Background

Jaitapur (home to the world-famous alphonso mango) is a small port situated in Rajapur Tehsil

of Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra State, India. Jaitapur lies on the Arabian sea coast.

Jaitapur came into limelight due to the proposed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project by Nuclear

Power Corporation of India. The Nuclear Power Plant was approved during Nicolas Sarkozy’s

trip to India in December 2010 thus giving French multinational ‘Areva’ the contract to construct

6 reactors, each of 1650 MW capacity totaling to 9,900 MW. The actual plant site is situated at

Madban, a village besides Jaitapur. However, the project has been named after Jaitapur, as it is

the port for the project.

If commissioned, the 9,900 MW Jaitapur Nuclear Power Station will be the largest in the world,

overtaking the current largest 8,200 MW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

The Data Sheet of Jaitapur

* Proposed 9900 MW power project of Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL),It will be

the largest nuclear power generating station in the world by net electrical power rating once

completed

* 968 hectares The nuclear plant site covers five villages: Madban, Niveli, Karel, Mithgavane,

Varliwada, all in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra

* Land acquisition ordered in 2007. Land cleared for acquisition: 968 hectares.

* 14.85 Rs-cr Compensation earmarked by the state government

* 1.38 Rs-cr Amount paid out so far

* 1.2-1.5 Rs-lakh/acre Price initially offered to villagers

* 4 Rs-lakh Later upped to Rs 4 lakh

* 10 Rs-lakh This year, the state government has offered Rs 10 lakh per acre plus one job to

every family displaced by the project

* 2,400 Families affected by land acquisition

* 40 Only 40 have accepted compensation so far, but some of them are rethinking their stand

* 40,000 The plant affects the livelihood of 40,000 locals, including about 16,000 directly

dependent on fishing

* 2,200 Rs-cr Land was shown as “barren” in the initial environment impact assessment reports.

But the district is famous for mangoes, chiefly the alphonso variety. Annual turnover: Rs 2,200

crore. In 2003, Ratnagiri was even declared a “horticulture zone”.

Is Jaitapur An Earthquake Prone Area?

Jaitapur is considered to be prone to seismic activity. According to a leading Daily it falls under

the Zone 3 category. Data collected by the Geological Survey of India has suggested that there

have been over 92 quakes in 20 years, the biggest of them being 6.2 on the Richter scale.

Keeping this in view and the recent Fukushima I nuclear accidents in Japan, massive protests are

being organized by the locals and the tribes in this area who do not trust the Indian Government

of providing them with adequate safeguards and preserving the Biodiversity of the region.

People Protests:

Jaitapur protests

Fresh fears of a possible nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan that could

lead to radioactive contamination in the area has once again turned the spotlight on India’s most

ambitious nuclear power project at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.The 9,900 MW proposed project is

pegged to be the biggest in the world. It has already been facing stiff resistance from locals over

fears of security and losing their livelihoods after the project comes up.

Both Fukushima and Jaitapur sites are on the coast but with one major difference: while Japan

falls in Seismic Zone V, the very high-risk zone for seismic activity, Jaitapur is located in

Seismic zone III which is the moderate risk zone.

Some Concerns

The project is being imposed on a beautiful ecosystem, a segment of the Sahyadris where the

Krishna and the Godavari originate, with a flourishing farming, horticultural and fisheries

economy. It lies in one of the world’s 10 greatest biodiversity hotspots.

Only an irrational mind would want to risk degradation of this region to build nuclear reactors

that will displace 40,000 people, disrupt water flows and uproot fruit-yielding trees.

Seismicity is also of concern. Jaitapur is an earthquake-prone area, with a rating of 3 on a 1-5

scale. This violates an official committee’s recommendations against locating hazardous

industries outside Zone 2.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), a subsidiary of the Department of

Atomic Energy (DAE) zeroed in on Jaitapur in 2003, assuming the site would be approved.

