How safe are Indian Nuke Reactors

[Lord Nemesis]

Do you guy's know that almost every vitamin that we know about is is a poison and highly toxic to our body? Yet, these are also absolutely essential to the proper functioning of our body and people often take supplements if they are not getting enough of them through food. Too much of these will us, but so does too little.

Same goes for a majority of the medicines. They are highly toxic and many can kill you with even a minuscule overdose. Then there are also medicines that have side effects in certain scenarios/certain people. Does that mean we should ban medicines?

XRAY's are also very harmful to humans and so are the radio active materials that are used in the treatment of cancer. So should we ban them as well?

The same for goes Nuclear power. There is always the danger of radio active leaks and threat to human life, but it is also absolutely necessary to us as a developing nation with such a over bloated population. None of our conventional power generation methods methods can cope with the demand and nether are they entirely safe to the people or the planet in the long run. Of course care and responsibility needs to be exercised with Nuclear power as with any thing else, but saying that we should not have nuclear plants would be stupid in our current situation.

If anyone really feels that Nuclear Reactors should not be built in India, then you should start by getting electricity and water supply disconnected in your house. Give up your job if it requires you consume electricity, Build a cottage near a river, grow your own vegetables and live like a hermit. If you are not doing this, you are part of the reason why nuclear power is essential to our country.

 

[Mephistopheles]

There are other better environment friendly ways to generate electricity but what Lord nemesis said is absolutely right. Although there should be a balance, we shouldn't be overly dependent on nuclear reactors for our energy requirements. Our nation has a great potential to harness the abundant solar and wind energy but our reliance on it is very minuscule unfortunately.

 

[Arun1]

Indian Nuclear Power Plants: run on highly enriched PLUTONIUM, which is faar more radioactive and more difficult to contain in case of a very spontaneous chain reaction, the control rods in BARC, Trombay are atleast, atleast 52 years old, and there hasn't been a review of that so far, Incase trombay does blowup, you will have 3 or maybe even 4 times of what's happening in fukushima, those old Russian and Canadian reactors (now retired) and doing their time in BARC for studies, pose a bigger threat that the new ones.

This, if true, is a genuine reason for concern.However, instead of scare mongering against nuclear technology, we should be working on reviewing our current status and making upgrades to and if necessary decommission old plants and research centers.It is an unavoidable fact that nuclear power is hear to stay and that too for the long term,there are no other practical alternatives which can scale like our current sources of energy.

 

[l33t]

Nuclear Powerplants are ABSOLUTELY vital for the maintenance of continous power supply in India, in the coming years. We still dont have a credible source of alternative and clan energy, so if we dont build them right, we are going to have issues containing them, thats something the DAE should realize soon enough, and someone needs to shut Sunita Narain up, she's literally adding fuel to the already raging fire. Its like this, If we have Nuclear Powerplants, we run a risk of a catastrophe, if we dont then its still going to be a risky endeavour, since lignite reserves wont last for long in India, and we'll end up buying them from some other country at exorbitant prices. From what I know/studied, India has a rich reserve of monazite soil in the kerala coasts, rich in thorium, but the problem with that is that we still dont have very efficient ways of refining it, the whole story is shaky, to say the least...

The Irony is that we still dont have reactors which work on Thorium yet, but we have a lot of thorium in the country (deposits) still, we import uranium from canada/russia/australia/ukraine.

The other problem is that we even though we Import reactors from other countries, the Nuclear Energy Programme in India is shrouded behind an Iron curtain, which makes it even harder for others to help us.

Sad story

This, if true, is a genuine reason for concern.However, instead of scare mongering against nuclear technology, we should be working on reviewing our current status and making upgrades to and if necessary decommission old plants and research centers.It is an unavoidable fact that nuclear power is hear to stay and that too for the long term,there are no other practical alternatives which can scale like our current sources of energy.

BARC is a research centre, the control rods (which are now defunct- but still radioactive) are used for studies and research , India is yet to make a fully indigenous nuclear reactor, there 2 which we have built so far, 500MW the reactor itself is 85% sourced from other countries.

Nuclear power is here to stay, there are ways it can be made safe for generation, which is not happening.

 

[6pack]

Sorry to bump this up. Needed to add this:

There are no environmentally friendly ways to generate electricity in a large amount. Sure there is solar, wind etc but these are currently in nascent stage and need lots of space to generate a small amount of energy. Solar energy is not really environmentally friendly as made out to be since they use lead acid batteries to store electricity. Just imagine where the batteries will go when they fail.

Hydro electric Dams:

1. A huge area of land is which was above the river shoreline is submerged under water after the dam is built. The new submerged areas loose silt, etc and the trees die after some years due to too much water. Essentially acres and acres of land above the dam is turned to dead zone where hardly anything will grow.

2. Areas below the dam get less water than they got previously and many plants, and life revolving around those plants will die forever. The silt that used to get washed down the river will now get stuck near the dam and in few years the land below the dam will become barren. Many new dams which came up recently in past few years have a gate built in the lower portions of the dam so that when the silt builds up they can be washed away by the river. But the silt washed up is only a small portion (mostly less half of what gets deposited).

