Global Research

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is coming to India to discuss a ‘range of issues;’ the truth is that he is coming here as chief salesman of global nuclear industry, now collapsing under the collective onslaught of nuclear scientists, nuclear power plant engineers, physicists, investigative journalists and people.

Shinzo is known for many things: dogged attempts at reviving Japan’s nuclear industry, his alleged connections with Japan’s notorious mafia, Yamaguchi-gumi.

And now India has a rare chance to glimpse Manmohan Singh’s rare smile because he only smiles in the company of men like Shinzo, who was instrumental in the destabilization of Japan’s financial system. Recall the 1996 East Asian financial crisis, the European and London banksters acquired valuable national assets for a cent to a dollar.

 State of Nuclear Power Industry

The world has 447 NPPs. As of now all of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants have been switched off. These reactors should not have been allowed in the first place purely on grounds of safety, but in the 1950s Japan was grappling with post-war reconstruction under the direct control of the Americans who rammed down the Japanese throats these mainly General Electric designed NPPs. Germany has decided to close all NPPs. The WASP countries and France are the rogues.

The former Chairman of US-Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] Gregory Jaczko says that the current fleet of operating plants in the US should be phased out because regulators can’t guarantee against an accident causing widespread land contamination and, further, that all American reactors need to be shut down right now. Bits and pieces of information emerging from plant operators strongly indicate that not one NPP is economically viable.

A vital Jaczko revelation was that “the biggest problem with the NRC continues to be the heavy influence that the industry has in selecting the members of the commission… there are few commissioners who ever get onto the commission who are not endorsed by the industry.” So, an extremely hazardous industry regulates itself and that’s been the feature of American industry which Manmohan Singh wants to imitate.

 Indeed, all nuclear regulatory agencies are entirely controlled by and serve the nuclear industry through, directly or indirectly, elected officials like the Prime Minister of India. These regulatory bodies have consigned science and common sense to the dust bin.

India has surpassed all the crooks. The entire nuclear racket operates under the Official Secrets Act.

What is wrong with Nuclear power plants?

One constantly hears many imbeciles, including senior journalists, talking somewhat like “we need electricity; we need nuclear power because it is cheap, clean and safe.”

These morons should ask themselves, “Is there anything right with the nuclear power?” Here are the reasons why all sane scientists and engineers want all NPPs shut down, and they are the ones who make and run NPPs, not the foolish journalists:

1.       The risks arising from severe accidents on the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima accidents that can happen in any NPP, anywhere, anytime. If it is not happening more frequently proves that God is in Heaven. 

2.       The insurance problem stems from the threat of an accident. The damage from severe accidents was assessed in Government funded CRAC-II report presented to the US Congress in 1982. The official assessment of damage was so horrific that no private insurance company would ever provide cover and, therefore, the nuclear industry continues to rely completely on government-provided insurance.

3.       The nuclear waste problem has not been solved so far in any country. This is a complex problem but again we see a lethal issue mired in the geo-politics of science. Late Dr Radha Roy did come up with a solution, for which he is remembered for his “ROY PROCESS”, but not one Government financed even one study to test his conceptual framework for turning highly radioactive waste into inert substance within a month.

4.       All reactors leak low level radiation. My friend Bob Nichols who has extensive experience in making nuclear bombs told me once that there is nary a design that can contain radiation leaks. In fact, he said that “all reactors leak radiation all the time, 24×7; they are designed to leak and low level contamination spreads to 250 kilometre radius.” The Narora NPP is exactly 93 kilometres east of Delhi, Mumbai has three reactors, Madras reactor is just south of Chennai and Kaiga is close to Goa. 250 kilometre radius is equal to an area of 196,250 square kilometres using the formula for calculating the area of a circle, which is p x (radius squared), with value of p taken as 3.14. Now, we have 9 nuclear power stations with 20 critical reactors. If we take the 250 kilometre circle, about 560 million people are getting a daily dosing of lethal radiation.

5.       And that’s why the fifth reason for NOT promoting NPPs is the significant long-term health and safety problems. Not one man, woman or child living within the primary contamination zone will complete his natural life. Nuclear reactors sterilize population and alter the normal genetic sequence to induce malignancies. Farmlands also absorb radionuclide and plant uptake of radionuclide is higher as compared to other minerals and that has been known to the US Government from studies carried out between 1951 and 1970. 