Consider another irrationality. Four years after the project report was made, the state started

acquiring 2,400 acres for the reactors, six days before French President Nicolas Sarkozy came to

India. In deep financial trouble, Areva has long eyed India’s nuclear market and was the first to

seize the opportunity offered by the India-US nuclear deal.

Jaitapur’s six proposed EPRs were cleared in an extraordinarily sloppy Environment Impact

Assessment by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute that has no competence

in seismic or nuclear safety-related matters. It evades biodiversity issues and one of the greatest

problems with nuclear power — generation and storage of large quantities of radioactive wastes.

The EPR’s safety design is problematic because of its large (1,650 MW) size, complexity, and

high neutron density, which will produce seven times more toxic iodine-129 than normal

reactors. The world’s first EPR-under-construction, in Finland — western Europe’s first post-

Chernobyl reactor — has been delayed by at least 42 months and is 90% over budget.

Environmental problems

Local fishermen like Kotawadekar, who owns two trawlers and whose family has been in the

trade for generations, fear that the project could cause irreparable damage to the region’s

environment and marine ecology. The plant is expected to guzzle 52 billion litres of sea water

every day — 15 times Mumbai’s daily water supply — and disgorge the same volume five

degrees warmer back into the sea. Environmentalists say that would push away marine life along

the coast into deeper waters, depleting the catch and forcing local fishermen to go further out

into the sea.

Ratnagiri boasts an annual catch of 1,25,000 tonnes of a variety of fish, including pomfret,

surmai (kingfish), bangda (Indian mackerel) and rawas (Indian  salmon), but with the project,

those numbers could dwindle significantly.  Environmentalists also fear that the radioactive

waste generated in the nuclear plant could permeate the alluvial soil, stunting the local mango,

cashew, rice and jackfruit plantations.

Ever since Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave the go ahead to the project’s

environmental clearance in November, a rash of virulent anti-nuclear protests has rocked the

region. Hundreds of local activists, mostly farmers and environmentalists opposed to the project,

have been arrested, many of them in overnight raids. Some of those spared have been slapped

externment notices and barred from entering the region for fear of inciting violence.  

The growing opposition to this project is a litmus test for Maharashtra’s Congress-led

government headed by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who is keenly projecting the Jaitapur

Nuclear Power Plant (JNPP) as the state’s definitive solution to its growing electricity crisis. He

travelled to Jaitapur last month, shepherding a team of scientists, experts and officials, in a last-

ditch effort to mollify protestors and allay fears about environmental and safety concerns — but

without success. The opposition to this project has grown fiercer in recent days after an

earthquake-generated tsunami smashed into nuclear power plants in Japan, raising the spectre of

a possible nuclear meltdown and raising alarm about similar threats at India’s seaside nuclear

plants.

Safety First

C.B. Jain, the project director of JNPP at the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL),

dismisses those concerns. Though located on the seashore and a seismic zone, the plant is

proposed to be built at an elevation, which makes it less vulnerable to the threat of tsunami

waves.

EPR is one of the world’s “safest reactors”, he claims, designed to even withstand the high-speed

impact of a commercial or military aircraft. “The EPR design is a direct descendent of the tested

and proven N4 and KONVOI reactors from Framatome and Siemens/KWU, the most modern

and most powerful reactors in France and Germany,” Jain says.

But despite such assurances, safety remains the paramount concern given that EPR is an untested

reactor the world over. “Why  should the people  of  Jaitapur  be  subjected  to  the  high  risk  of 

proving  out  an  unknown  reactor  in  their  backyard?” asks Dr A. Gopalakrishnan, former

chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.

More than anything else, the project is heavily criticised for being carried out under a shroud of

secrecy.  

Several crucial technical questions about the project remain unanswered. One of them is whether

NPCIL has devised a coherent strategy to deal with the spent fuel coming out of the plant?

