Bharat Rakshak

Theo_Fidel wrote:Rs 5 per unit of power too is non-viable long term. TNEB has essentially gone 'bondi' trying to supply power at that rate.

You can see the shock in KKNPP where the same church and people who welcomed them 15 years ago is now deeply resentful and bitterly opposed.

Opposition will get much worse in future.

vina wrote:Despite all this, with selling power at Rs 5 to folks like me and Rs 8 to industry, the local distribution companies sort of manage to hang in there. Now if you replace the bulk of cheap power with very expensive power that costs Rs 8 or Rs 10 per kwh, and make everyone pay for power at Rs8 + discom costs (ie around Rs 8.5 or so), even if politically possible, the first persons to go truly "bondi " will be the farmers, like in the ones in the Koodankulam area!

Theo_Fidel wrote:This business of accusing farmers of getting free power is absolute garbage and only indulged in by Bangloori Billi types. A typical 3/4 hp set requires a connection charge of Rs 700 & a fixed tariff of Rs 1,800 per year.When you consider that most farmers only get 4 hours of power a day at odd hours this works out to 365x4 ~ 1460 kw consumption max or about Rs 2 per unit consumed during off peak times. Most times farmers go weeks without power. So by no means is it free.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) will launch 16 reactors at an outlay of Rs.2.3 trillion ($40 billion) during the 12th Plan period (2012-17), a top official of the atomic power operator said.

"We have to launch eight 700 MW pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and eight light water reactors (LWRs) involving a total outlay of Rs.230,000 crore (Rs.2.3 trillion). The LWRs will be from foreign companies," S.K. Jain, who retired Thursday as NPCIL chairman and managing director, told IANS in an interview.
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<Caption on a picture of fish >
TOKYO - A 232kg blue-fin tuna is displayed during a new year's first auction at the Tsukiji fish market on in Tokyo, Japan. You could eat fish like this with its Fukushima 137/134Cs content for every meal for the rest of your life with no effects from the radiation, although the mercury might kill you. The market handles approximately 3,000 tons of fish a day, generating about 3 billion yen.
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The several hot tuna articles that have come out this week have been interesting and amusing. No, I don’t mean bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen from Jefferson Airplane, I mean articles like Bluefin Tuna Record Fukushima Radioactivity by science correspondent for the BBC News Jonathan Amos that report these tuna have picked up radioactive pollution and contamination from waters of the coast of Japan and are transporting them to America. This work comes from Professor Nicholas Fisher whom Amos described as ‘stunned’ to find the radioactive signal in bluefin tuna from different isotopes of the element cesium (Cs), specifically 137Cs and 134Cs.

P L E A S E ---
These fish have no contamination, are not polluted, and Fisher was not ’stunned’ as he knew full well that he should see this. We see these chemical signatures all the time from many events and sources. We even see 137Cs in fish (and in us) from fallout from the 50’s and 60’s. No big deal. I would be worried if we did not see these signatures because that would imply we were not doing our jobs. Since we can detect a single nucleus disintegrating, we can measure radioactivity very, very well, better than we can detect toxic compounds like mercury.

Normal radioactivity in our diet can be up to 400 Bq/kg in foods like potatoes, bananas,{ } nuts, beets and other vegetables, primarily from natural 40K with a little from Ra, U and Th. Normal radioactivity in tuna is about 92 Bq/kg (Tahir et al. 2010). These Fukushima fish have about 95 Bq/kg. Yes, we can measure this tiny amount, but no it’s not important at all.

The problem here is the difference between pollution and a chemical signature like what we are seeing in these fish. A chemical signature is the presence of various trace elements whose detailed ratios to each other can point to a specific region or event that gave rise to those elements in that ratio. Thus, measuring the Nd:Sm ratios in a water sample from the mid-Atlantic ocean can tell you if that water came from the Mediterranean Sea or from the Arctic Ocean because the source of those elements in those waters is weathering of different rocks with different amounts of trace elements (Nd/Sm isotopics).

Similarly, when DPRK (North Korea), tested small atomic devices a few years ago, we collected air samples flying over the country because the ratios of various isotopes like Pu, Cs and Sr give a signature telling the size and type of the device, and whether or not the test was even successful. The one in 2006 was basically a failure but the one in 2009 was a success.

