NUCLEAR POWER AT WHAT COST?????

With the never ending quest for more and more comforts for man, the energy requirements of our globe are growing up rather fast. The advances in science and technology have on one hand given us access to comforts and luxuries of life. At the same time it has given mankind the much needed insight into the various cycles of nature that maintain the balance so very essential for the very existence of life.

Rapid industrialization and inventions of motorized means of transport have revolutionized our lives. All this more or less through intensive use of fossil fuels has increased the pollution levels many many folds. The increased respiratory disorders among the populace, the greatly worrisome associated phenomenon of global warming and the limited fossil fuel resources of the globe has set the mankind thinking on the future course of action.

In this context, two new terms for energy resources have emerged. Firstly renewable/ infinite sources of energy such as sun,wind, ocean, hydro, bio fuels, biomass etc. and secondly clean sources of energy such as solar, wind, ocean, nuclear etc.. It does not require any rocket science to understand and conclude that future energy security of all nations must be based on the following considerations.

• The first and foremost requirement of a viable energy security solution is that it should be a clean source  capable of producing energy in a clean manner without any contribution to the biggest worry of  global warming. Surprisingly the much touted clean nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.
• The source must be eternal and have the capacity to last for thousands of years so that the researches and technology development efforts can lead to an eternally valid solution like the invention of wheel. 
• All processes involved in utilizing an energy source for producing energy right from mineral stage to fuel extraction, power plant wastes and spent fuel disposal should be absolutely safe for humanity. In addition there should be zero chance of catastrophic accidents. In fact  Nuclear fuels are a curse on humanity from the stage of ore to fuel elements to waste.
• Lastly, the power production costs should be competitive with power from other sources. Nuclear power has always been touted as mankind’s finest invention to produce power at cheap prices without significantly harming the environment. However, a closer analysis reveals that it continues to remain one of the most expensive enterprises in the world, requiring constant subsidies and governmental support to ensure its continuous survival. Besides the manipulations regarding  ignoring costs of decommissioning, dismantling  and  nuclear waste disposal which are very very high, all governments and companies selling this technology are absolutely silent on the aspect of huge liabilities arising out of a catastrophic accident. A worst-case scenario study in 1997 by the Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated that a major accident could cost $566 billion in damages and cause 143,000 possible deaths. Another such study, by Sandia National Laboratories in 1982, calculated the possible costs at $314 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that would put both estimates close to the trillion dollar range today.
• The typical gestation period for a 1 GW nuclear plant is anything between 10-15 years many times involving further cost escalations and time over runs whereas a solar power plant of the same magnitude  could be functional in 1 year time. Imagine the value addition to the national GDP that will come through this 1 GW of power available for additional 9-14 years. This certainly is a win win situation for any nation.

In spite of all these facts about nuclear power regarding the cost of power, how clean is its implementation and the magnitude of catastrophe that can befall a nation in case of a major accident, it is not understood why people are enameled for nuclear power option when better sound options are available. Indian policy makers seem to be guided 

• Either by their whims and fancies 
• Or they are overawed by this complicated and sophisticated accident/catastrophe prone yet lucrative technology of taming atomic fission phenomenon.
• Or perhaps in their opinion solar technology cannot deliver because of its shear simplicity.In fact solar is simple and must be kept simple to retain its edge and that is the beauty.

NOW NUCLEAR POWER PLANT THROUGH SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT

The government of India, a government sans governance and the ruling polity has always been objecting to the judicial activism of the Indian courts in all matters relating to governance and felt that it was intruding into the government domain even though it was absolutely necessary in the light of total inaction by the government in all matters of public interest and welfare. It was most surprising to see the apex court proclaiming that fear of nuclear disaster has no basis. It should be appreciated that science and technology is as bankrupt as it was fifty years back and tries to fix up the faults as are thrown up by accidents and occurrings from time to time. The safety teams are playing around with collation of statistical data of functioning of a multitude of components, mechanical behaviour and failure of structures and the materials and trying to overcome these through redundancy and reliability.