The Facts: By stakeholders to cease the problem

Despite various efforts my stake-holders (NPCIL & Areva) for the progression of Power Project

this is still a problem due to various Environmental factors and undisclosed government

clearances, which still shows dark future for the project. Such as

geological issues

Since Jaitapur being seismically sensitive area, the danger of an earthquake has been

foremost on the minds of people

government also manipulating notification of the area from high severity earthquake zone to

moderate seismic severity zone

(a) NPCIL has always been a transparent and cohesive community citizen all throughout

its existence. With nation building as our core aim, our corporate goals are no different

from that of the common good of the people. The Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project site

was accorded “In Principle” approval by the Government, initially in September

2005. Subsequently, in October 2009, Government of India approved to locate six

reactors of 1650 MW each to exploit the full potential of the site. During the period

from 2005 till date, NPCIL has conducted structured public awareness campaigns,

organized several, held debates and discussions on nuclear power and

Jaitapur plant in and around the Jaitapur site. In addition, several meetings on relevant

issues have been held between NPCIL and all the stakeholders, including the project

affected persons.

To name a few of these, exhibitions-cum-discussions and public addresses on the

nuclear power/JNPP were organized in December 2005 and February 2006 in Village

Mithagavan and Madvan. There was an active participation of villagers and their

representatives, press and media and state officials in these events. These campaigns

were followed by organized visits of project-affected people, state officials, press

and media, to NPCIL’s Kaiga Site in Karnataka in 2005, Kudankulam site in

Tamilnadu in 2006 and Tarapur site in Maharashtra in 2007. About 60 to 70 persons

from the surrounding area visited these plants in each of these visits.

Till now, about 30 meeting with various groups of stakeholders, including the project

affected villagers, have been organized by NPCIL to provide factual information on

the project and associated aspects. The public awareness campaigns on nuclear power

and Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project, around Jaitapur and Ratnagiri have been an

ongoing feature through exhibitions, lectures, public addresses, meetings, press and

media campaigns and personal interactions.

(b) The public hearing of Jaitapur nuclear power project was organised by the Maharashtra

Pollution Control Board, in line with the MoEF notification of September 2006. The said

notification prescribes submission of the executive summary of Environmental Impact

Assessment (EIA) report one month before the hearing date. Also, in view of the requests

made by some sections of the society to the concerned officials of the state government, to

provide the Main Report (Part-1) and Appendix on studies carried out (Part-2), the same were

provided in the local language – Marathi.

(c) Extensive information is also available on our website. Information on NPCIL,

various aspects of nuclear power, Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report of

the project, public hearing proceedings, MoEF clearance and FAQs in respect of

Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project is available on NPCILweb site (www.npcil.nic.in).

(d) NPCIL has always been and is open to discussions, sharing information and providing

exhibitions, held debates and discussions on nuclear power and

Jaitapur plant in and around the Jaitapur site. In addition, several meetings on relevant

issues have been held between NPCIL and all the stakeholders, including the project

affected persons.

To name a few of these, exhibitions-cum-discussions and public addresses on the

nuclear power/JNPP were organized in December 2005 and February 2006 in Village

Mithagavan and Madvan. There was an active participation of villagers and their

representatives, press and media and state officials in these events. These campaigns

were followed by organized visits of project-affected people, state officials, press

and media, to NPCIL’s Kaiga Site in Karnataka in 2005, Kudankulam site in

Tamilnadu in 2006 and Tarapur site in Maharashtra in 2007. About 60 to 70 persons

from the surrounding area visited these plants in each of these visits.

Till now, about 30 meeting with various groups of stakeholders, is, including the project

affected villagers, have been organized by NPCIL to provide factual information on

the project and associated aspects. The public awareness campaigns on nuclear power

and Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project, around Jaitapur and Ratnagiri have been an

ongoing feature through exhibitions, lectures, public addresses, meetings, press and

media campaigns and personal interactions.

(b) The public hearing of Jaitapur nuclear power project was organised by the Maharashtra

Pollution Control Board, in line with the MoEF notification of September 2006. The said

notification prescribes submission of the executive summary of Environmental Impact

Assessment (EIA) report one month before the hearing date. Also, in view of the requests

made by some sections of the society to the concerned officials of the state government, to

provide the Main Report (Part-1) and Appendix on studies carried out (Part-2), the same were

provided in the local language – Marathi.

