Stop a nuclear disaster :: Suggested questionnaire/homework before taking a stand on the Nuclear Liability Bill

India

Since the content of the very few newspaper articles on the Nuclear Liability Bill are full of omissions and contradictions, here are a few suggested questions before taking a stand on this very important issue.

Note: The answers are all on public sources on the internet. The list of references given at the end has only a few of the sources of information available. Things remain secret only as long as our lack of interest allows them to be so!

--------------------------------------------------------

1. Who is afraid of nuclear energy?
2. Who declared, “Those who are shouting against nuclear power should listen to what scientists have to say”?
3. Who declared, “A nuclear reactor once started needs to be looked after to keep its safety functions going, whether it generates electricity or not. This management commitment has to last all the way up to the end of decommissioning process and also until all spent fuel is reprocessed and waste properly disposed off.”?
4. Who prevented journalists and observers to enter the conference hall when the Soviet delegation submitted their report to the IAEA in August 1986 at the special conference convened to discuss the Chernobyl accident? The Annex 7 of that report did not appear in the published report, and the existence of that Annex was never mentioned. What was in that Annex 7?
5. Who told lies to Western and Eastern European people after 1986 about the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident? Who dismissed the scientific findings of the Belarus and Ukrainian Academies of Science in favour of the opinions of 3 (yes, three) hand-picked foreign experts? What was there to fear for the Western nuclear industry?
6. Who put in jail the senior scientists who collected the data and studied the consequences of Chernobyl accident, and closed their departments and institutes?
7. Who invented the concept of “mental health related to atomic energy”, and when? Who invented the concept of “radiophobia”, and when?
8. Who, with what credentials, initially said the total casualty figure of the Chernobyl accident was 23, and now reluctantly admits it may reach 4,000?
9. Who, with what credentials, said it will be 1,000,000?
10. Why has the world-wide nuclear industry always been insisting for a “nuclear liability bill”, a “Price-Anderson Act”, a “Paris Convention on Nuclear Third Party Liability”, a “Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage”, and similar pieces of legislation? Would the richest corporations in the world really need such unlimited government-backed insurance covers, if their liability could not possibly extend to more than a few thousand families?
11. After 50 years of commercial nuclear industry, are the world’s biggest nuclear corporations in a position to clean obsolete nuclear facilities for a fixed price, calculated in advance?
12. Has any private or government organisation, anywhere, ever successfully dismantled and cleaned a nuclear facility like a power plant or a plutonium production plant?
13. Does anyone know what to do with nuclear waste?
14. Anyway, who says nuclear power is safe?
15. What are the only 3 risks that the Lloyds of London can’t insure?
16. Who has the courage to actually own a nuclear power plant today, under the conditions quoted in the above question No 3?
17. Who is owner of the nuclear waste?
18. Why can’t the huge nuclear corporations like Areva, Bechtel, etc. be “rational” and “fearless” enough to take full responsibility for the consequences of their operations?
19. Who says they can’t develop nuclear energy in India without a free, unlimited, and comprehensive government insurance, covering any possible event, beyond a token amount of $450 millions?
20. Could these people fear an accident?
21. Are they “afraid”?
22. Why?
    
    … And, what about the hundreds of thousands of young volunteers from the entire Soviet Union who sacrificed their health and life to reduce the consequences of the Chernobyl accident for the rest of the world?
    
    Where they “afraid”?
    

-----------------------------------------
The answers:

1. Who is afraid of nuclear energy?
   -- Investors and Insurance Companies.
2. Who declared, “Those who are shouting against nuclear power should listen to what scientists have to say”?
   -- The Chief Minister of West Bengal Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
3. Who declared, “A nuclear reactor once started needs to be looked after to keep its safety functions going, whether it generates electricity or not. This management commitment has to last all the way up to the end of decommissioning process and also until all spent fuel is reprocessed and waste properly disposed off.”?
   -- Dr. Anil Kakodkar, when he was chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). [1]
   (Remember this sentence: it will be used 4 or 5 times thereafter!)
4. Who prevented journalists and observers to enter the conference hall when the Soviet delegation submitted their report to the IAEA in August 1986 at the special conference convened to discuss the Chernobyl accident? The Annex 7 of that report did not appear in the published report, and the existence of that Annex was never mentioned. What was in that Annex 7?
   -- The Soviet delegation headed by Valery Legassov, after presenting their comprehensive, 370-page report, followed by a 3 hours question-answers session, received a standing ovation for their efforts. [2]
   
   But the content of their report triggered an outcry, and the IAEA opposed its public release. Particularly, the estimated casualties that were calculated using extensive measured data and following the admitted norms of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), was considered much too high, and the next 2 days were spent in negotiating with the Soviet delegation a figure that would be more “presentable”. It was ultimately scaled down from 30,000 – 40,000 deaths to 5,100 – 10,000. It is the IAEA, a UN body funded by public money, which decided to shield these heated discussions from public scrutiny and to hold the conference behind closed doors. [3]
   
   -- The annex 7 explains the methodology used for evaluating the health consequences of the accident. [3, 4] Its disappearance in pure old Soviet style, indicates that the IAEA was quite unable to digest the “Glasnost” and the “Perestroika” which had started in the Soviet Union. But, one wonders if it could now?
   