All these exercises were carried out before commissioning power plants at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima but as providence will have it some new unknown factors came into being and these catastrophic accidents occurred. Let us all understand that nuclear energy safety has been a false promise and will continue to be the same for all times to come. Humanity has suffered heavily because of ironic claims of 100% safety but we in India seem to be none the wiser from the experiences of others. These ominous words contained in the judgement "Nobody on this earth can predict what would happen in future and to a larger extent we have to leave it to the destiny" should not be taken lightly as the stakes are not the same as that of an automobile accident. The decisions must be weighed in the light of the quantum of risks of catastrophic accidents in nuclear power plants. 

There has got to be something horrendous in nuclear power play. We must try to analyse why even the so called masters of nuclear power technology are themselves shying away from this energy. No new plant has come up on the soil of USA since 1980. Germany and Japan have decided to phase out all nuclear energy. So much so even the French have decided to go in for reductions in their dependence on nuclear energy.

While nobody can deny the requirements of energy for the sunny future of the masses of India as brought out in a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which highlights that to sustain rapid global economic growth, it is necessary to double the supply of energy and tripling supply of electricity by 2050. Further, it is stated billions of poor people need energy and other life-saving and job-creating technologies.” But today we have better alternates available to realise our aims. It will be criminal to bank upon a technology which is in an obsolescence phase because of thorns attached to it and not in sync with the vision and aspirations of 21st century. India does not need nuclear power for its energy security. Let us hope that wisdom prevails on Indian rulers and polity.

Who Benefits From Nuclear Power Plants In India? – CounterCurrents.org

Who Benefits From Nuclear Power Plants In India?

By   Buddhi Kota Subbarao. Ph.D.

02 August, 2012
Countercurrents.org

The rest of the world is moving towards renewable energy and away from nuclear power. But India is pouring most of its energy budget into establishing more and more nuclear power plants. It raises two compelling questions. Why is the present Union Government of India committing an enormous portion of its energy budget to imported nuclear power plants? Who benefits from these nuclear power plants?

The answers to these questions are not difficult to find. The secrecy that surrounds nuclear issues affords the Union Government to deal with vast sums of money in an easy way. Corrupt practices in the nuclear field do not get exposed as easily as in other fields. Big money and political ambitions go hand in hand. This is one part of the answer. The other part is the way the Indian nuclear establishment functions.

Indian nuclear establishment has some unique features. Pursuit is more for administrative power and less for knowledge in science and technology. Consequently, pretence to knowledge grew over the years. Accountability is conspicuous by its absence. Mediocre results and at times even nil results are proclaimed as outstanding achievements. The cleverness of the Indian nuclear establishment is from the way it can claim indigenous development and at the same time devise methods to import foreign technology.

On account of the reluctance of the national media, print and electronic, to take up investigative journalism in the nuclear field as effectively as it has been taking up in other fields, the Indian public has been deprived of a fair and full opportunity to know the true face of the Indian nuclear establishment.

As a result, Indian people are not adequately equipped to make a critical analysis of the claims of their nuclear establishment. If the establishment claims all our nuclear power plants are safe, it is believed. If the establishment declares there is no radiation pollution in and around Indian nuclear installations and power plants, it is simply believed, though it is not true in reality. Several instances can be cited which betray the make believe necessity of nuclear electricity and also the make believe nuclear safety in India. [1], [1a], [1b], [1c], [1d], [1e].

Nuclear Power vs. Renewable Energy Deployment

According to World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012, the growth of nuclear power is on the decline and the renewable energy development is on the rise.

Indian energy planners should take note of the vivid picture on the investment in renewable energy, as presented by the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012,

Global investment in renewable energy totalled US$260 billion in 2011, up five percent from the previous year and almost five times the 2004 amount. Considering a 50 percent unit price drop over the past year, the performance of solar photovoltaics (PV) with US$137 billion worth of new installations, an increase of 36 percent, is all the more impressive. The total cumulative investment in renewables has risen to over US$1 trillion since 2004, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, this compares to our estimate of nuclear power investment decisions of approximately $120 billion over the same time period. The rise and fall of nuclear investments is essentially due to the evolution of the Chinese program, with 40 percent of current worldwide construction. [2]

On the installed capacities of different energy sources, World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012, has recorded,

  Installed worldwide nuclear capacity decreased in the years 1998, 2006, 2009 and again in 2011, while the annual installed wind power capacity increased by 41 GW ( GW stands for gigawatt or thousand megawatt) in 2011 alone. China constitutes an accelerated version of this global pattern. Installed wind power capacity grew by a factor of 50 in the past five years to reach close to 63 GW, five times more than the installed nuclear capacity and equivalent to the French nuclear fleet. Solar capacity was ................... .....................................