Source - Discovery channel. Saw a program on china's biggest dam - The Three Gorges dam.

Impact of dams - Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coal/ Thermal Power plants:

1. Their main source is coal or natural fuels like lpg, naptha etc which when burnt produce carbon, carbon dioxide, sulphur etc. These produce a lot of emissions in air and need a special filter to trap the noxious pollutants.

Read more here: Fossil fuel power station - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All this is just a play orchestrated by the political parties for some tv time. When it really matters, no one will be bothered if anyone dies or not in reality.

 

[Kaleen Bhaiya]

No one is against the nuclear energy. Even the people in Jaitapur want electrical energy for purposes. But trying to build a reactor on a land which is more sesmic prone is like asking for trouble. We already have live examples Chernobyl, Long Island and now Fukushima. The people oppose the construction because they have no faith in the govt. Why, beacause in the eventuality of such catastrophes, the govt. simply lifts its hands up, leaving the comman man to fight for himself. If the govt. explains to the ppl that so and so SPECIFIC measures would be taken and try to build the confidence of the people, I am sure people will understand. When people make genuine concerns, govt is supposed to answer it, not shoo them away.

There are reactors all over the world other than India. People there do not oppose or create problems leading to the project being scrapped. People there have faith in their govt. that in the eventuality of a catastrophe much less damage would be for them to suffer. A example from the chernobyl vs. fukushima where many ppl died in chernobyl as compared to no deaths in the latter because of good planning and foreseeing the effects of nuclear damage.

 

[iamnew]

Although nuclear energy is dangerous,there are no viable alternatives for our growing energy need.We must build nuclear plants with the greatest care and safety standards.One thing i am sure is that if the japs cant build it 100% safe,we dont stand a chance against 50feet tsunamis or 8.5 magnitude earthquakes.we can only hope those things does not happen here.

 

[6pack]

No one is against the nuclear energy. Even the people in Jaitapur want electrical energy for purposes. But trying to build a reactor on a land which is more sesmic prone is like asking for trouble. We already have live examples Chernobyl, Long Island and now Fukushima. The people oppose the construction because they have no faith in the govt. Why, beacause in the eventuality of such catastrophes, the govt. simply lifts its hands up, leaving the comman man to fight for himself. If the govt. explains to the ppl that so and so SPECIFIC measures would be taken and try to build the confidence of the people, I am sure people will understand. When people make genuine concerns, govt is supposed to answer it, not shoo them away.

There are reactors all over the world other than India. People there do not oppose or create problems leading to the project being scrapped. People there have faith in their govt. that in the eventuality of a catastrophe much less damage would be for them to suffer. A example from the chernobyl vs. fukushima where many ppl died in chernobyl as compared to no deaths in the latter because of good planning and foreseeing the effects of nuclear damage.

i'm guessing more people die in road and rail accidents a year than they would in a nuclear disaster. How many died in the Fukushima disaster? about a dozen or so? And in Three Mile Island?

Not to mention these plants were built in the 70's. The tech has gone through many changes and lots of new safeguards have been put in place now.

Seismic activity? Lets see at that angle. According to this wiki link - Jaitapur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The actual plant site is situated at Madban, a village besides Jaitapur.

Jaitapur is considered to be prone to seismic activity. According to a leading Daily it falls under the Zone 3 category. Data collected by the Geological Survey of India has suggested that there have been over 92 quakes in 20 years, the biggest of them being 6.2 on the Richter scale. Keeping this in view and the recent Fukushima I nuclear accidents in Japan, massive protests are being organized by the locals and the tribes in this area who do not trust the Indian Government of providing them with adequate safeguards and preserving the Biodiversity of the region.[4]

So what is a Zone 3 level? - Earthquake hazard zoning of India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Indian subcontinent has a history of devastating earthquakes. The major reason for the high frequency and intensity of the earthquakes is that India is driving into Asia at a rate of appromately 47 mm/year[1]. Geographical statistics of India show that almost 54% of the land is vulnerable to earthquakes. The latest version of seismic zoning map of India given in the earthquake resistant design code of India [IS 1893 (Part 1) 2002] assigns four levels of seismicity for India in terms of zone factors. In other words, the earthquake zoning map of India divides India into 4 seismic zones (Zone 2, 3, 4 and 5) unlike its previous version which consisted of five or six zones for the country. According to the present zoning map, Zone 5 expects the highest level of seismicity whereas Zone 2 is associated with the lowest level of seismicity. The latest seismic zoning map can be accessed from The India Meteorological Department website

so should no nuclear plants be built?

 

[axis]

@6pack link on earthquake harard zoning is good. The Jaitapur protests are just pure politics. A couple of years back the opposition successfully protested the constructuction of a coal fired power plant near Pen(approx 100-120KM from Mumbai). Everybody wants electricity, they just dont want to pay for it and dont want the power plants in their vicinity.