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The method of reprocessing nuclear fuel rods has always been defended as an appropriate method to dispose of dangerous nuclear waste, as a method of ‘recycling’. Yet nuclear reprocessing results in new waste, and that is the most damaging industrial waste in the entire nuclear production chain. It has to be stored and put aside in nuclear waste tanks for an indefinite period of time.

Storage of such high-level waste in tanks has resulted in catastrophic accidents, notably in Cheliabinsk (former Soviet Union). The nuclear fuel rods from the reactors at Koodankulam, once depreciated, will most likely be reprocessed at Kalpakkam.

Yet Kalpakkam has already proven to be a dangerous hotspot. Here, in January 2003, a valve connecting a high-level radioactive liquid waste tank and a low level waste tank leaked, leading to radiation exposure for at least six employees, an unknown number of deaths, and temporary closure of Kalpakkam’s main plant. The Kalpakkam nuclear complex also holds the dubious distinction of having been flooded when the devastating tsunami of 2004 struck.

Kalpakkam hence is an additional reason for worries. Not least because the nuclear complex harbours a test reactor constructed towards enabling India build a plutonium economy. Indian peace activists have expressed suspicions that the plutonium separated at Indian civilian reprocessing facilities will be diverted and used to increase the country’s stock of atomic weapons.

These suspicions have not been allayed by recent developments. Since the beginning of this year, India boasts three reprocessing plants. Further, the U.S. government has in principle granted the Indian government permission to domestically reprocess fuel elements from reactors to be supplied under the 2008 U.S.-India deal. Hence, diversion of plutonium towards India’s weapons’ programme is well possible.

Again, the use of plutonium separated at Kalpakkam for civilian purposes is no less questionable. Plutonium is the most toxic substance humanity has ever created. Even microgram quantities of plutonium, if inhaled or ingested by humans, are known to result in fatal cancers.

In Europe, fast breeder reactors – so termed since they create additional plutonium even as they burn plutonium – have long been considered unfeasible. The fast-breeder reactor at Kalkar in Germany, built in the 1970s and 1980s against fierce international opposition, could not be put into operation.

France’s fast breeder, the Superphoenix, had to be closed in the late 1990s after a poor record of 12 years of operation. Yet these negative experiences are apparently being ignored by India. Technological preparations towards the building of a full-scale fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam are reportedly in an advanced stage.

In short, the significance of the struggle waged by villagers in the south of Tamil Nadu stretches well beyond the Koodankulam nuclear project itself. ….

The stakes are very large, since India’s nuclear lobby has set its mind on turning India into a plutonium power. Yet because the Koodankulam project is closely
intertwined with plans for expansion of the Kalpakkam complex, the struggle is bound to reverberate throughout the state of Tamil Nadu and beyond.

http://www.international.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2698:anti-nuclear-struggle-has-large-fallout&catid=80:politics&Itemid=120