NUCLEAR ENERGY SAFETY- A FALSE PROMISE

The developed world polity , nuclear energy cartels and technocrats' lobbies have a big motivation to fool the world because they want to earn from their huge investments in nuclear power and technology researches, nuclear power plant manufacturing techniques, nuclear fuel facilities and lastly to retain their blackmailing right to deny the fuel or spares at any time they feel like.There is no nation on this globe which does not have one or more viable alternate available for its energy security. Everyday the polity and experts of nuclear power technology sellers as well as buyers come out with statements regarding the safety of nuclear plants by killing their conscience and conveniently ignoring all facts

Ever since the  nuclear energy route for energy security has been professed and taken up, a large no of accidents have occurred in these plants but the ten major ones require special mention and deliberations. From the first day of the first nuclear power plant way back in 1956 at Windscale, England, the polity and technocrats kept on assuring the whole world that everything has been taken care of for ensuring 100% safety of nuclear power plants particularly when the extent of holocaust which could be wrought on humanity by nuclear fission were fresh in public minds after Nagasaki and Hiroshima atom bomb attacks. 

The risks of catastrophic accidents at Nuclear Power Plants

Potential Accident Consequences

The potential harmful consequences of a reactor plant eruption are truly catastrophic in magnitude. From a near full release of fission products and plutonium from just one reactor, about 200,000 square kilometers of land could have to be abandoned, due to high Gamma-radiation levels from the ground fallout, according to my analysis. (The size of West Germany is about 250,000 square kilometers, and Spain, 490,000 sq. kilometers. A like size area could have to be abandoned due alone to man-made plutonium fallout dust (Alpha-radiation) - a lung cancer hazard - following a PWR or BWR eruption, and up to one million square kilometers in the case of a nuclear explosion accident in a plutonium-fuelled fast breeder reactor, which contains much more plutonium. Several hundred thousand square kilometers could be ruined agriculturally for food growing due to long-lasting Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 fallout. There are many other forms of radiation exposure, such as radiation damage to the thyroid gland (cancer) from radioactive Iodine, and exposure of the skin to Beta-radiation, and inhalation of radioactive fission products besides plutonium dust. The combined effects are incalculable in terms of injury and impaired health to humans (and animals). The possibility of fifty million or more cancer deaths cannot be excluded.



The Irony of 100% safety

• How hollow and wrong were these claims on safety, came to light after the Three Mile Island, USA, 1979 accident and once again every body was assured of 100% safety with new revised stringent controls
• The same wrong full  assertions were repeated after The Chernobyl Disaster, USSR, 1986 and once again the humanity was fooled into believing that 100 % safety has been assured now with new , revised and stringent controls at all stages of manufacture and plant functioning.
• Nature once again reminded these touts of nuclear energy of the inadequacies in their knowledge and understanding of complex behaviour through Tsunami and earthquake damage to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Japan 2012.

In spite of all such warnings why the polity, technocrats and industrial cartels are refusing to accept the simplest of the reality that human knowledge of science and technology is a follower of natural phenomenon. In safety engineering, human knowledge follows calamities,  complex behaviour of material response, component failure and accident occurrences. New chinks in our knowledge of plant safety, design criterion and failure analysis will keep on emerging with each new accident which will again be plugged with revised stringent measures. This process of evolution of safety concepts is acceptable in all walks of life and in all technologies but no body or no nation on this globe has the right to make large populations sit on a catastrophic bomb for their lure of power, money and looking after the interests of cartel they represent.

The Irony of Probability

Many a times general public is fed on probability figures of a catastrophic accident in a nuclear power plant.The accidental release of radioactivity as a result of reactor accident, terrorist attack or as a consequence of some natural disaster can be catastrophic. The scientists and technocrats would like to say that chances of such an occurrence are 1 in a billion or a trillion but can they deny that such an occurrence could as well be the 1st one and the balance of (1 trillion - 1) occurrences can be catastrophe free. 

Some glowing examples of this probability meaning out of known occurrences are given below.

• The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003. When the flight was Okayed the probability of accident was similar to one described above but the accident and occurrence is there before the world.
• Heard from one of the top nuclear engineering expert of India that the probability of a full blown nuclear accident is as low as somebody getting killed in a road accident.