In my old environmental monitoring lab in Carlsbad, NM (CEMRC), we would monitor for trace elements in soil, water, air, humans and animals and could distinguish between specific types of nuclear tests. As an example, we could use the extremely small Pu-isotopic signature in various soils to tell whether they were dominated by fallout from above-ground nuclear tests from the Cold War or from a small underground atomic test in 1961 at the nearby Gnome site. Global fallout is dominated by above ground atmospheric tests of high-yield fusion bombs (H-bombs) which produce lower amounts of fission products (137Cs and 90Sr) and higher amounts of 239Pu than lower-yield fission bombs (like Gnome) which produce higher amounts of fission products and higher amounts of 240Pu and 242Pu.


Therefore, the tuna signatures are interesting because they have a Fukushima signature for Cs ratios. Although there are 39 isotopes of Cs, most are so unstable that they decay away in seconds to weeks. The three important ones for nuclear reactors and bombs are 134Cs (half-life ~ 2 yrs), 137Cs (half-life ~ 30 yrs), and stable 133Cs. Chemically, Cs acts like potassium (K) with a similar biological half-life, meaning the time it takes the body to purge half of the element. Biological half-life depends on the animal, and upon individual metabolisms, diet and especially water consumption. For Cs, it is between one and four months in humans. This is completely independent of the radiological half-life of the element. And is plenty of time for these fish to transverse the Pacific.

Since the Fukushima event occurred less than 2 years ago, 134Cs has undergone the better part of only one half-life but is still part of the signature, and will be for about 15 years or so. The 137Cs has undergone almost no decay, but is also mixed up with the residual 137Cs from historic global fallout. So it is the presence of 134Cs in the fish that gives them a Fukushima signature. Just like the 131I signature we saw in air over the west coast in the two months following Fukushima. It faded away after that since 131I has only an 8-day half-life and is gone in two or three months.

But these signatures, like Cs in the tuna, are so small that they pose no risk and cannot be considered pollution as pollution and contamination imply actual health and environmental effects. On the other hand, the mercury in tuna, while still low, has led the EPA to recommend eating only one can per week to avoid possible toxicity. You could eat several tons of this Fukushima tuna and have no health effect from the radiation, although the mercury would become a problem at that point.
<snip... please read the whole article>

harbans wrote: The only way rational study and methodology heads to quick sand is brute irrational fear mongering and subsequent stoppage of work/ limitation of output.

It’s hard to capture activities when talking about death since heart disease and cancer account for over half of all deaths (over 1 million in 2011) but what you do that causes them is the key, because then you might be able to make good choices, the outcome that worrying should accomplish. Society needs to make similar choices as a whole to increase the safety of its citizens.

This essentially means that industrial units in Tamil Nadu that have already been facing prolonged power cuts now will have to brace themselves for more. According to the TNSEB, industrial and commercial consumers will face up to 40% higher power cuts in the coming months. Industrial units located outside Chennai are already facing power cuts for up to 8-10 hours in a day. Besides this, all industries will be subjected to a one-day power holiday every week from March 1 onwards.

vina wrote:

Opposition will get much worse in future.

Don't think so. People in Chennai, with Nuke plants right in the backyards don't seem to care, people in Mumbai , again with Nuke plants right in the backyards dont care.

There’s a secure solution to America’s nuclear waste problem: bury it under Carlsbad, New Mexico. The locals are ready — if only Washington would get out of the way. {Interestingly even in India, Washington and other outsiders are ready to tell what is best for us.. We ought to listen to logic not irrational fear.. }
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Amber G. wrote: Nuclear reactor supplier cannot be held liable for damages, says NPCIL Chairman

Dr SK Jain's "concrete" example is too simplistic. Even assuming bricks and stones were sourced locally, each and every CC of concrete would have been placed under Russian supervision. In the case of Kaiga "dome failure", as I remember the construction agency was not found fault with; it was the designer who was said to be responsible. With imported reactors, holding the Owner-Operator responsible for accidents caused by defects in equipment wholly supplied by the foreign vendor is unreasonable. Turbine Supplier was said to be responsible for the Narora fire incident a few decades ago, not the "Operator" (NPCIL). In fact it is said that it was NPCIL's Operators who saved the day from a major catastrophe! Truth is NPP designs are so advanced that a major failure must necessarily have many plausible causes. Realistic determination and appropriate apportioning responsibility need to be purely technological exercises - not clouded by political, monetary or other considerations.