6.       The high financial risks of nuclear power and long-lead times and uncertainties are well established. Not one NPP has ever been completed on time, anywhere on the planet. In India, the poor taxpayers are paying for a highly risky technology for boiling water, on and on, just to support a bunch of nuclear baboons procreating on NPPs’ rooftops, without a care for their lives and that of their wives and children. Do we have data? These families are slowly dying and not even knowing why, but working for a corrupt military-industrial-financial-scientific-political complex that is beyond their grasp.

7.       The very definition of “clean energy from nukes” is bogus. From the time uranium is mined, enriched into yellow cakes to further enriching to fissile level itself is not only an energy-intensive process but extremely lethal as all reports from uranium mines around the world show. If “clean” means low carbon dioxide emission, that theory itself is fraudulent as has been proved time and again and IPCC itself has been discredited. Albert Gore is facing a court case for promoting his bogus global warming theory based on CO₂ emission.

8.       The typical water requirement of an NPP is huge and doesn’t matter whether it is closed loop or open. Even within closed loop pressurised leaks do happen and frequently, and then radioactive water is discharged into the lake, river or ocean. Narora NPP in Uttar Pradesh is situated on the bank of the Ganges. Would the Ministry of Health fund a research to determine radiation sickness among villagers from Narora downstream up to Varanasi? One study conducted around RAPs, the Rajasthan reactor, conclusively proved that proximate villages have high incidence of IMR, cancers, and other degenerative diseases. Has the Indian Government ever come out clean? 

9.       The capacity factor of the 20 operational reactors is 61.99%, lowest in the world and when I shared this data with a leading US scientist, he was shocked. The BARC scientists fobbed it off, saying India didn’t have enough fissile material because of a ban, but now we will achieve higher capacity factor!!! Which means we can’t run our reactors without US Government support. 

10.      At current extraction rate, Uranium sources will be exhausted in about 74 years. Nuclear reactors can’t be sustained beyond 30-40 years in India. Ten countries have 88% uranium reserve of which 89% is controlled by a dozen European Elite families, including the Queen of England. Manmohan Singh eulogized the British colonialists to secure a seat as India’s Prime Minister, but he is surpassing the scoundrel rulers who helped the British recapture India in 1857.

 Planning Commission’s Working Group on Energy Policy

So, we have at least ten reasons, well researched and documented in serious works of experts, for not opting for the nuclear option. Now, let us look at the Planning Commission’s “Working Group on Energy”, headed by perennial non-performer Kirit Parikh, who has friends in high places and squirms into any serious debate on any subject without any knowledge. So, let us examine the four voluminous reports he chaired on India’s energy policy, a nonsensical set of documents endorsed by former World Bank executive Montek Singh Ahluwalia, now the Deputy Chairperson of India’s Planning Commission.

 The reports examine coal, hydro and nuclear options as if the Working Group was told to examine coal, hydro and nuclear only. The justification used is that India has no option but coal, hydro and nuclear without examining other options. The report on renewable sources of energy does not mention geo-thermal and OTEC or even advanced solar. It talks condescendingly about alternative sources. And a princely sum of Rs 100 million, not even two million dollars, was allocated for the XIIth Plan for research which will last from 2012 to 2017.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had recommended around the same time that the US Government should invest US$ 500 million on Geo-thermal research to make Enhanced Geothermal Energy [EGS] commercially viable. There is a 200 Mega Watt geo-thermal plant located in a California car park, that people can’t even hear, that it is generating electricity for them. But in Planning Commission report, the experts perhaps could not even spell GEO-THERMAL.

The cross-over point, the economic generation cost from all sources of electricity where options really don’t matter, was reached in 2005, excluding nuclear and coal, which have huge environmental costs invariably externalised. Whether one generates electricity from solar, wind, hydro, OTEC, or Wave became comparable and, in fact, more competitive as compared to coal and nuclear if assessed objectively on globally agreed parameters. This issue was not even addressed in the Government of India’s Planning Commission reports.

China discontinued nuclear option immediately after the March 2011 Fukushima events. However, up until March 2013, it installed 19,000 MW of wind generation capacity. And here in India, despite Manmohan Singh’s promise of Kudankulam going critical, the engineers may have to open the skull to set the wires and valves right.

Back to Shinzo Abe’s Delhi visit

Shinzo’s Delhi visit is an extension of his 2007 secret deal with Dick Cheney in Tokyo where a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region was sealed with the US, Japan, Australia and India as partners to contain and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia. The nuclear mafia rules OK!

Notes:

1. Readers wishing to see the number of installed NPP around the world can see the map and list of countries, and pray for their irradiated souls:

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/CurrentReactors