Such accidents involve one or a few persons at a time whereas nuclear blow out is affecting millions of people, land areas as big as mid sized countries are destroyed for ever as brought out in  Potential Accident Consequences above.

Those selling and buying nuclear energy should understand that their criminal motivation shall not be pardoned by future generations.

NUCLEAR ENERGY in INDIA: IS IT A WISE OPTION

Indian nation is standing on the crossroads to find an answer to the Energy Security of the country which is effective, long lasting, safe with no chance of a catastrophic accident, environment friendly and totally dependent upon Indian Natural Resources. The answer to energy security definitely lies in  a combination of the clean energy technologies and that too in the renewable ones. Luckily India is blessed with an abundance of solar, wind and Hydroelectric potential sufficient  to take care of its energy needs even when per capita energy consumption is raised to the level of advanced western nations. In a country with such a favourable scenario for renewable energy sources, basing our energy security on nuclear energy reeks of nothing else but  hidden agenda of vested interests. The question "NUCLEAR ENERGY in INDIA: IS IT A WISE OPTION" cannot stand the scrutiny of even the elementary wisdom. The rulers of the country should rise above their petty politics, narrow vision and act as statesmen with a vision beyond thirty years when most of the fuel resources of this world, be it coal, oil or Uranium will all dry up to a level beyond commercial exploitation and all humanity on this globe will be forced to look towards eternal renewable energy sources only.

Few questions that need to be probed

1. The cost of nuclear energy including capital cost, fuel cost, running cost, arrangements for stopping theft and pilferage of nuclear material, safety against terrorist groups, full arrangements for full compensation in case of a blow out for immediate damage/losses and losses resulting in even after two or three decades, decommissioning cost of a life expired plant and management of nuclear wastes and above all vulnerability to political and economic blackmail by the fuel suppliers.Incidentally no nation has made any provisions for  full arrangements for compensation in case of a blow out, decommissioning cost of a life expired plant and cost of management of nuclear wastes so far as these costs are exorbitant and in the light of this commercial exploitation of nuclear energy is perhaps simply not viable.And that is why no new nuclear plants have come up anywhere in the western world where the society is extremely sensitive to such issues.
2. Why should we Indians be made to sit on  potentially catastrophic sites when no scientist or technologist can guarantee an absolute safety of a nuclear power plant. They can only vouch for the fact that all safety measures as per current national safety standards have been incorporated. These standards are still in a process of evolution and get revised after each major accident. In fact the whole process is like chasing a mirage of absolute safety. By the time you incorporate one set of safety standards, new facts come to light in the wake of a disaster or calamity or an accident and you start incorporating additional safety devices and making new safety codes.

The government/polity is not entitled to commit such a horrendous stupidity even after making full arrangements for everything brought out in 1. above particularly when other saner and cost effective options are available. Let wisdom prevail on Indian Polity and let India be a nation which has learnt from the mistakes and experiences of others. By taking the timely action of switching over to renewable energy sources India can elevate itself to the status of world leader in the energy security game for all times to come.

Indian Nuclear Power Option:A Fraud On the Nation

Indian government seems to be in undue haste to sink trillions of rupees of the nation on the nuclear power option as energy security which is defunct, redundant and out of sync with the best available options in the 21st century and  future ahead. No other nation on this globe seems to have any conviction on this energy security option, not even the main advocates and suppliers of nuclear power technology themselves.
Apart from the safety and environment concerns associated with nuclear power option, it is the civil liability magnitude which seems to be beyond any tangible solution. The total damages in the case of a full blow  out can be thousands of lives, condemned area of about 10000 sq. kms. and effects lingering on for many decades. In terms of money, the damages amount to a whopping sum of Rs 90000 Crores or higher. Who is going to pay? If Government of India has to exercise nuclear power option, what provisions have been made for blow out damages? If damage amount is taken care of, even the much touted lower cost of nuclear energy production becomes much more than the cost of production of solar and wind energy.Lastly, what surety is there that India will be ensured nuclear fuel supplies for all times to come; for tomorrow the economic and political interests of nuclear cartel countries and India could clash. Or does India has to be under the black mail threat for all times to come once it exercises the nuclear power option. Do we have a suitable and fail safe penalty clause included in these contracts for we are going to sink a fortune in these plants.

