Op-ed: Compounding mistakes

M V Ramana

The poor economics of nuclear power is more relevant in poor countries like India and Pakistan. The larger population densities and the poorer medical infrastructure in South Asia imply that the damage to public health and the environment from an accident at a nuclear reactor would be intensified

Last month, during Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali’s visit to China, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed under which the Chinese government is to help Pakistan build a second nuclear reactor at Chashma. The first reactor at Chashma, which became critical in May 2000, was built by the China National Nuclear Corporation according to a deal signed in December 1991. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) has also announced plans to build another reactor near Karachi.

This decision to build nuclear reactors and expand the role of nuclear energy is injudicious. It comes at a time when much of the world is forsaking nuclear energy for cheaper and cleaner sources. In an earlier column (Phasing out nuclear power in Europe, Daily Times, January 30, 2003), I described how most of Europe is abandoning nuclear power. No new nuclear reactors have been commissioned in the US for two decades or more. These decisions are primarily due to the uneconomical nature of nuclear energy, the risk of serious accidents that could cause large-scale radioactive contamination, and the unsolved problem of dealing with the massive amounts of radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactors.

But Pakistani decision-makers appear not to have learnt any lessons from this historical trend. Neither for that matter have Indian decision makers, who have also been pursuing a large-scale nuclear power programme. The negative aspects of nuclear power in the case of Western countries are much more applicable to South Asia. The poor economics of nuclear power, for example, results from the capital-intensive nature of the technology, a factor that is much more relevant in poor, capital-starved countries like India and Pakistan. Likewise, the larger population densities and the poorer medical infrastructure in South Asia imply that the damage to public health and the environment that would result from an accident at a nuclear reactor would be intensified.

In their December 1999 study “Pakistan’s Chashma Nuclear Power Plant: A Preliminary Study of Some Safety Issues and Estimates of the Consequences of a Severe Accident” (available on the internet at http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/index.shtml), physicists Zia Mian and A. H. Nayyar have carefully explored the last factor in the case of a hypothetical accident at Chashma. They estimate that in the event of a severe accident that involves the release of a significant fraction of the reactor’s radioactive core, the resultant radiation doses could cause some 12,000-23,000 cancer deaths, and perhaps three times as many cancer cases. There could be over 8,000 children who die from thyroid cancer. These numbers reflect the fact that due to the rapidly increasing population in Pakistan, over 50 per cent of all people are under the age of 19 and over 30 per cent are under the age of 10. This population distribution is significant because the health impact from exposure to radioactivity is typically more intense in the case of children.

All of this is within 300 km of the site of the accident. The radioactivity could easily spread to greater distances causing even more death and destruction. Mian and Nayyar also estimate that radioactive contamination of the ground would make it necessary to evacuate the population out to a distance of about 70 km from the reactor for a limited period, and perhaps permanently displace people living within about 30 km.

Mian and Nayyar highlight three factors that may trigger potential accidents at Chashma specifically. The first is that the reactor is situated in an active earthquake zone. According to international records, between 1973 and 1999, there were 24 earthquakes with an epicentre within 100 km of the reactor site, and five earthquakes within 40 km. There would have been many smaller ones as well. Some of these could trigger an accident at the reactor.

Further, because the reactor is located on the banks of the Indus with a high water table, the ground may be susceptible to liquefaction, a phenomenon where, in response to an earthquake, the ground loses its strength and flows as if it was liquid. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission has not demonstrated that it has adequately taken these concerns into consideration while designing the reactor.

The second major area of concern that Mian and Nayyar identify is the safety of the Chashma reactor design. Chashma was originally designed by the China National Nuclear Corporation to be a replica of China’s first indigenous reactor, Qinshan-1. However, a review by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) led to “numerous design changes”. Even after that review by PAEC, in September 1993 a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reviewed the Chashma design and “made several recommendations for further improvements”. In other words, PAEC’s earlier evaluation had missed out on these areas requiring improvements.

The relative inexperience of Chinese nuclear designers and consequent lack of reliability of their nuclear plants was underscored by the July 1998 accident at the Qinshan-1 nuclear power plant, which resulted because some components were improperly designed and did not have adequate strength to withstand routine operations. Further, Chinese nuclear operators and designers could not fix these problems and had to turn to an American company — Westinghouse — for help.

The final reason for concern that Mian and Nayyar mention is the lack of independent oversight of the design or construction of the nuclear plant at Chashma. The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Board is the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the budget for the regulatory board comes from PAEC.

All of these concerns, in particular the poor choice of location of the reactor, affect the proposed second reactor at Chashma as well. Having more than one reactor at a single site only increases the magnitude of the damage to public health and the environment should there be accidents at both reactors — a likely possibility if the trigger were, say, an earthquake that would affect both. Thus, the decision to build a second reactor at Chashma only compounds the mistake of commissioning the first one. The time to abandon that project, as well as the pursuit of nuclear energy, is now.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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