Nuclear safety : Analysis

Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) in Ukraine, The Three Mile Island accident (1979) in US and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (2011) in Japan vividly highlight the perils involved in the attempts to tame the giant called the nuclear energy. These incidents make it imperative to ensure that safety standards are strictly adhered to while dealing with radioactive materials.

In this light, India’s abysmal rank of 28 among the 32 countries in NIT's Nuclear Materials Security Index – the first of its kind that assesses nuclear security conditions worldwide – raises serious concerns. Moreover, India’s score of 43 on societal factors is even below that of North Korea. It may look to be prejudiced to rank India at such a low level, especially when India has scored well in keeping international commitments, on-site physical protection and accounting procedures.

Many people may argue against the merits of including societal factors like political instability and corruption in the composition of the index, but lack of an institutionally independent agency in India makes it even more reasonable to include the criteria. Moreover, several studies have underlined the high correlation between corruption and public policy shortcomings. This also explains India’s low score on domestic commitments and regulations.

Among others, one of the main factors in ensuring nuclear safety is proper handling of nuclear and radioactive waste. However, domestic legislation and mechanisms prevalent in India in this aspect do not augur well with international standards and practices. As a matter of fact, controlling radioactive materials come under the purview of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) but surprisingly, AERB has no mechanism in place to keep a watch on the radioactive material users and the handling of such materials.

There is no monitoring as such at the state level for handling radioactive waste. In fact, radioactive waste is not even mentioned in any of the ministry’s rules related to e-waste disposal! In one such instance, radioactive material (Cobalt-60) was found with a scrap dealer in Delhi’s Mayapuri market last year. In another example, a couple of years back, military shells, hidden in a container of scrap metal, made way to Ghaziabad from Iran. These cases showcase how lack of direct control makes India vulnerable to such threats.

On the other hand, the US stores all the nuclear and radioactive waste as used fuels at the reactor sites to dispose it later in their underground repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In Europe the waste is sent for reprocessing either to Sellafield in UK or La Hague in France. Sweden, too, has a centralised used fuel storage which stores such radioactive substance to be geologically disposed later. Moreover, in developed nations, scrap dealers are equipped with gamma zone scanners to scan scraps for radioactive materials. At present, India neither has any such facility in place nor has enough manpower to deal with it.

The government must put in place a mechanism to watch the movement of radioactive materials. Besides, coordination among various government agencies dealing with e-waste at the municipal, state and the central level and AERB dealing with disposal of radioactive substances is a must.