Mumbai

In order to slake its thirst for energy, India is building the world’s largest nuclear power plant in Jaitapur.

The news magazine India Today put the subject on its cover last week. “Is India a Nuclear Time Bomb?” asks writer Sandeep Unnithan and unveils a scenario that a disaster like the one in Japan could also occur in India. Although nuclear power is the subject of headlines and TV debates in Mumbai, there is no apparent change of direction in India’s nuclear policy. Greenpeace India questions the government’s stance that says the power plants are one hundred percent safe.

India needs a great deal of energy to satisfy its desire to be a major power. Already, the state is unable to cover its power requirement; the huge nation is growing and growing. The same applies to India’s nuclear power industry. “At present, nuclear power only makes up four percent of our energy requirement,” explains Karuna Raina, the energy campaigner of Greenpeace India, “the aim for 2020 is 25 percent.” There are 20 nuclear power plants in the country, four more will be completed by 2013 and six nuclear power plants are in the planning stages. Presently, a nuclear power plant is being constructed in Jaitapur, about 300 kilometres south of Mumbai, which will be the largest in the world, with a capacity of 9,900 megawatts.

Now, however, it is being reconsidered, at least in theory. Heated TV debates demand that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh take a different course and Germany is repeatedly used as an example. Singh says that although there is a need to learn from the experiences in Japan, he does not intend to deviate from his nuclear course. At least Singh has ordered that the country’s 20 nuclear power plants be reviewed. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh says that the project in Jaitapur needs to be reassessed. Yet, such statements must be taken with a pinch of salt. “I don’t think we need to press the rewind button,” says Ramesh, “but also not fast forward.”

Ultimately, a lot of money is at stake. The power plant technologies come from Russia, France and the United States. India wants to spend more than 175 billion dollars on them. France is involved in the plant at Jaitapur. The French president himself travelled to Delhi in 2010 to sign the contracts for its construction.

The Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan, recently spoke out again in favour of the controversial project. He emphasized that the nation’s natural energy resources will be depleted in three or four decades. The nuclear power plant in Jaitapur is absolutely safe, Chavan declared at a press conference in Mumbai.

Environmental activists and experts, however, say that Jaitapur is located in an earthquake region with high seismic activity. According to India Today an earthquake measuring magnitude 5 on the Richter scale was measured very close by in 2008. Scientist and nuclear power opponent Pradeep Indulkar considers this one of the dangers. “In a seismic zone, the magnitude either remains the same or increases,” Indulkar told India Today.

At a press conference in Mumbai Karuna Raina, the nuclear energy campaigner for Greenpeace India, said that the government’s data is false. “The proponents of the project claim that Jaitapur is located in zone 3,” said Raina, “but India’s Geological Institute ascertained that Jaitapur is situated in seismic zone 4; the highest is zone 5.” Raina also accuses the government of not even taking natural disasters such as tsunamis into consideration in the planning of the nuclear power plant. “Although Jaitapur is situated directly on the coast,” said Raina.

Vaishali Patil from Mumbai is one of the most ambitious activists against the project. “The government says that it has examined everything, but this is not true,” Patil told our newspaper and referred to the Oceanographic Institute in Goa, which is dubious about the environmental impact assessment for the project. Mangrove forests and mango plantations near to Jaitapur will have to make way for its construction. Farmers will lose their fields and fishers are being resettled.

Scattered protests are being held in Mumbai and its surroundings yet they do not come close to the thousands of protesters or human chains seen in Germany. Last week, only 500 people attended a demonstration, a tiny number considering the size of the population of over one billion. So far, 60,000 people have signed an online petition against nuclear power initiated by Greenpeace India. The revolution will have to wait.