interesting points.

I suppose after all the various stalwarts and websites that have been quoted on this site, even the New American has become halal to quote.

In this article, author Ed Hiserodt, who wrote a book called What if Radiation is Actually Good for You? , has some interesting things to say.

The situation in Japan is grim. Estimates of the dead or missing — and by now this latter group must be moved into the dead column — is above 25,000 souls. A half-million residents are homeless, with many in danger of starvation since roads and railroads have simply disappeared. Yet the world’s media pays only lip service to the plight of Japanese citizens. It is almost entirely focused on the disabled nuclear reactors and the “leaks” of radiation that have had, and will have, virtually no effect on human health.

Note: In the Fukushima prefecture itself a dam burst minutes after the earthquake and swept away 1,800 homes. Perhaps somebody on this thread - particularly those who are untiringly dredging all manner of negative reports they can trawl from the Net which badmouths the Japanese - could try to find something which could give an indication of what percentage of the roughly 25,000 dead, died on account of this dam? My rough estimate, even if one person per home died and nobody else who happened to be on the path of that water were killed, then we have score: Dead by dam burst in Fukushima: 1,800. Dead on account of radiation in Fukushima: 0.

Interestingly, many of the expatriates “escaped” to areas where the background radiation was higher, in some cases much higher, than the areas in Japan they were evacuating owing to radioactive releases. An April 1 Bloomberg article by Stuart Biggs and Yuriy Humber gave the current background radiation measurements in Tokyo compared with other areas. Even after the releases in Japan, the amount of background radiation in Tokyo is still below the world average. The article quoted Bob Bury of the UK’s Royal College of Radiologists, “The situation in Japan looks set to follow the pattern of Chernobyl, where fear of radiation did far more damage than the radiation itself.”

If we analyze for a moment the MSNBC.com story “Japan faces another dilemma: Radiation-contaminated bodies,” {thank God this piece of thrash wasn't posted here!} we should remember that exposure to radiation does not make one radioactive, e.g., you don’t become radioactive from an X-ray. So any contamination would have had to settle out from the atmosphere onto the bodies. One might ask how the radioactive particles know how to zero in on the corpses and avoid the area that surrounds them.

UConn physics professor emeritus Howard Hayden points out in his newsletter, The Energy Advocate, that the joke is on the Californians who are now gobbling down potassium iodine pills to saturate their thyroids in an attempt to block an accumulation of radioactive iodine. The “K” in KI pills is potassium, a small percentage of which is radioactive Potassium 40. In an attempt to avoid barely detectable amounts of Iodine 131, they are ingesting easily measurable amounts of bone-seeking Potassium 40. Actually this radiation won’t bother them either, although the pills are not gentle on the digestive system and give the same symptoms — nausea and cramping — as does real radiation sickness, which has afflicted no one in Japan, let alone thousands of miles away in the United States.

The next quote is a keeper, should be posted as a sticky on this thread!

Fear of radiation is a learned behavior. Moreover, it’s not something we learn from personal experience or observation. We have no way to sense it and must be told by others that we are in danger. As noted above, we receive plenty of information from the media on the dangers of radiation, and this is nothing new. Professor Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh looked at the New York Times Information Bank, which allows access to numerous publications, and found over the period 1974 to 1978 that there were about 120 stories per year on automobile accidents that killed some 200,000 people. But there were 200 stories per year on radiation that killed no one. Do you know anyone who died or was sickened by radiation? Do you know anybody who knows anybody who was such a victim? The odds are a million to one against it.

Note: Tragically last year two of my relatives died in automobile accidents. Does that mean I should stop driving my car?

Aside from death and radiation sickness resulting from extremely high doses of radiation, the only other known negative effect of radiation on humans is an increased risk of cancer. While certainly real, this threat seems overblown. Professor John Cameron, of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, points out that there were only about 400 excess cancer deaths in the tens of thousands of exposed individuals in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If a large-scale, real-life sampling of radiation survivors didn’t validate hypotheses of skyrocketing cancer rates, though many of the affected people suffered acute radiation exposure, why then do we hear terrifying reports about the number of cancer deaths we can expect from the recent partial meltdown in Japan, where no one has been reported to have faced acute exposure? It is because of a statistical hypothesis known as Linear No Threshold theory, or LNT.

Linear No Threshold theory assumes that there is a linear relationship in the amount of danger posed by increasing levels of radiation. Let’s use aspirin to demonstrate LNT at work. Assume that 100 tablets is a 100-percent fatal dose of aspirin. (That is roughly the case for a 200-pound man.) Linear No Threshold theory would predict that 50 tablets would cause a 50-percent mortality rate, 10 tablets would result in 10-percent mortality, and a single tablet would cause one percent of the users to die. We can pretty well agree that this doesn’t happen with aspirin, but we are told that it does for radiation.