(c) Extensive information is also available on our website. Information on NPCIL,

various aspects of nuclear power, Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report of

the project, public hearing proceedings, MoEF clearance and FAQs in respect of

Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project is available on NPCILweb site (www.npcil.nic.in).

(d) NPCIL has always been and is open to discussions, sharing information and providing

clarifications.

Steps that should have been taken to avoid such a scenario:

Considering a seismically non-activity area

Since Jaitapur being seismically sensitive area, the danger of an earthquake has been foremost on

the minds of people. According to the Earthquake hazard zoning of India, Jaitapur comes under

Zone III. This zone is called the moderate Risk Zone and covers areas liable to MSK VIII.The

presence of two major creeks on the proposed site has been ignored while clearing the site. Post

the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident, environmentalists, citizens of the area

and the people world over are questioning about safety, as when in 2007 the largest nuclear

generating station in the world Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan at the

Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant was closed for five months following an earthquake. The

probability of a tsunami, and the damage thereof, has not been taken into account while clearing

the site Nevertheless probability of a tsunami on the Arabian Sea coast is very low due to the

lack of seismic activity in the ocean. Moreover Jaitapur is located on plateau probability of

tsunami reaching Jaitapur is quite less.

It is not clear where the nuclear waste emanating from the site will be dumped. The plant is

estimated to generate 300 tonnes of waste each year. EPR waste will have about four times as

much radioactive Bromine, Iodine, Caesium, etc, compared to ordinary pressurized water

reactor.

Protecting the marine life in the nearby seas

Since the plant will use the sea water for cooling and then release warm water in the Arabian

Sea, fishermen in villages around are predicting destruction of fisheries in the nearby sea. Media

articles also highlight the possible human and fisheries cost of this project. Social impact

assessment reviews of the project are being conducted by the Jamsetji Tata centre for disaster

management of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Transparency with regards to Project details

The Government of India is not fully transparent with its own citizens. The Government is hiding

facts about huge negative impact on the social and environmental development of the Konkan

region in general and the Government is also manipulating notification of the area from high

severity earthquake zone to moderate seismic severity zone.

Mango harvest will be disrupted

Ratnagiri has 15,233 hectares under mango cultivation, with an estimated annual business

turnover of Rs. 2,200 crores. The mango crop is extremely sensitive to the minutest changes in

temperature and soil chemistry. The local people apprehend that a good deal of the mango

harvest would be lost if the project comes up.

Threat to a Unique Ecosystem

Konkan has been called the “Kashmir of Maharashta” because of its stunning beauty. The

Konkan scenario offers a magical combination of mountains and undulating hills, verdant

plateaus, creeks, lagoons, the open sea and infinite greenery. There is hardly a square foot of land

that is not lush with vegetation. The Konkan ecology contains virgin rainforests and an immense

diversity of plant, animal and marine life. Botanists say it is India’s richest area for endemic

plant species.

Konkan is one of the world’s 10 “Hottest Biodiversity Hotspots”. The Sahyadri mountains in the

Western Ghats are home to over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species and 508

bird and 179 amphibian species, including 325 globally threatened ones. Two great peninsular

rivers (the Krishna and the Godavari) originate there. The region’s ecology is so precious and

unique that one would need a diabolically destructive imagination and intent to destroy it by

building a nuclear power plant in it.

Nuclear is Unsafe

India’s super-ambitious nuclear expansion plans are based on assumption that a global nuclear

renaissance is under way and that nuclear power is the best solution both to the climate change

crisis and to the national energy security question. But as we see in the last section, there is no

nuclear renaissance worldwide. Nuclear power is in decline. One of the main reasons for this is

that nuclear power is unpopular and nuclear reactors are seen as bad neighbours.

Nuclear power generation is inevitably fraught with radiation, an invisible and insidious poison,

which is unsafe in all doses, however small. Radiation causes cancers and genetic damage, for

which there is no cure, antidote or remedy. Nuclear plants expose not just occupational workers,

but also the general public to radioactive hazards in numerous ways.

