Nuclear Not So New or Clear:

01 June/2011: In 2009 the UPA-1 government, in a very clear headed manner, had risked its existence just to pass the Nuclear Bill in Parliament. The voting for the Bill had created history in a sense that the prime Opposition party in the Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was morally supporting it but had to cast its votes in the ‘Noes’ countdown. Some prominent BJP Members of Parliament had brought bundles of high denomination currency notes into the House to expose the game of the Congress. The UPA leaders had tried to woo votes from all parties at a very high cost. They had garnered the support of the Samajvadi Party, among others, to help them out of the impasse. All this was necessitated when the Left parties cut their ties with the ruling coalition because they were opposed to the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty with the US of A.

The Left may have suffered a major setback now but their arguments against the Deal should not be ignored. The BJD had also opposed this Treaty on various counts. Although some Members tacitly supported it, one MP of the BJD had openly cast his vote in favor of the Nuclear Deal. It could certainly be said that this person had no concept of what he was doing and how his act of carelessness due to greed for money that was paid to him (a huge amount, it is reported) will affect all future generations of India.

There was a statement of the then Secretary of Energy of the US Federal administration saying that they had concrete plans to remove all and every radioactive solids and liquids from the US mainland by 2012. This statement of the US Secretary was posted on the website of the Department in sometime during March/April 2009 and it was meant for the whole world to see what the intention of that country was in relation to supplying of nuclear materials to other nations for ‘peaceful’ use. Anyone, who cared to find out, could have realized that the drama enacted before and after the Indo-US Nuclear deal clearly manifests only, repeat only, the one sided desire of the US which always keeps its own interest first and foremost. Fair enough. Any smart operator like that country should keep its national interest as a primary guiding factor for all negotiation purposes. The sad part is that why does this theorem not apply in the case of India. In our country, rhetoric and simply ignoring the voice of reason with a shrug has become the guiding factor for all matters that involve national interest. This sort of a behavior was well noticed when the BJP led NDA was ruling in people like Advani, Jaswant Singh, Pramod Mahajan and the likes. Now, in the Congress led UPA 1 & 2, similar egoistic and haughty attitude can be noticed plaguing people like Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and some others who are convinced they are, by birth, Mistra-Know-It-All. It is people like these named who were always in the vanguard of wrong doings such as the Nuclear deal, the sale of VSNL to Tata, the pact with terrorists to save a daughter at the cost of the nation, to mention only a few.

Capping most wrong doings is the Nuclear deal for sure.  Now, on hindsight, it seems even more logical. A look at how the Fukushima incident has damaged the Japanese and the image of Japan worldwide should be an eye opener for all those supporting the nuclear lobby. Especially in India. Now the big shocking news is that Germany, and for that matter most of Europe, plans to become totally nuclear free by 2022. They have, all of those countries, planned to start dismantling their reactors with immediate effect. The dateline is to be treated as the deadline for working out alternative sources of energy for that continent. As most would know, the per capita consumption of energy in Europe is so much higher than that in our country. And yet they have decided to quit the path of nuclear power simply because they understand the perils of that comfort.

The Nippon incident proves beyond a doubt the dangers of venturing into large scale nuclear energy. With a dedicated and well trained work force that only the Japanese could put together, all the king’s men could not put the Humpty Dumpty of Fukushima reactors back in shape. An explosion after explosions and radioactivity spreading even today, that nation has a lot to explain to the world, not only to its neighbors who could be directly affected by the accident but everybody else. Now imagine a similar scenario happening in India. First, we are not a careful people. An accident which could possibly make people radioactive would stop almost all workers in an Indian nuclear installation to stop going to work. Here it would not be necessary to have an earthquake resulting in a tsunami to create an incident. Human errors and casual attitudes would double up as natural calamities. Forget that the national security system would be completely clueless if a Headley type character walks around and, maybe, even enters an installation with a hope of having a blast there.

Admittedly, India is starved of energy. But so are we water starved (or parched). This country is starved of many other things and most of them are required for human survival. Who, than, is truly starved of energy? It is mostly, and no kidding, the rich industrialists who have the endless requirement for energy. Be it petroleum, electricity or gas, the need of that sector is unquenchable.  Comparatively, agriculture or domestic consumption of energy in India is extremely low. It must be accepted that for the development of the country, the industrial production sector must be encouraged. Still, there has to be a limit on the amount of risk that the establishment should take to satisfy the needs of any particular sector while endangering the whole country’s populace.

Let it not be vague or unclear. Today the whole world is moving away from nuclear energy and all that it stands for. Fukushima has enlightened and informed the global community of the unbalanced dangers of this particular source of energy. The negatives of nuclear energy far outweigh the positives. Therefore, before any further damage happens, let India stop all its Jaitapur type projects and commence investing, instead, on alternative sources of energy right now.