High doses of radiation, for example 100,000 mrem, are carcinogenic and generally follow the LNT. But there is a growing consensus among health professionals that no such risk occurs below 10,000 mrem. Anti-nuclear activists and the media haven’t caught on to this, however, as the following example shows.

Let us assume that the risk of cancer increases by 10 percent for anyone exposed to 100,000 mrem of radiation. If we extrapolate this linearly to zero, then at 10,000 mrem we have a one-percent increase in cancer. At 10 mrem, there would be a 0.001 percent increased risk of cancer. Now comes a hypothetical release of radiation that blankets the country of Japan with a dose of 10 mrem, the U.S. average for 10 days from natural sources. With a population of 127,000,000 people and a mortality of 0.001 percent, the LNT predicts 1,270 increased cancer deaths. Of course the media would pick up on this fact as gospel, needlessly frightening the citizenry with fictitious threats of cancer and death.

So what will be the likely outcome of the nuclear meltdown, and the subsequent release of radioactive elements, in Japan? Once pumps are fully operational and structural damage to the nuclear power plant is repaired, the level of radiation from venting the containment vessels and from uncovered spent-fuel cooling ponds will quickly drop, as will airborne particles. Within a few months, the 131I deposited on the ground will decay to zero. Some 137Cs (cesium) will remain detectable on the ground, but at present it appears to be only a tenth the amount of that from the Chernobyl incident — and the amount from Chernobyl was on the same order of magnitude as the natural radionuclides in the soil.

Of course, anti-nuclear activists will predict thousands of cancer deaths based on the LNT, which will not happen, but no matter. Fear is the objective. As we have already seen, the Fukushima “disaster” will become the rallying cry against nuclear power. Few will remember that the plant stayed generally intact despite being hit by an earthquake with more than six times the energy the plant was designed to withstand, plus a tsunami estimated at 49 feet that swept away backup generators 33 feet above sea level. Wonder how those windmills would have stood up.

We've already seen the above being played in a well-orchestrated fashion on this thread haven't we?

[SureshP]

Interactive map showing the spread of nuclear power stations across the world with time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13159407

[somnath]

MIT study on nuclear power...

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuc ... te2009.pdf

In sum, compared to 2003, the motivation to make more use of nuclear power
is greater, and more rapid progress is needed in enabling the option of nuclear
power expansion to play a role in meeting the global warming challenge. The
sober warning is that if more is not done, nuclear power will diminish as a
practical and timely option for deployment at a scale that would constitute a
material contribution to climate change risk mitigation.

[Sanatanan]

Indo-Japan nuke deal delayed, but on track

[quote]The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant might delay the civil nuclear agreement between India and Japan, but it will definitely go through, said Akitaka Saiki, Japanese ambassador to India
. . .
Saiki said: "The levels of radiation in Fukushima are not equivalent to Chernobyl. There is no meltdown in Japan."[/quote]

[vera_k]

An alternative to nuclear power

Natural gas, the lesser evil among fossil fuels, is an attractive choice.

[Theo_Fidel]

One vendor / Site is a form of risk management strategy.

While it is political risk management, it is not design or vendor risk management.

In fact if there is a problem with any design or vendor, you are guaranteed to get it. This is not the way risk/cost management works in the large scale. Say you are building 5 Aircraft Carriers, would you want 5 incompatible designs w/ 5 different ship yards from 5 different companies to build it. India does not yet have the technical base to make most of the equipment for these plants so now we are at the mercy of 5 different vendors.

[brihaspati]

Friends,
I think we are discussing maybe the wrong risks? You see "risks" must be seen in terms of risks to investments, money put in, capital etc. Risks are not about "people" unless of course someone decides to make it politically costly - which in turn increases the risks of investments made into political parties. People are just numbers after all - its not Takahashi J who will get xx cancer with a xxx probability more than a control group and which reduces his life span and his economic value by an "expected" xxxxx %-age. It is just a paltry and insignificant number - say of the order of 10^(-6). [Any requirement to do a Bayesian update since the incident? Perhaps not!]


So maybe we should look at how risky is nuclear power/reactor to the capital invested/monetary profits connected to the "nuclear reactor". The impact of trade or export embargos on products is more significant than a mere human life. Those are the meat of economies. Maybe if we explore that, we can see that costs and risks are negligible?

So as long as export bans etc can be worked around and nullified, there are no economic growth problems, no difficulty in obtaining continued monetary profits, there are no risks in even blow-outs of nuclear reactors. Give sufficient time - radioactive decay will ensure that one day it will be "healthy" again. After all people have been dying in war, from bad drinking water, riots and railways, and dying even without all that anyway! People die - but economic profits and capital growth stays for ever! so something that stays forever is much much more valuable and precious than a guaranteed to be eliminated entity anyway!

[GuruPrabhu]

^^^ That is a fine approach. I would suggest that the risk to be evaluated is the impact of a slowdown of the 3-phase program. The evaluation should be done for a 40-50 year time frame.