10 villages join protest against nuclear plant Times of India, Bhaskar Mukherjee, TNN | Feb 11, 2012,  FATEHABAD

The protesters gathered in the local grain market and then marched to the mini secretariat to hand over a memorandum against the plant, signed by 10,000 people, to deputy commissioner M L Kaushik. Villagers including women from Kharakheri, Dhanger, Mochiwali, Khajuri, Chobara, Jandli, Dahman, Kajal Heri, Nehla and Gorakhpur participated in the demonstration.

President of Kisan Sangharsh Samiti Hans Raj Siwach said, “We are on a protest call for the past 546 days but the government does not care. We shall not let the government acquire our agriculture land.” He asked, “Why does the Haryana government want to set up nuclear power plant. Don’t they realize what the Fukushima nuclear disaster did to Japan?”

At least 1,313 acres of land in the village are to be acquired for the nuclear plant. Farmers of Gorakhpur had recently held three officials hostage when they visited the village for taking measurements. The officials were only let go when they promised never to come to the village again. They were forced to write down their promise on paper and sign it.

In the meantime, the residents of the village submitted memorandums against the setting up of the nuclear plant on their land.  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/10-villages-join-protest-against-nuclear-plant/articleshow/11843998.cms

‘Remove pro-nuclear Srinivasan from panel’ Press Trust Of India, Hindustan Times, Chennai, February 10, 2012

People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) said it welcomed constitution of the four-member state panel but pointed out that Srinivasan was a “well-known pro-nuclear person.”

Srinivasan was the former chairman and a current member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission. He was also a member of the site selection committee in the 1980s for the KNPP and has been writing and speaking in favor of nuclear power and the Koodankulam project itself, S P Udayakumar, leading the anti-nuclear movement, said in a statement.

He said people had expected that the state expert team would be neutral and independent “but Dr Srinivasan is neither.So it is hard for the PMANE to accept Dr Srinivasan.”
It asked the chief minister to replace Srinivasan with another expert and expand the team with experts in Geology, Oceanography and
Hydrology. PMANE also requested Jayalalithaa to make the State Expert Team meet its own experts, consider their findings and engage in a ”genuine dialogue” and listen to the fears and concerns of the people and arrive at a conclusion in a democratic manner on the basis of majority opinion.

He alleged that having failed to allay the fears of the people, the Centre was sending spies into the areas around Koodankulam “to divide
our communities, create fear and panic among the people and instigate violence..”… http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Chennai/Remove-pro-nuclear-Srinivasan-from-panel/Article1-809419.aspx

The reality is that China needs nuclear power much less than the nuclear industry needs China. 

Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012  Source: Platts - a leading global provider of energy, metals and petrochemicals information. London, 30 January 2012 “….BRICs   [Brazil, Russia, India and China] + South Korea China has dominated new nuclear plant orders in the past few years, accounting for 25 out of the 38 reactors on which construction started worldwide between 2008-2010. Six of these units were for Gen III+ designs, four AP1000s and two EPRs. Almost all the others used a design imported from France in the 1980s, which in turn had been licensed from Westinghouse in the early 1970s. This design, the CPR1000, is showing its age and there was an expectation, even before Fukushima, that the AP1000 would replace it. This would have been a huge boost to the AP1000, giving it the volume of orders that might have allowed costs to come down and for teething problems to be solved. The EPR, by contrast, appears to have no prospect of further orders in China.

However, there were signs that the strain of the rapid pace of construction was beginning to show. In 2011, no new starts were made, compared with ten in 2010. Fukusima explains this to a degree, but some might have been expected in the first three months of 2011 before disaster struck. The reason behind the slowdown is the high cost of the AP1000. The large Chinese utilities appear to be looking at other options.

There is now talk of pursuing indigenous advanced designs developed from the CPR1000 as well as Small Modular Reactors. China has always been adept at convincing nuclear suppliers that there was a great future for their particular technology in China.
It is unclear whether talk of SMRs and new advanced designs will go any further. China is looking much less committed to nuclear power than it was a year ago.

There is also speculation that China may enter the export market on the entirely unsupported assumptions that its reactors will be cheap and that it can successfully build them away from home soil. South Africa is particularly enthusiastic about Chinese designs, but whether this enthusiasm can be turned into orders remains to be seen.