Radioactive wastes of different intensity or level are produced in all stages of the so-called

nuclear fuel cycle. Wastes are produced in a nuclear reactor’s core. They are created in uranium

mining, refining and enrichment, and in fuel fabrication. Handling and transporting nuclear

materials also generates wastes. As does the reprocessing of spent-fuel rods which contain vast

amounts of dangerous radionuclides. An average reactor generates 20 to 30 tonnes of high-level

nuclear waste every year.

Even after decades of claims by the nuclear industry, humankind has found no way of safely

disposing of nuclear waste. It remains dangerously radioactive and hazardous literally for

thousands of years.

Adverse Economics of the Project

Serious questions have been raised about the economic costs of the Jaitapur project based on the

extremely expensive European Pressurised Reactors.[xlvi] Each of the six 1,650 MW reactors

would cost around $7 billion assuming the capital cost of the EPR being built at Olkiluoto does

not escalate beyond the latest estimate of 5.7 billion Euros. This works out to Rs 21 crores per

megawatt (MW) of capacity.

This cost estimate, however, does not include fuel costs or maintenance costs. The nuclear

industry has devised ways to hide several other costs too—storage of hundreds of tonnes of the

nuclear waste generated annually; the cost of reactor decommissioning which could amount to

one-third to one-half of the total construction cost; the extensive additional physical security

costs, including anti-aircraft batteries and extra coast guard deployment. Of course,

environmental costs, and health costs imposed on miners, plant workers, and the public living

close to nuclear installations, and the associated medical expenses, are ignored altogether.

Comparing the likely cost of electricity generation in Jaitapur, based only on the capital cost,

with other available options leads us to alarming conclusions. According to the current Finnish

estimate, itself conservative, the EPR’s capital costs (Rs 21 crores per MW) turn out far more

expensive than those of the indigenous CANDU reactors installed at the Rajasthan, Madras,

Narora and Kaiga power stations, which are about Rs 8-9 crores per MW. They are and even

higher than the capital costs of supercritical coal-fired thermal power stations (Re 5 crores per

MW).

EPRs: Untested Reactors

There are genuine concerns about the safety and viability of the European Pressurised Reactor

that are to be imported for the Jaitapur nuclear power “park”. Areva’s 1650 MWe EPRs are

based on the French N4 and German Konvoi-type reactors.[xviii] However, nowhere in the

world has an EPR been fully built or commissioned so far. There are four EPRs in different

stages of construction in the world. Two of them are already facing serious financial problems

and delay.

Unique Solution

1) Cheaper and better alternatives like Hydro and Bio power, the technology to extract

power from these sources also exists in India.

2) Alternatives including wind and solar are relatively expensive and but lack the scale and

storage capacity to provide base load supply.

3) India has announced plans for a prototype nuclear power plant that uses an innovative,

''safer'' fuel.Officials are selecting a site for the reactor, the first of its kind, using thorium

for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium, the fuel for conventional reactors. They want

the plant to be operating i by the end of the decade.

The development of workable and large-scale thorium reactors has been a dream for

nuclear engineers for decades, while for some environmentalists it has become a major

hope as an alternative to fossil fuels. Proponents say the fuel has considerable advantages

over uranium. It is more abundant, and exploiting it does not involve release of large

quantities of carbon dioxide, making it less dangerous for the climate than fossil fuels

like coal.

The pro-thorium lobby maintains this was partly because nuclear power programs in the

US and elsewhere were developed with a military purpose in mind: access to a source of

plutonium for nuclear weapons. Unlike uranium, thorium-fuelled reactors do not result in

a proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium. Also, under certain conditions, the waste

from thorium reactors is less dangerous and remains radioactive for hundreds rather than

thousands of years. With the world's supply of uranium rapidly depleting, attention has

refocused on thorium, which is three to four times more abundant and 200 times more

energy-dense. India has substantial thorium deposits and with a world hungry for low-

carbon energy, it has its eyes on a potentially lucrative export market.