   
5. Who told lies to Western and Eastern European people after 1986 about the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident? Who dismissed the scientific findings of the Belarus and Ukrainian Academies of Science in favour of the opinions of 3 (yes, three) hand-picked foreign experts? What was there to fear for the Western nuclear industry?
   
   -- The IAEA, the French government and many other European governments, the governments of the former Soviet Union told lies deliberately. They even had the gall to defend their lies, as an attempt to avoid “panic” in the public, which could have had, according to some French officials, “far worse consequences than the radioactivity itself”. [5]
   
   -- In 1988 the government of USSR decided that the dose-limit for evacuation of the population was “35 rem in 70 years”. The Academy of Science of Belarus contested this value and recommended 7 rem in 70 years, or 0.1 rem/year, which was the ICPR norm at the time, and the Ukrainian Academy of Science recommended 10 rem in 70 years [3]. In 1989 the WHO sent an ad-hoc mission to Belarus composed of 3 experts: M. Waight, secretary of the WHO, Dan Beninson, president of the ICRP and the most vociferous opponent of the 1986 Soviet report, and Pierre Pellerin, director since 1956 of the French Central Service of Protection from Ionising Radiation, who became famous in 1986 for insisting the French territory had been totally spared by radioactive fallout when the rest of Europe was taking sanitary measures, and is now facing deception charges in his country [5, 6]. These three experts declared that 35 rem in 70 years was a “conservative figure, consistent with international norms” (without stating which norm), that “by their own opinion, they would choose a value 2 or 3 times higher”, and that “experts not well-versed in radioactive effects assign all health problems to radioactivity”, when factors like “stress” and “psychological” problems also play a role [7]. It is to be noted that Pierre Pellerin was then a full-time functionary of the French ministry of Health, and that the value of “35 rem in 70 years” was in complete contradiction with the French norms. (It is also interesting that, 20 years later, his line of defense against the charge of "aggravated deception" he is facing, is that he was "under enormous political pressure"). After the ad-hoc mission of the three WHO experts, the Belarus and Ukrainian governments utilised this opportunity to deride their own scientists and to dismiss the recommendations of their respective Academies of Science [3].
   
   
6. Who put in jail the senior scientists who collected the data and studied the consequences of Chernobyl accident, and closed their departments and institutes?
   
   -- Professor Yury Bandazhevsky was the director of the Gomel Medical Institute. In 2001 the research activities of his institute on the health consequences of Chernobyl accident were stopped, his institute re-organised, and he was sentenced to 8 years of jail. He has been released on parole in 2005 [8].
   
   -- Professor Vassili Borissovitch Nesterenko, was director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus since 1977. He was one of the volunteers who threw liquid azote from helicopters in the open reactor No 4, and the only survivor of a team of 4 other “liquidators”. In 1986 he oriented the efforts of his institute towards the mitigation of the Chernobyl accident, until 1987 when his laboratory was dismantled, his institute re-organised, his job cancelled. He was also threatened of internment in a psychiatric asylum [9].
   
   
7. Who invented the concept of “mental health related to atomic energy”, and when? Who invented the concept of “radiophobia”, and when?
   
   -- The WHO in 1958 published its report No. 151, titled “Mental health aspects of the peaceful uses of atomic energy” in which this UN body recommends to keep the information about nuclear energy under tight control, because “mental” problems induced by atomic energy in the population, could harm the development of this technology. [10]
   
   -- L. A. Ilyin and O. A. Pavlovskij in the report to the IAEA, “Radiological consequences of the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union and measures taken to mitigate their impact”, IAEA Bulletin 4/1987, mentioned for the first time “radiophobia” as a mental disease responsible for the adverse health effects of the Chernobyl accident. [3]
   
   This “concept” of no scientific value has since been much utilised by the IAEA and the nuclear industry.
   
   
8. Who, with what credentials, initially said the total casualty figure of the Chernobyl accident was 23, and now reluctantly admits it may reach 4,000?
   
