Every country needs a Kudankulam

Watching hundreds of protesters braving the sea at Kudankulam battling a tough-minded Tamil Nadu administration, it might seem that India is ploughing a lonely furrow, pushing for nuclear energy when the world is seemingly turning away from it.

After Japan’s Fukushima disaster in March 2011, when a tsunami led to a power failure leading to a failure of the cooling system and a meltdown in the nuclear reactor, a resultant tsunami of public opinion blew away a burgeoning nuclear renaissance.

Germany, anyway ambivalent about nuclear power, moved swiftly to cut out nuclear power from their energy mix. Norbert Rottgen, environment minister, announced Germany would shut down all its nuclear plants by 2022. Eight reactors were immediately put out of work. Germany decided to go for off-shore wind farms, coal power plants but with carbon sequestration technology, and solar energy. All very green-sounding stuff.

An irate Japan, reeling from the effects of the tsunami and the radiation disaster at once trained their ire on nuclear power. Last week, the Japanese government announced they would back away from nuclear power, ending its use by 2040. In the months after Fukushima, japan shut down all its nuclear reactors for safety checks.

France, that strong proponent of nuclear power too buckled. Last week, Francois Hollande declared that France would go down from a 78 per cent dependency on nuclear power to 50 per cent.

The last word apparently belonged to Jeff Immelt, the chief of GE. In an interview to FT, one of the world's largest makers of nuclear equipment said, "It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule."

India was looking at a nuclear renaissance of its own after a US-India nuclear deal in 2008 opened the door to internal cooperation in setting up nuclear plants in India. India’s nuclear power plants, mostly set up during the sanctions years provide only 3 per cent of the energy mix. But the first two plants at Kudankulam being set up with Russian assistance, ran into popular protests, with the local population raising questions of safety. Should India go down the Japanese route?

Hold your horses. Lets look at the world more carefully.

Can Japan really turn off its nuclear power? Japan got around 30 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power before Fukushima, and was planning to raise that to 50 per cent. Now Japan, a resource-poor nation will be importing 96 per cent of its energy from overseas, mainly fossil fuels. This is expensive, not to speak of ruining all environmental standards. With its economy in chronic shortage, will Japan survive raising the costs of manufacturing and recovery to such an extent? Secondly, almost all of Japan’s oil and gas is sourced from the Middle East, and all of those super tankers traverse difficult waters of Straits of Hormuz, South and East China Seas. Japan-China tensions are now reaching shrill notes. Why would Japan want to hand over its energy security keys to China which could block access? Less appreciated too is the fact that Japan’s nuclear deterrent would take a heavy beating if it turns away from nuclear power. Japan is not an overt nuclear weapons state, but its famously known as being a screwdriver’s turn away from being one. It could become a costly security mistake.

Germany’s alternatives are little better. Moving to fossil fuels will hit at the heart of the green movement which wants Germany to slash its carbon emissions by 2020 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels. Germany already leads the pack in solar panels and wind turbines. But wind turbines are no favourite of wildlife conservationists, they want turbines offshore, which makes them expensive. Back of the envelope calculations say you need 2000 giant turbines, covering over 350 square miles to generate equivalent power as an 1154 MW nuclear reactor.

When you get past the romance of solar and wind, two obvious things strike you __ a nuclear power plant can give you steady, uninterrupted, predictable power. Guess what __ the sun isn’t shining all the time and neither is the wind blowing at optimum generating speeds. Besides both solar and wind power are great for domestic use, but not industrial use.

On the cost front, the cost of a nuclear power plant incorporates the cost of waste and decommissioning. Not fossil fuels, where the cost in terms of human and environmental damage is incalculable. Both solar and wind energy are currently subsidised, not nuclear. Given this, nuclear, even with the costs of liability, gestation and safety, works out cheaper. Nuclear's greatest costs are in the construction stage. Comparing an operational nuclear power plant with a fossil fuel one

In India, where coal mining is dirty business, land acquisition is a problem, imported energy is hopelessly expensive and uncertain, we should definitely not turn our back on nuclear power. Yes there are costs, and risks, but so is fracking for shale gas, tar sands, heck even oil and natural gas. India has abundant sun and wind to be tapped for energy, which we should, with a vengeance. Diversification is the game here, over dependence causes vulnerabilities.

So are the Kudankulam protesters wrong? No, but we must be clear that the concerns are about safety not nuclear power. It is correct for citizens to grill the atomic energy establishment on safety. India’s DAE and AERB have enjoyed too many years hiding under a rock. They need to be up to speed on safety measures and develop more transparent methods of informing the population. Last week, the DAE succumbed, and promised to ask IAEA to review its nuclear regulatory process which has come under severe criticism. DAE needs to get off its "we-know-best" high horse, so yes the demonstrations are useful. we need both the power plant and the protests for us to evolve the more diversified energy mix, but to keep safety issues paramount.

And thankfully, in many parts of the world, there are more sensible countries around. The UAE plans to build four nuclear power plants of a total 5600 MW at $20 billion, the first of which will roll out in 2017. South Korea won that contract from under the noses of the market leaders, France. Turkey is building its first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu with Russian help in another $20 billion deal. The UK is getting the French to build its next nuclear power plant, albeit under popular protest.

Its time to think beyond a disaster.

(Published in Sunday ET Magazine, September 22, 2012)