Sanku wrote:

Amber G. wrote: Nuclear reactor supplier cannot be held liable for damages, says NPCIL Chairman

Why is NPCIL chairman batting for the suppliers? (In this case Russians) --> there is a excellent rebut in the comments in the Hindu
Clearly, once the matter has been spoken about in the Parliament, I would expect the NPCIL chairman to bat for his organization and India, and not for Russia, France or US.
Very disappointing. Hopefully once the political leadership changes, a large realignment of top levels personnel is also carried out in many of the state enterprises.

Neela wrote: Most European and North American countries are signatories to the Paris convention which places almost all responsibility on the operator. Please read Article 3 , Article 4 .Article 5 ..

Etc....

Nuclear energy will not be able to solve the power crisis in India, said Dr Bikash Sinha, Homi Bhabha Professor at the Department of Atomic Energy, on Tuesday. The country therefore needs to focus on solar energy. Nuclear energy meets minimal demand for electricity in the country, he added.

“We have done very little to utilise solar energy options. India will have to do something seriously in this regard,” Dr Sinha said on the sidelines of a seminar on green economy organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Areva and others such as GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Westinghouse Electric Co. are aiming to capitalize on India's plans to spend billions of dollars to boost its nuclear power capacity 15 times to 63 gigawatts by 2032. More than half of India's 201 GW of total power generation capacity is based on coal, which is in short supply.
India is in talks with Russia, France and South Korea to buy nuclear reactors for power plants, said V. Narayanasamy, junior minister at the prime minister's office.Areva and the local state-owned nuclear power monopoly have signed an initial pact in 2010 to build the two reactors of 1,650 megawatts each at Jaitapur in the western Maharashtra state. Nuclear Power Corp. plans to have six reactors with a total capacity of 9.9 GW at Jaitapur."If we sign the contract by the year-end, we will target to commission the first reactor by the year 2020 and the second by 2021," Arthur Montalembert, Areva India's chairman, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.The Jaitapur project is facing delays due to protests by local people who fear the nuclear plant could endanger their lives. Their concerns were accentuated by the Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan after last year's earth quake and tsunami."It (the accident) has certainly induced some delays, not specifically to India. Its consequences led to reviews in France and each and every country," Mr. Montalembert said. "It has certainly impacted business plans."

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda approved Saturday the reactivation of two nuclear reactors in western Japan, the first restart since last year’s atomic disaster.

The government told the operator Kansai Electric Power Co to reactivate the idled units 3 and 4 of the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture over strong public opposition after the premier met Governor Issei Nishikawa, who gave his consent.

The plant is 60 kilometres north of Kyoto city, the ancient capital and a major tourist destination with a population of 1.38 million.

Japan’s 50 reactors have been shut down for maintenance. Utility companies have been unable to reactivate them because of public fears about nuclear power after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2001.

The plant suffered meltdowns after it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave areas surrounding the complex.

In early May, Hokkaido Electric Power Co shut down reactor 3 at its Tomari plant on the northern Japanese island, leaving the nation without nuclear-generated electricity for the first time in 42 years.

Nuclear plants accounted for about 30 per cent of the country’s supply before the Fukushima disaster.

Amber G. wrote: One rational study... For perspective What's is really going to kill you..
(Figures are from US but it still gives some idea )

Please see the original post here ..

From: What's Really Gonna Kill You?
From above:

It’s hard to capture activities when talking about death since heart disease and cancer account for over half of all deaths (over 1 million in 2011) but what you do that causes them is the key, because then you might be able to make good choices, the outcome that worrying should accomplish. Society needs to make similar choices as a whole to increase the safety of its citizens.

Rooftop solar is several times more dangerous than nuclear power and wind power. It is still much safer than coal and oil, because those have a lot of air pollution deaths.

Rooftop solar can be safer [0.44 up to 0.83 death per twh each year). If the rooftop solar is part of the shingle so you do not put the roof up more than once and do not increase maintenance then that is ok too. Or if you had a robotic system of installation.