   -- The IAEA [11]
   
   
9. Who, with what credentials, said it will be 1,000,000?
   
   -- Professor John Gofman, former group co-leader of the Plutonium Project (for the Manhattan Project), former co-director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Founder and first Director of the Biomedical Research Division of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and responsible with Dr. Arthur Tamplin of the report that eventually forced in 1971 the American nuclear operators to reduce their normal radioactive emissions by 90%. (He was fired shortly after that, and he became a university professor) [12]
   
   
10. Why has the world-wide nuclear industry always been insisting for a “nuclear liability bill”, a “Price-Anderson Act”, a “Paris Convention on Nuclear Third Party Liability”, a “Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage”, and similar pieces of legislation? Would the richest corporations in the world really need such unlimited government-backed insurance covers, if their liability could not possibly extend to more than a few thousand families?
    
    -- The nuclear companies claim for “immortality”, they say they have to survive economically any nuclear disaster of any magnitude, anyway and at any cost. One of their arguments is, we will need their expertise even more after a disaster than before, so society can’t afford to dismantle their organisations. But the Chernobyl experience has shown that what really help in disasters are competent and courageous individuals who can make things work, including against the inertia of their organisations when necessary. Also, many nuclear companies and research institutes were restructured in the 5-6 years following the Chernobyl accident, in the former USSR and in Europe, although none of these organisations were made to pay a penny as compensation. So dismantling does happen anyway after a major event and is not related to the payment of penalties. To dismantle an organisation doesn’t always mean to lose its competence, and to re-organise its capable people in a different manner may be necessary if the previous organisation has failed to take its responsibility. So, the claim that nuclear corporations should survive a nuclear accident has no validity in the light of events.
    
    
11. After 50 years of commercial nuclear industry, are the world’s biggest nuclear corporations in a position to clean obsolete nuclear facilities for a fixed price, calculated in advance?
    
    -- The only case of commercial nuclear cleaning operation is the one presently done by AREVA for the British government at Sellafield-Windscale, on terms that are similar to popular software agreements: No guarantee of results and no liability (even in case of proven error). [13, 14]
    
    
12. Has any private or government organisation, anywhere, ever successfully dismantled and cleaned a nuclear facility like a power plant or a plutonium production plant?
    
    -- Only a handful of small research reactors have been fully decommissioned, in conditions that are not well documented. Presently, all the atomic bomb and plutonium production facilities (Hanford in USA, Marcoule in France, Cheliabinsk in former USSR, etc.) have cleaning programs going on since the last 30 years, and are being turned into permanent research centres on the “back-end of nuclear cycle” (read: radioactive waste), thus delaying decommissioning forever!
    
    
13. Does anyone know what to do with nuclear waste?
    
    -- All that the scientists can do at present is packaging, sub-packaging, over-packaging, and re-packaging... and all the administrations can do is dumping, more or less discreetly, in the hope that when the radioactivity will be detected it will be too late to trace its origin! For how many generations we will be able to maintain scientific interest in nuclear garbage maintenance and monitoring, along with the necessary resources, is anybody’s guess.
    
    
14. Anyway, who says nuclear power is safe?
    
    -- People who don’t own the radioactive waste: Nuclear corporations.
    
    
15. What are the only 3 risks that the Lloyds of London can’t insure?
    
    -- a) Gambling, b) War, and c) Nuclear activities.
    
    
16. Who has the courage to actually own a nuclear power plant today, under the conditions quoted in the above question No 3?
    
    -- Only governments. However, the concept of ownership for hundreds of thousands of years is a non-sense abstraction.
    
    
17. Who is owner of the nuclear waste?
    
    -- Always governments (American companies have managed to “sell” their waste to their government).
    
    
18. Why can’t the huge nuclear corporations like Areva, Bechtel, etc. be “rational” and “fearless” enough to take full responsibility for the consequences of their operations?
    
    -- The apparent contradiction comes from the incomplete information given to the public. The nuclear corporations quote scientists saying everything “can be” brought under control and the risk “can be” brought down to an arbitrarily low level, but at the same time, their extraordinary liability cap demand show that they themselves don’t believe it can be brought down to a level comfortable for their money.
    
    If, by their own assessment the AREVA, ROSATOM, BECHTEL, TATA, etc. say their technology is SAFE ENOUGH for our lives, then we HAVE TO consider it is also safe enough FOR THEIR MONEY, and no Nuclear Liability Bill is needed!
    
    (However, their very demand should awaken us and we should consider if a huge bank guarantee should not be demanded from nuclear companies!)
    
    
19. Who says they can’t develop nuclear energy in India without a free, unlimited, and comprehensive government insurance, covering any possible event, beyond a token amount of $450 millions?
    
