Future wastelands

In the UK, the National Audit Office (NAO) went into the cost factor of the legacy of nuclear power and estimated, in 1993, that the cost of reprocessing the sp-ent fuel and shutting down the nuclear power plants could be as high as Å“40billion. This forced the government to review and downsize the future plans to do away with nuclear power and invest in alternative sources of energy.

The Indian nucleocrats have not yet told us that the `perpetual care cost’ of the rubble from the nuclear power plants containing radioactive nickel — which may remain hazardous for about 1.5 million years — would quadruple the decommissioning cost. This happens because, unlike most industrial facilities, nuclear power plants do not just suffer wear and tear.

A nuclear reactor is worn out by constant and irreversible bombardment of atomic radiation that is a byproduct of the immense heat created in a controlled atomic reaction. Of the heat that produces the steam that drives the turbines that turn the generators that produce electricity. About 500 kg of radioactive sludge is taken out every half-life (15 years) of the plant’s pipes by means of a very complicated evaporation process.

In addition to this sludge in the pipes, there is radiation that passesthrough the cooling water and pipes hitting the steel sheets, about one foot thick, of the conta-inment vessel. In the steel sheets, the atoms of iron, nickel, chrome, and so on, become radioactive. Iron, when radioactive, loses half of its lethality in 2.6 years, half of what is left in the next 2.6 years, so on and so forth. Therefore, if iron could be stored safely for a few years, it beco-mes quite harmless.

The radioactivity of nickel, however, remains at dangerously high levels for 92 years. The metal remains hot for 80,000 years. Even the steel-sheathed concrete of the shell for the steel vessel starts absorbing radioactivity and in ab-out 30 years becomes so soaked with radiation that it must be compl-etely isolated to avoid human contact. The pr-oblem of disposing of to-ns of waste (the entire nuclear power plant along with its structure) will be a nightmare for the future generations to live through.

For an idea about the size of the problem, the reactor at Three Mile Island was 41 feet tall and16 feet in diameter and weighed 400 tons. It was housed in a steel-clad containment building with four-foot-thick concrete walls. That building was 190 feet high and 140 feet in diameter — the size of a 14-storey apartment building. One wonders how our fragile economy will be able to bear the financial shock of decommissioning power plants bigger than the TMI plant?

In the plush offices of nucleocrats, away from the regimen of life in Rajasthan, four methods are under consideration. The first, apparently the safest but the most expensive, involves dismantling of the entire reactor. The parts will be then transported to the burial site in Rajasthan, buried in the ground, and then theoretically forgotten for ever. Only theoretically since all experience with toxic waste burial grounds so far shows that unexpected leaks are more the rule than the exception. Such leaks have a very high probability of contaminating ground water which will flow in the municipal taps, perhaps miles away from the burial site.

Asecond way of shelving the reactors is simply to build a new, massive, sealed structure of steel and concrete around each one after first removing any easily detached wastes such as fuel rods and cooling liquids. This will also make it theft-proof but, if an earthquake or any other unforeseen accident causes a leak in the entombed reactor, the result could be swiftly and simply devastating.

A third method of putting the reactor out of commission is to just `mothball’ it. This means that the fuel and waste are removed and the reactor is simply fenced off, constantly guarded for centuries to come that it will take to cool down to a safe level of radiation. The possibility of a terrorist attack or sabotage resulting in hot debris being scattered all over is there, but then this is the cheapest method.

There is a school of thought that a combination of all these methods ought to be employed, in which the reactor is either entombed or mothballed for a century and then dismantled. The idea is that a century ofsitting would cool it down enough to make taking it apart cheaper and safer. But this presents all the perils of other four methods. The truth of the matter is that nobody in the whole world really knows what is or is not believable. What is known is that the nucleocrats’ hope of finding a solution to the waste disposal problem before the first reactor became due for decommissioning has been belied.

There is only one way to test the intellectual honesty of Indian nucleocrats who talk of burying the nuclear waste in Ra-jasthan. They must be asked why a nuclear waste dump exploded in Russia in the sixties. What advances in technology of toxic waste disposal have been mastered to avoid a similar accident in Rajasthan? As is their wont, all Indian nucleocrats will take a deep puff on their cigars and say that, since the nuclear secrets cannot be discussed in public, they can only reassure the country that all precautions have been taken to assure the safety of the nuclear waste graveyards in Rajasthan.

It isonly then that the Chief Minister of Rajasthan responsible for the health and safety of the people of his state ought to request the nucleocrats to recommend to the government in New Delhi to allow Rajasthan to import toxic and nuclear waste from foreign countries for permanent burial in Rajasthan as a means of earning foreign exchange. The reaction to his request will tell all.

The writer, formerly in the Indian Navy, specialises in nuclear waste management