World average for coal is about 161 deaths per TWh.
In the USA about 30,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 2000 TWh.
15 deaths per TWh.
In China about 500,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 1800 TWh.
278 deaths per TWh.
{ This is a long and detailed article, worth reading in full for those interested}

The table below lists the mortality rate of each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhrs produced. The numbers are a combination of actual direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, and are rounded to two significant figures.

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
Coal – global average 170,000 (50% global electricity)
Coal – China 280,000 (75% China’s electricity)
Coal – U.S. 15,000 (44% U.S. electricity)

Oil 36,000 (36% of energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (20% global electricity)

Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)

Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity)

Wind 150 (~ 1% global electricity)

Hydro – global average 1,400 (15% global electricity)

Nuclear* – global average 90 (17% global electricity)
*For nuclear includes Chernobyl and Fukushima ..virtually all deaths are attributed to Chernoybl..

Cheap Coal Is Dead. Long Live Renewables. (Part 1)
By Carl Pope - Jun 19, 2012

“Sustainable Energy for All” is the main theme for this week’s Rio+20 United Nations gathering in Brazil. The challenge of making energy both accessible and sustainable has grown more complicated in the past year or so, and also more exciting. These are tough times for coal and other high-carbon sources of energy, while the news about clean energy is more promising.

In March, the power generating arm of India’s largest conglomerate, the Tata Group, announced that it was shifting its investment strategy from coal-fired thermal plants to wind and solar renewable projects. Coal projects, Tata said, were becoming “impossible” to develop, and investment in them had stopped.

With this declaration, one of Asia’s biggest energy players confirmed an emerging reality. The U.S., Europe, Russia, Australia and Japan all had created modern consumer economies dependent on abundant, cheap fossil-fuel energy. In the 21st century that is no longer viable; the high-carbon growth path is closing.

The reason is cost. Oil has long been expensive, because low-cost oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have learned to demand high prices by limiting supplies and refusing to sign long-term price agreements. Coal had always been different -- traded locally, on both long-term concessions and short-term spot contracts. Two years ago, China and India could supplement their domestic coal supplies with imports from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. Some of the cheapest coal mines serving China in 2010 were in Indonesia, where India’s Adani Power Ltd. and Tata were purchasing coal mines and building their own shipping and port facilities to ensure they could supply a wave of huge new power projects.
Geologically Abundant

While coal is geologically more abundant than oil, cheap coal, close to population centers, is not. The biggest coal- producing region in the U.S. -- the Powder River Basin -- can get coal out of the ground for about $12 a ton. It costs roughly $60 a ton to ship it to power plants in the Ohio Valley. China’s vast reserves near Inner Mongolia can be mined for $25 a ton. But by the time it travels by rail across North China, then by sea to southern coastal cities, the cost rises to more than $125 a ton.

Shipping coal is more difficult and more expensive than shipping oil. Only a few coal-exporting countries are close to Asian markets; Australia and Indonesia dominate the trade. In 2011, countries with abundant accessible coal, such as Indonesia, began to demand high prices -- two times higher in fact. Coal became the new oil. An informal cartel of coal exporters emerged with the same strategic goal as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries -- obtaining higher prices.

China and India, which had been counting on buying coal for $40 a ton, now find that imported coal at $120 a ton is “cheap.” Dozens of coal plants in China and India cut back capacity because of fuel costs and shortages. Indian power companies scrapped 42 gigawatts worth of new power plants. The Reserve Bank of India warned investors that coal projects were very risky. India’s largest coal company tried to raise its prices, only to be forced to back down by the government, which owns more than half of it. Eventually, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered Coal India to provide adequate coal deliveries for power projects in the pipeline. Coal India grudgingly agreed, but markets didn’t believe it could deliver; banks continued to refuse to lend, leading to Tata’s announcement. Meanwhile, in China, the government tried to reverse its previous deregulation of the coal-mining and transportation sectors in an effort to get prices under control, causing friction with state-owned coal mines.

