A hefty dose of claptrap

UCIL officials decided to call the bluff of the few local politicians making the charges and have declared their operations open to scrutiny. A team of doctors and scientists specialising in the health effects of radiation from prestigious hospitals, including the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre BARC hospital, Mumbai, and the Tata Main Hospital, Jamshedpur, hassince conducted an exhaustive medical survey in the villages around Jaduguda and given the operations a clean bill of health.

One surprising fact emerged from the health surveys conducted in Jaduguda. While the Indian Council of Medical Research ICMR has estimated the national average incidence of cancer to be 74 per one lakh population, in Jaduguda the incidence is only 22.

The conclusions drawn by the team after their detailed medical survey of the UCIL8217;s tailings pond8217; was unambiguous: there was no radiation even metres away from the waste disposal site in excess of levels permitted by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board AERB. The doctors examined children from the area around the mines, made house visits, reviewed and verified monitoring levels and collected blood samples which were sent to BARC, Mumbai, for analysis.

As can be expected in an area as backward as this, chronic malarial infections combined with malnutrition, poor hygiene and lack of clean drinking water lower the health profile.In their report, the team concluded that it was quot;convinced and unanimously agreed that the disease pattern cannot be ascribed to radiation exposure in any of these cases.quot;

The initial news report of a radiation threat at Jaduguda was carried in a local weekly. It alleged that the incidence of cancer and birth deformities was exceptionally high around Jaduguda as a result of uranium mining and careless waste disposal. The story, expectedly, was picked up by the foreign media. So how, and perhaps more importantly why, did these reports of radiation-induced abnormalities get play in the newspapers without their veracity being checked out?

The leading political activist, who claims to be taking up the cause of the local tribals and does not deny his political ambitions, is unable to substantiate his charges.

According to Department of Atomic Energy DAE officials there is a pattern and a purpose to the attacks on UCIL: its uranium mining operations at Jaduguda are the foundation of India8217;s nuclearprogramme.

The ore is mined at a depth of nearly 640 metres. From rough-hewn rocks, uranium is extracted at the Jaduguda mill by a hydrometallurgical process. After three stages of crushing and two of wet-grinding, it is leached out of a slurry as a concentrate of magnesium diuranate, better known as yellow cake8217;. This is filtered, thickened, dried and packed into drums and transported to the Nuclear Fuel Complex at Hyderabad, where it is processed.

Since the ore is low-grade, milling operations result in 99.9 per cent waste. This tailing8217; contains bulk decay products of uranium which are radioactive.

The tailings are neutralised and dealt with in two ways. The more coarse particles are used to refill old, exploited mines. Finer slurry is pumped into an impoundment system known as a tailing pond8217;. The water that decants off is treated at an effluent treatment plant and recycled for use in the milling operations. The remaining sludge in the ponds is treated with lime and barium chloride to removeradium and manganese by precipitation.

Dense vegetation covers the tailing ponds at Chatikocha to contain the dispersal of airborne dust. After showing a group of journalists the radiation levels at the pond A.H. Khan, who heads the BARC Health Physics Unit at Jaduguda, said there was constant surveillance of environmental release both into the atmosphere and the aquatic system around UCIL.

Apart from regular collection and testing of groundwater, soil, grass, algae and fish samples to check for signs of gamma radiation, a network of thermoluminescent dosimeters TLDs have been placed in a 25-kilometre radius to evaluate natural background gamma radiation, says Khan. The rehabilitation package worked out for acquiring the land where the tailing ponds have come up included compensation for land and housing, alternative land sites with tubewells and handpumps and employment for one member of each family that was relocated.

According to UCIL Chairman and Managing Director J.L. Bhasin, the rehabilitationpackage itself may have a bearing on the problem. Every local politician had his own list of candidates for employment in place of the actual oustees. With the minimum packet for even mill hands averaging about Rs 5,000 a month, any job in the Jaduguda mines becomes a contentious issue, especially as the UCIL management has been insisting that the oustees have to be rehabilitated first.

The tension between the political mafia and the UCIL management has acquired another twist with the radiation scare. The DAE8217;s safety regulations are so stringent that engineers and scientists at Jaduguda feel these accusations are motivated. They see in the campaign yet another attempt to hit out at the Indian nuclear programme.

India has set an ambitious target of increasing nuclear power generation from the current level of around 1,840 MW to 20,000 MW by the year 2020. With the Tarapore experience still fresh in their minds, when the US halted supplies of enriched uranium soon after the 1974 Pokharan tests, the Indiannuclear establishment is convinced that it has to maintain the country8217;s nuclear autonomy.

The attack on UCIL, which was immediately picked up by the Western media, is obviously an attempt to strike at the root of the Indian nuclear programme. quot;Anyone who imagines that we can get away with slack management is mistaken. There are very strict regulatory norms that are monitored constantly by the AERB and have to be followed to the letter,quot; said Bhasin, a mining engineer who completes 33 years at the Jaduguda mines this year.

Part of the reason why India maintains such stringent regulations, pitched even higher than international standards, is because at no point does it want to be caught on the wrong foot. quot;We would prefer to err on the side of caution,quot; DAE scientists involved in safety surveillance often say. The limits prescribed by AERB are more stringent than those of the International Council for Radiological Protection ICRP.

Though the ore found at Jaduguda is of very low quality, the yield beingless than 0.06 per cent, the UCIL8217;s operations are strategically critical. It gives the Indian nuclear programme its fundamental autonomy at a time when the country8217;s nuclear programme is confronted with ever-tightening export control regimes.

The writer visited Jaduguda as a guest of the Department of Atomic Energy