    -- Investors.
    
    
20. Could these people fear an accident?
    
    -- The key is they want to survive financially to all accidents in the future, at any cost.
    
    
21. Are they “afraid”?
    
    -- They are afraid for their investment.
    
    
22. Why?
    
    -- The key to surviving the nuclear era is to maintain the nuclear industry alive enough to be able to look after the nuclear facilities and nuclear waste, for ever. (Again, see quote in question No 3). This is already a big economic burden for heavily nuclearised countries, and could become a political problem also, when people will ask why they should pay for facilities that don’t produce electricity anymore.
    
    A strategy is to spread the burden over a larger population, so that at least they won’t be alone in this trouble, and a huge and very densely populated country like India is the best target for this type of strategy. It is assumed that nuclear-free people and countries will not spontaneously come forward to help the nuclearised ones when they are in need. (If the international help for the Belarus and Ukrainian people after the Chernobyl accident is anything to go by, the assumption is not wrong: Denying and dismissing were the main focus of the IAEA and nuclear governments).
    
    Therefore fear and coercion are the driving forces of present undercover nuclear policies.
    
    … And, what about the hundreds of thousands of young volunteers from the entire Soviet Union who sacrificed their health and life to reduce the consequences of the Chernobyl accident for the rest of the world?
    
    Where they “afraid”?
    -- All witnesses (officials, scientists, journalists, etc.) were astonished to see that none of the nuclear workers had deserted their post or taken a leave after the accident, and were continuing to discharge their duties at the reactors No 1, 2 and 3, just besides the open reactor No. 4, in terrible radioactivity conditions, thus preventing the disaster to spread to the other units. Similarly, no soldier had deserted, and volunteers were found easily and immediately, for any life-threatening or “suicide” work. Liquidators learned to “count lives”: For many difficult decisions taken during cleaning operations, the number of lives it would “cost” was calculated. It is estimated that the majority of the 600,000 “liquidators”, most of them in their early twenties in 1986, are dead now.
    
    It is evident fear and coercion were not factors for them!
    

Sources and references:

[1] Address by Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, at the Indo-French Nuclear Industry Business Meet in Mumbai on 15th October 2007
http://www.dae.gov.in/press/chmnindofr.htm
[2] Testimony of Dr. Hans Blix, former head of the IAEA, in “Valery Legasov, the head of Chernobyl blast clear-up team”, Part 2 Of 3, by Alexey Yaroshevsky, Russia Today TV channel, April 28, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cboaaToCvjA
[3] Bella Belbéoch, Responsabilités Occidentales dans les conséquences sanitaires de la catastrophe de Tchernobyl, en Biélorussie, Ukraine et Russie, in RADIOPROTECTION ET DROIT NUCLEAIRE, Genève, 1998
http://www.unige.ch/sebes/textes/1998/98BelbeochB.html
English translation (but beware of some translation ambiguities, like for example « minimiser » = “to play down”, wrongly translated as “to minimize”) can be found here:
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/western_responsability.html
[4] USSR State Committee on the utilization of nuclear Energy: The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant and its consequences. Information compiled for the IAEA Expert' Meeting, 25-29 August 1986,
Vienna. The Annex 7, Medical-Biological Problems, can be found here:
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/annexe7_aiea_aout_1986.pdf
[5] Hervé Morin, Le Monde, 24 Avril 2006
English Translation here:
http://www.truthout.org/article/le-monde-continuing-fallout-from-chernobyl
A summary here:
http://www.understandfrance.org/French/Documents12.html
Other details here:
[6] Communiqué CRII-RAD, Valence, le 3 novembre 1999 :
http://www.criirad.org/actualites/communiques/accusation.pellerin.html
[7] Sovietskaya Bieloroussia, Sunday 1st July 1989
Available (in French) here:
http://resosol.org/Gazette/1990/100_24.html
[8] Wikipedia
[9] http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/cv_nesterenko.html
Wikipedia
[10] http://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938923W/Mental-health-aspects-of-the-peaceful-uses-of-atomic-energy
[11] THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 30, 1986
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/30/world/chernobyl-toll-now-23-more-deaths-expected.html
[12] THE NATION, September 14, 2007
http://98.129.134.2/doc/20071001/mangano
[13] The great nuclear bail-out, The Guardian, Tuesday 28 October 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/28/westminster-nuclearpower-sellafield
[14] MP's anger as state bears cost of any Sellafield disaster, The
Guardian, Monday 27 October 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/27/sellafield-deal-nuclear-economy
[15] Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl

About the Article:
Information compiled and comments added by
Laurent Fournier
(Father of three, Kolkata)

Replies and contributions appreciated!