India’s murky nuclear power quest

Financial Chronicle, 7 September 2011

The latest India-related WikiLeaks di­sclosures, based on cables detailing co­nversations bet­w­een United States diplomats and Indian politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats and journalists, show many of the latter in remarkably poor light. Our top officials and policymakers think nothing of disclosing privileged information, such as policy briefs given to them by the prime minister, classified data on India’s military activities, or assessments of their own colleagues.

The portions of the cables, published in the media so far, are replete with what would be regarded in most countries as information that’s too sensitive to be shared even with friendliest of foreign governments, leave alone that of the US, a state with imperial ambitions, with which many nations, including India, have had a less-than-smooth relationship. The Indian elite comes through as if, it were only too eager to please the Americans and stress common approaches with them — no matter what the official position. Why else would they rat on their colleagues or disclose their leaders’ “penchant for corruption†?

Within the Indian bureaucracy, the group, which em­erges as most prone to making leaks and the worst in irresponsible conduct, is the leaders of the science and technology departments, such as the department of atomic energy (DAE) and Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

These are precisely the departments that desperately seek countless exemptions from RTI and other information-disclosure obligations on the ground that they are engaged in sensitive and “strategically important activities†. The DAE continues to be shielded by the Atomic Energy Act 1962, which allows it to withhold even from parliament any information it chooses to hide. It has abused this privilege to suppress information about the production of civilian materials like heavy water — only to avoid disclosures of its embarrassingly poor performance.

Consider the conduct of former DAE secretary Anil Kakodkar, one of the key negotiators of the US-India nuclear deal. At a meeting with US nuclear industry executives in Mumbai in March 2007, Kakodkar told General Electric and Westinghouse representatives that “there was room for everybody†in India’s soon-to-be-ma­ssi­v­ely-expanded civilian nuclear programme, suggesting that they would be given a site in one of India’s many planned “nuclear parks†. He also revealed that the Jaitapur “park†in Maharashtra would go to the French company Areva.

This contradicted the official stand till then, namely, “no decision has been taken†on awarding nuclear reactor contracts.

In November 2008, Kakodkar told a US delegation that Nuclear Power Corporation of India, a DAE subsidiary, “pl­anned to seek joint ventures with private firms in the nuclear power generating and management sector, possibly including foreign firms†. This policy decision was then classified and not public.

DAE officials also opened the doors to classified nuclear facilities for visiting US officials. For instance, former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Dale Klein and his delegation were given a conducted tour that same month of several reactors and a “secret†waste-based plant at Trombay. The diplomatic cable called it “ unprecedented official access†.

No less embarrassing are the observations in the cables about Kakodkar’s successor, the even less distinguished Sr­ikumar Banerjee, whom diplomats from the US consulate in Mumbai found “pedantic and impatient†, but positively inclined towards Washington of course.

“For example, Banerjee p­ersistently interrupted his fellow scientists, either correcting them, urging them to sp­eed up the process or altogether taking over the presentation made before a visiting delegation from the US,†re­ads the cable.

The cable also refers to the comment of a retired DAE official, Ramesh Deshpande, that Banerjee may not have been the right candidate to replace Kakodkar. Deshpande expr­essed scepticism about Banerjee’s ability to effectively succeed Kakodkar as the head of India’s nuclear energy programme. “According to Deshpande, Banerjee is more of a metallurgist than a nuclear scientist. He said Kakodkar was a workaholic and a micro-manager with a penchant for details who scrutinised every document that passed through his hands,†says the cable.

According to the cable, “Deshpande claimed that the Indian government was not able to find a suitable successor to Kakodkar due to a lack of candidates of Kakodkar’s calibre and experience…â€

The quality of Kakodkar’s “calibre†is unknown to the public. What the public does know is that the DAE has long been one of the worst-run departments of the government, with exorbitant costs and an appalling safety record. It has missed every single target in the fanciful and over-ambitious plans for nuclear power that it itself formulated since founder Homi Bhabha’s time.

A 1962 plan by Bhabha projected 20,000 mw in nuclear generation capacity by 1987. The achievement that year, based mainly on imported reactors, was a miniscule 512 mw. Similarly, for 2000, a target of 43,500 mw was set — soon arbitrarily lowered to 10,000 mw. The 2000 achievement was only 2,720 mw. Missing the 10,000 mw target did not discourage the DAE from doubling that number to 20,000 mw for 2020. Today, India’s cumulative achievement is less than 5,000 mw.

After Fukushima, it’s natural and pertinent to ask if nuclear power has a future anywhere, including India. But whatever the future or present, Banerjee will surely find a place in the past for declaring on April 14 that the unfolding multi-reactor Fuk­ushima me­ltdown was “purely a chemical reaction†, not a nuclear emergency.

(The author [Praful Bidwai] writes on environment and development issues)