Expensive Shipping
India and China, respectively, are home to some of the world’s largest coal reserves. They are the fastest-growing global coal markets. But most of their coal is distant from their booming coastal regions. Their rail systems are inadequate to ship the volumes needed to fuel existing needs, much less the growth expected by 2020. And shipping coal by rail is expensive. Most of the cost of coal is not wages, but diesel fuel used either to mine or transport it. As oil grows more expensive, it drags the price of coal up with it.

There is cheap coal in the Powder River Basin, in part because U.S. demand for coal is slumping as American power companies shift to cheaper and cleaner natural gas or renewables. Peabody Energy Inc. would love to ship its surplus Wyoming coal to Asia, if it can get it there. Peabody promises investors that it can make money shipping coal to China -- precisely because it expects the price to remain at $120 or more. But U.S. coal companies must first overcome local community opposition to shipping and loading hundreds of millions of tons of dirty black dust through West Coast ports such as Longview, Washington.

What does $120-a-ton coal mean for the development plans of India and China? At $120 a ton, electricity from coal costs about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, before installing pollution controls. But India and China built their economic plans on 4 cents-a-kilowatt-hour power, presuming that cheap Indonesian coal would keep the price down.

Indonesia is no longer willing to be the low-cost provider; it sees China and India using imported coal to fuel industrialization and economic development, and would rather see that development taking place at home. So the island nation announced that it will impose a tax on coal exports, leading to an actual ban in 2014. If Indonesia follows through, it would pull about 320 million tons -- roughly 40 percent of the Asian coal transported by sea -- off the market, creating a power crisis for China and India (and other importers, such as Japan and Korea) that would make the shortfalls of 2011 seem minor. Even if Indonesia merely insists on keeping prices at more than $100 a ton, the cost of electricity in China’s and India’s booming, but still fundamentally poor, economies will double.

Transportation Fuel
Oil, clearly, is already too expensive to power Asia’s growing electricity demand. The price of liquefied natural gas, which most Asian nations import, is linked to oil. India and China are now aggressively seeking their own versions of the shale-gas boom occurring in the U.S. But even if they manage to increase domestic supplies, they would be shrewd to convert natural gas to a transportation fuel rather than devoting it to electrical generation.

Because as the cost of high-carbon electricity soars, the cost of low-carbon alternatives is plummeting.

China’s wind industry is eager to provide power at prices ranging from 7 cents a kilowatt-hour to 13 cents, and India’s latest solar projects are bid at 15 cents. Costs of wind and solar continue to decline. The conventional wisdom is that, because wind and solar are intermittent sources, they can’t be used to power an entire economy. It’s true that it will take some time before renewables can compete with the $40-a-ton coal that Asia had been counting on. But as challenging as the low- carbon path to growth may be, coal markets are telling Asia it has no choice. High-carbon growth not only would cook the climate. It would also derail Asia’s economies.

(Carl Pope is a former chairman of the Sierra Club. The opinions expressed are his own.)

vina wrote: However, WHAT Carl Pope leaves OUT is the Elephant in the room, Nuclear.

vina wrote: Now you know why Manmohan Singh's 123 agreement and the importance it, and his determination to see it through, going to the extent of even putting his govt on line.

arnab wrote:Hmm, the 'untested' nuclear power plant (Westinghouse AP1000) is going to come up in Gujarat (as per agreement with NPCIL). How come NaMo isn't protesting? Perhaps because he is a true bharat rakshak unlike Mamata Banerjee

vishvak wrote:

arnab wrote:Hmm, the 'untested' nuclear power plant (Westinghouse AP1000) is going to come up in Gujarat (as per agreement with NPCIL). How come NaMo isn't protesting? Perhaps because he is a true bharat rakshak unlike Mamata Banerjee

So now it comes to NaMo to protest when the hardware is 'international western'?

vic wrote:Most of India's Mega thermal power projects have collapsed and atleast TATAs and Reliance have sued the Govt. Hence that coal babay is dead

arnab wrote:Hmm, the 'untested' nuclear power plant (Westinghouse AP1000) is going to come up in Gujarat (as per agreement with NPCIL). How come NaMo isn't protesting? Perhaps because he is a true bharat rakshak unlike Mamata Banerjee

Neela wrote: Hmm the 'untested' nuclear power plant (Westinghouse AP1000) is alreadying coming up in 7 locations in the US