The reality is that China needs nuclear power much less than the nuclear industry needs China. For its part, Russia did not order any reactors for its home market for more than two decades after Chernobyl. Six plants, started before Chernobyl, remained under construction for well into the 21st century. All except one (the only one using the Chernobyl design) are now finally on-line. The last was commissioned in 2011 after 25 years under construction.

In 2008, Russia began ordering again with a new design, which it claimed was Gen III+. In 2008-10, the government started construction on two reactors per year. It also reported export orders to Turkey, Vietnam, India and Bulgaria, although serious work has not started on any of these projects as yet. It also brought on line the reactor in Iran started in 1975, a curious mixture that appears to be a Russian reactor inside a Siemens containment.

Whether the new Russian design would satisfy Western regulators is not known, but the Russian vendor, Rosatom, does seem willing to do deals no other vendor would, and not just in Iran. For Turkey, it is contracted to build and operate four reactors, selling much of the power in a fixed price range, reported to be about €100-120/MWh ($126.87-152.32/MWh).

For India, it has nearly completed two reactors at Kudankulam and is reported to have agreed to supply ten more, despite Indian law allowing some limited liability for vendors in the case of an accident, a liability that is proscribed by international treaty elsewhere. The question marks against Russia are whether it can penetrate the larger developed country markets, whether it can continue to offer the sort of deals it has recently signed up to, and whether the technology would stand up to Western regulatory scrutiny.

India, meanwhile, has always been a country where there would be a huge nuclear market tomorrow. In part, orders have not materialised because of the proliferation issues raised by the country’s 1975 nuclear weapons test and New Delhi’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. However, there are also problems of finance and the country’s record on construction time and cost. India’s nuclear plants probably have the worst reliability record of any nation in the world. Nearly all the country’s existing plants are based on the Canadian CANDU design imported before India’s nuclear test explosion in 1975.

The deal in 2007 to get round NPT restrictions has opened the way for a flood of reported orders with Areva (EPRs), Toshiba/Westinghouse (AP1000s) and GE-Hitachi (ABWRs). Each has claimed orders for six reactors on top of the ten reactors ordered from Rosatom. India also plans to build six more of its CANDU design. However, none of these deals looks secure and problems of vendor liability as well as finance – vendors are asking for very strong support from sovereign loan guarantees – may mean few will actually go ahead.

South Korea has established a good reputation for building nuclear plants to cost and time, as well as operating them reliably. However, it was not until 2009 that it entered the international market, selling four reactors to the UAE, undercutting bids by Areva and Toshiba by more than 20%. This caused much soul searching in France and Japan, where the nuclear industry was mortified at being beaten so comprehensively by what they would see as their technological inferiors. The design South Korea offered is based on a US one, the Combustion Engineering System 80+, which was given safety approval in the US in 1997, but which would now require significant upgrades to be licensable in Europe and the US. Work has yet to start in the UAE and it remains to be seen whether South Korea’s bid was realistic, or whether it was seriously under-priced, failing to taking into account the issues of building away from home soil. If things go wrong, Korea’s entry to the nuclear export market could be short-lived…. Source: Platts - a leading global provider of energy, metals and petrochemicals information.

The commissioning of the plant was earlier slated in December 2011, but has been delayed after protests by locals, who have been agitating since September last, demanding scrapping of the Indo-Russian project, citing safety concerns following the Fukushima disaster.
The previous three rounds of talks between the Central experts committee and Tamil Nadu Government panel set up to break the impasse over the project, held on November 7, 18 and
December 15 last year failed to make any headway towards commissioning of the first unit as locals were not satisfied with the replies given by the expert group to their queries.
The fourth round meeting between the committee and panel is planned to be held on January
31.http://ibnlive.in.com/news/kudankulam-antinuclear-forum-stages-protest/224546-62-128.html

Renewable energy potential 28GW+ in Karnataka, Construction Week online India,  Jan 24, 2012

The policy envisions a generation of 6600 MW of renewable electricity by 2014 and about Rs.23,890 crore of investments during the said period. Studies by the World Institute of Sustainable Energy (WISE), Pune, suggest that Karnataka has much more RE potential
than envisaged, which is more than 24 GW, out of which currently, only 3.45 GW has been tapped so far (as on Nov 2011). This includes 1929 MW of wind, 86 MW of biomass, 782 MW of bagasse cogen, 646 MW of small hydro, and 9 MW of solar. Wind offers the maximum potential with an untapped potential of 11 GW. Obviously the huge untapped potential also creates a huge investment opportunity…..
http://www.constructionweekonline.in/article-7672-renewable_energy_potential_28gw_in_karnataka/

Officials said REAP would meet water storage and pumping needs in both rural and urban India by harnessing renewable energy sources. “It will help in combating global warming and other environmental issues. In addition to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, it will help BYPL manage the electricity demand better,” said an official.

