India is going nuclear. I do not mean the nuclear weapons—after all, that is almost a forty-year old news since the country detonated its first device in 1974. The latest stir was caused by the federal government’s green-lighting of a nuclear power plant in the state of Maharashtra—the home of India’s commercial capital, Mumbai.
The rapid economic growth rate over the last two decades has resulted in an ever increasing demand for electricity from India’s businesses and households. As with China, most of the electricity generation comes from coal-fired power plants, which account for about 70 percent of India’s power supply.
However, in a land of a billion-plus people, there simply isn’t enough for everybody. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) “South Asia currently accounts for 42% of the total number of people in the world without access to electricity.” Even Sub-Saharan Africa is better on this measure, with only 31 percent not having access to electricity there. The IEA reported that more than 400 million in India “don’t have access to the energy needed for lighting, mechanical power, transport and telecommunications.” That is a mind boggling statistic as we begin the second decade of the 21st century!
Energy consumption is result of economic prosperity as well as a requirement for economic growth and development. The lack of capacity means that power cuts are a regular feature of life in India, particularly in settlements far away from the major urban centers. One aunt of mine who lives in a smaller town, about 400 miles from Chennai where my parents are, has learnt to live with power cuts that last for anything from three to six hours every day.
Thus, it is understandable why the Indian government is exploring every possible way to speed up the expansion of capacity on this front.
The proposed nuclear power plant, in Jaitapur, is expected to play a big role in filling the gap between the supply and demand. With the nuclear reactor technology from France, the plan calls for a total capacity of 9,900 megawatts of power, which will make it the largest nuclear-power plant in the world. The first of the six units is expected to be commissioned by 2018.
As much as here in the US we have our own worries over nuclear power, there is considerable opposition to the project within India too. In addition to issues of safety and radioactive wastes, there are serious ecological concerns. The proposed site is by India’s western coast along the Arabian Sea, and a project of this magnitude is bound to have immense impacts on the marine life. And, it is in an area that, like many parts of India, is not without any seismic risk.
Despite opposition to the project, the federal minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh, came out swinging when he announced the clearance for the project: “I know the environmentalists will not be very happy with my decision, but it is foolish romance to think that India can attain high growth rate and sustain the energy needs of a 1.2 billion population with the help of solar, wind, biogas and such other forms of energy. It is paradoxical that environmentalists are against nuclear energy,” he said.
It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine that as Indians begin to generate and consume electricity at even a fifth of our consumption, the impacts on the global environment will be a lot more than probably what we could imagine.
The atrociously awful tragedy is how much we in the United States just don't want to engage in constructive public discussions on our own domestic energy policies, and about the global situation. Soon after 9/11, we had a wonderful chance to rethink the energy policy. We blew that. As we slid into recession, we had another small chance to rethink our energy approaches. That ship has also sailed now.
All we are left with is how the US tried to buy votes at Copenhagen, and how the Cancun summit will be a disaster as well.
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