While Germany has decided to phase out its nuclear power option completely by 2030, the French and British governments are under tremendous pressure from a vast majority of their populace to phase out nuclear energy completely by 2050 or so.In USA no new nuclear plants have come up during the last three decades. It cannot be just a coincidence that the most developed countries are fighting against the very presence of nuclear power plants on their soil. Indian government is either oblivious of the concerns that are bothering the citizens of developed nations or is holding them back from the nation for reasons best known to it.

India is likely to add up about 5 lakh mw of electrical power in the coming two decades and a similar demand is likely to emanate from Asia and Africa who are likely to be denied access to nuclear power.The energy requirements of developed world will be confined to small amount of replacement of their obsolete plants. In this scenario, the advanced countries will like to delay the employment of huge funds for developing renewable clean energy technologies till such time they earn huge sums of money from their earlier investments in nuclear power technologies. The same money will be deployed for researches and industrial infrastructure development for clean renewable energy technologies.This is the right time and opportunity for India to make best use of trillions of rupees to be spent in power sector by giving impetus to relevant researches, technology development and manufacturing facilities for renewable clean energy options and become world leaders in this field which is going to be the backbone of development and prosperity in the immediate, intermediate and long term future.The government policies are certainly denying the nation the golden opportunity to become world leaders.
Let us wake up and not allow these politicians to opt for nuclear power option and deny the nation the golden chance to become world leader. Even a mother does not feed milk to its own child unless it cries.

Nuclear Power In India:Our worst enemy

Those who are advocating the case of nuclear power for India are the worst enemies of the country and are in fact playing into the hands of Western Giants by nurturing their quest to remain global super economic powers and technology leaders for the coming fifty years at least. Let us not fall into this trap and place trillions of dollars as the cost of nuclear power plant technologies in their hands. These technologies are definitely defunct and out of sync with the energy security concepts of  21st century. The huge sums of money gained by these countries through sale of these technologies will enable them to remain technology leaders through major researches and engineering infrastructure development in the upcoming fields of wind and solar energy. Let those in power and policy makers of the nation show to the nation that they are working for Indian National Interest in the same way as US and French leaders are working for their country's interests.

It should be clear to one and all of this country that western nations have not suddenly developed special love and concern for India and its poor masses for nothing. They are only ensuring their own economic interests. For if today India does not buy 30000 mw of nuclear power plants, all their efforts and investments in research and technology infrastructure development for nuclear power plants will go unrewarded as none of their favored friends are willing to buy new nuclear plants or replace the earlier ones.They have little incentive for pouring in large sums of money in solar and wind power as catering to replacement requirements of nuclear and thermal power plants is a smaller economic activity and new economic powers like Germany, Japan, China and India are also gearing up to have a share in this pie.

For India, the opportunity of developing wind and solar energy is something like 75000 to 80000 mw in the coming decade. If we harness our research talent and expertise of engineering giants of the country for technology development, we will reap the benefits of this massive in house requirements and opportunity of massive scale up of engineering operations. We can easily become the world leaders and exporters of these technologies to the whole world.

So far for the opportunity to become world leaders in the field of power generation. Let us now concentrate on the problems associated with nuclear power generation which in themselves are strong enough reasons for abandoning the path of energy security through nuclear options.

• No nuclear reactor can be 100% safe. A normal accident of whatever magnitude in any industry can at worst affect a couple of lives for once, whereas the worst possible nuclear accident can destroy thousands of lives,affect very large tracts of lands and couple of generations of those involved in the accident. These accidents could be a result of engineering failures, natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunami, terror attacks etc.
• The capital cost of  1 mw of nuclear power plant is approx. 40 crores which as it is exorbitant. If we add the cost of radioactive waste management ( about 10% ) and insurance liability cost against terror attacks and accident damage ( 100% or even more ), nuclear power  becomes only a liability to the nation. This is perhaps the reason that no new nuclear power plants came up in USA during the last three decades and Germany has decided to totally abandon it by 2025. Japan will be no longer be replacing their old reactors. Australia the second largest producer of nuclear fuel has no nuclear power plant.
• Problems of proliferation, susceptibility to theft or sale to terrorist and criminal organisations
• Extremely long gestation periods of 10 - 15 years
• India will always be prone to blackmail at the whims and fancies of fuel suppliers. After all we have been subject to this blackmail earlier also.