The first REAP system was installed at a plot owned by the All India Panchayat Parishad (AIPS) in Mayur Vihar. Dikshit said the REAP technology would reduce consumption of power during morning peak hours, when most people switch on their pumps to get water as well as store it. “The technology will also prove useful in agriculture, hospitals, schools, hotels, restaurants, malls and group housing societies,” said a government official. The solar panel will be connected to a pump, which will draw ground water and store it in an overhead tank. The REAP has a capacity to draw 30,000l of water per hour. The CM said generation of power with coal and gas is not a viable solution as these resources are getting depleted.  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Renewable-energy-holds-key-to-growth-says-Sheila/articleshow/11573708.cms

The evidence is incontrovertible that India was a customer of the Khan network.

Gillard’s sexual education, Crikey, January 18, 2012 –, by NAJ Taylor   ”……..  if Playboy’s January issue (the one with Lindsay Lohan on the cover) is approached with open eyes, I believe it has the capacity the recast the Australia-India relationship. In sum, the article by Joshua Pollack concerns an already infamous Pakistani and a group of Indian nuclear scientists – the evidence assembled suggests only one thing: there was once a time when they were all in bed together.

The Secret Treachery of A.Q. Khan, PLAYBOY, January  12, JOSHUA POLLACK 

…… Khan could legitimately claim a victory over the Indians when it came to centrifuge technology. While the Indians had beaten Pakistan to the bomb, they had  done  so through mastery of plutonium production—a  different route to creating a nuclear weapon. India’s ability to enrich uranium remained limited. New Delhi started a centrifuge program in the 1970s, but  the  Indians weren’t ready to break ground on their main  enrichment facility until  1986. By that point, Pakistan’s KRL had  been  churning out  weapons-grade uranium for at least  three years.

India’s enrichment program progressed slowly, but at some point before 1992 the Indians began experimenting with supercritical centrifuges, devices that can withstand very high rotational speeds. The program apparently continued to expand, with the Indians purchasing large quantities of supercritical centrifuge components from 1997 to 1999 and again from 2003 to 2006.  Surprisingly, they were almost open about their shopping spree. In 2006 the Washington, D.C.–based Institute for Science and International Security revealed that the Indian government had used news- paper ads to solicit bids for centrifuge parts. The details of these advertisements, along with documents the Indians gave potential suppliers, provide strong clues about where New Delhi’s supercritical centrifuge technology came from. Despite some changes, the design is recognizable to the trained eye:  It almost mirrors the  G-2 centrifuge, a design that  Khan  stole from URENCO in the 1970s and later reproduced as Pakistan’s P-2 centrifuge.

Centrifuge specs are not the only apparent link between India’s enrichment program and Khan’s operation. The cast of characters also overlaps, starting with Gerhard Wisser, a German living in South Africa. In collaboration with Gotthard Lerch in Switzerland, Wisser’s engineering firm supplied new gas- handling equipment for KRL’s centrifuges, delivered through Farooq’s operation in Dubai. When Khan struck his 1997 deal with Libya, he called on Wisser for similar equipment. According to a South African court document, Wisser also supplied India’s centrifuge program with specialized equipment, starting in the late 1980s. What else he or Lerch might have sold to the Indians remains unknown, but the timing is consistent with India’s earliest known work with supercritical centrifuges. Wisser seems to have had access to centrifuge designs, too; he tried to sell them to the South Africans around the same time.

Could Khan have been ignorant about Wisser’s dealings with India? His own guilty conscience says otherwise. Though Khan has never acknowledged having a fourth customer, he gave his Pakistani interrogators at least two contradictory cover stories that explained how KRL’s enrichment technology could have ended up in enemy hands. The full transcript of Khan’s interrogation, said to run hundreds of pages, has never been made public, but Musharraf ’s 2006  memoir provides important details…..” http://www.playboy.com/magazine/the-secret-treachery-of-a-q-khan