Energy Security - Nuclear Energy:The Worst Option

While the advanced countries on this globe are working towards abandoning the nuclear energy options, we in India true to our tag of third world nation are going gaga  over nuclear energy options. Surprisingly our policy makers very conveniently prefer to close their eyes to 3 mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi disasters. The nation is constantly being fed on half baked truth of Nuclear Energy as the only viable Energy Security available and the accompanying safety concerns are being underplayed. By selling nuclear energy plants to India, the US and French presidents may be guilty of working against the humanity but they are certainly working in the best interests of their countries.Through these sales they are ensuring extra jobs to their countrymen, earning huge  amounts from investments made by their countries in the fields of infrastructure and technologies for nuclear plant engineering in sixties and seventies of last century as also making these huge funds so earned available for research and technology development in solar and wind power sectors which will enable them to retain their status as world leaders even in the upcoming field of renewable energy science, engineering and technology. But why are our leaders, policy makers and technocrats helping them out in realising their goals? Why are they ignoring what these advanced countries are doing for their own energy security during the coming decades?

Let us do a little bit of fact finding regarding status of nuclear energy programs of these advanced countries.

• In USA during the last 25 years no new additions have been made to nuclear energy. During the same period they have added about 80000 mw of wind and solar power and as an endeavour to have more and more of clean energy, huge sums are being allocated to these energy sectors to replace conventional thermal power plants in spite of a very powerful nuclear lobby.
• France is perhaps the only country which has been increasing its dependence on nuclear energy up to now. They are also feeling the heat of lagging behind in renewable energy which is the most sought after and viable technology on a major part of our globe.
• Germany is going ahead with the complete phasing out of nuclear power by 2022 simultaneously aiming to boost electricity generation from non polluting sources like wind and solar to 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 from less than 20% now.
• South Africa is seriously thinking about not going ahead with proposed nuclear energy plants. Rather they think it will be wiser to invest in the new energy solutions i.e. renewable sources like wind and solar.
• Japan has placed a moratorium on setting up of new reactors and are seriously reviewing all present installations.
• China has an installed renewable energy capacity of  80000 mw ( wind and solar ) while they are aiming at about 40000 mw of nuclear power by 2015. Their priorities on energy sources are quite inevitable in their policies.

It is very clear that whole world including nuclear energy reactor designers and fabricators namely US and France are going slow with this much touted energy security solution. The reasons are not very difficult to apprehend when we go into the details of economy and problems of proliferation, nuclear waste management and safety concerns.Nuclear power plants come at an exorbitant cost of Rs 25 crores / mw and in fact this may escalate to about Rs 50 crores when measures for waste management, disaster compensation insurance and stringent safety norms likely to be imposed in the light of Japanese disaster are taken into account. In comparison wind, hydro and thermal power can be installed at a cost of about Rs 5-6 crore per mw and solar energy could be installed at Rs 16-20 crore per mw. Additionally nuclear power plants have a very long gestation period of 10-15 years and investment recovery period of 25-40 years.

The radioactive material is susceptible to thefts by or eventual sale to terrorists or international criminal organisations. The accidental release of radioactivity as a result of reactor accident, terrorist attack or as a consequence of some natural disaster can be catastrophic. The scientists and technocrats would like to say that chances of such an occurrence are 1 in a billion or a trillion but can they deny that such an occurrence could as well be the 1st one and the balance of (1 trillion - 1) occurrences can be catastrophe free.

The environment hazards arising as a result of nuclear power plants cannot be ignored. For India add to this the all time dependence for nuclear fuel on other countries rendering us prone to blackmail at the whims and fancies of these suppliers.

In the light of all this is it advisable to go in for this option when much better and safe options are available? Let wisdom and national interest prevail on our politicians and nuclear technocrat lobby so that we do not fall prey to US and French interests and in the bargain lose our chance of leading the world in the transition to renewable energy solutions. Let us make best use of our being backward in per capita energy consumption, for US, Europe and China combined together will not add or replace 8,00,000 mw which India is planning to add during the next decade or so.We have the opportunity of fine tuning wind and solar energy technologies and cut down their costs through development of large scale manufacturing facilities without having to bother about our earlier investments in any energy field becoming redundant and superfluous.